Bleak election prospects in Quebec good for Canada

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Pauline Marois is greeted by PQ candidate and former student leader Léo Bureau-Blouin during a campaign stop Thursday in Laval, Que. (PAUL CHIASSON / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The Parti Quebecois ought, by all rights, to be a shoo-in when Quebecers go to the polls on Sept. 4. The fact that the province’s election is even considered a contest underlines the weakness of the party and the separatist movement that it leads.

After nine years in power, the Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest should be ripe for the picking. Seventy per cent of voters tell pollsters they’re dissatisfied with its performance. The province’s finances are a mess, and the Liberals have the stink of corruption. The unrest whipped up by students and their supporters over tuition fees made the government look alternately feeble and enraged.

So it ought to be the moment for Pauline Marois and the PQ to slip effortlessly back into power, given Quebecers’ tendency to kick the bums out every eight or nine years. The Pequistes may well win, but it won’t be a cake walk. Partly it’s leadership: Marois is a lightweight and an opportunist who looked ridiculous banging pots at the head of the student street protests.

More importantly — and this is the best news for those of us outside Quebec — she’s already running away from her party’s signature position. On Day One of the campaign she dodged the basic question: will you call a referendum on sovereignty if you’re elected? Quebecers will "eventually" have to decide, she said, but not now.

Who knows when that moment will come, if ever? Polls show little appetite among Quebecers for even debating sovereignty. They simply don’t want to be forced to choose between Quebec and Canada; better than the rest of us they know how divisive and painful that would be.

Instead, the PQ offers a dispiriting mix of obstructionism towards Ottawa and pointless blustering on the language front. Its not-so-secret strategy will be to make all sorts of demands on the federal government (more powers on the economy, immigration, culture and so on) and then strike an outraged pose if they aren’t met. It would be nice to think Quebecers will see through this tired approach, but it’s been a winning formula for Quebec governments for decades, so why change now?

At the same time, the PQ threatens to exploit simmering insecurities about language by further limiting access to education in English (by forbidding francophone students from attending junior colleges in English) and imposing more language rules on small business. The perceived problem is creeping bilingualism on the island of Montreal. The city’s mixing of languages and cultures should be a point of pride for Quebecers (as well as an advantage in positioning it for global competition), but for the old-think PQ it’s a problem to be solved by ever-tighter language laws.

So, clapped-out Liberals or same-old Pequistes? With such choices it’s no wonder that other options have emerged — the "third way" Coalition Avenir Quebec (which promises to put the sovereignty issue on ice for a decade) and the ultra-left Quebec Solidaire party. The first is untested; the second is even more uncompromisingly separatist than the PQ.

With those parties bleeding support from the big two, the result may well be a minority of chastened Liberals or Pequistes on a short leash. That wouldn’t be so bad. Quebec elections are always important, given the size of the province and its unique role in Confederation as home of the Quebecois "nation." But more and more they are simply provincial elections like many others — and for Canada that’s an excellent thing.