The collapse in popularity of Jean Charest's Liberal party, elected with a comfortable majority just 15 months ago, forcefully reminds us all that in a political system with only one federalist party, dangerous instability is always too close.
The sovereignty movement has found little to complain about in recent years, and Canada's financial stability has been a comfort recently to Quebecers as to all other Canadians, and yet here we see the Parti Québécois with a commanding lead in the latest opinion polls.
Fortunately we won't be dealing with Premier Pauline Marois anytime soon. Although Charest's poll numbers are in free-fall, he presides over a majority government and a disciplined caucus; there is just about zero prospect of an election any time soon. If Stephen Harper had suffered such a steep decline in popularity, we'd be on our way to our polling places before you could say "hidden agenda."
We have often bemoaned in this space the fact that federalists in Quebec - including almost the whole anglophone community - are captives of the Liberal party. Now that party is wallowing at the bottom of the polls, and those of us with no appetite for more separatist chicanery can only watch impotently to see if the Liberals can regain their footing in the two or three years left to them.
At their weekend general council meeting the Liberals put on a brave face, praising themselves for managing the economic crisis, for presenting a realistic budget, and for building and rebuilding infrastructure everywhere. Never mind that the credit for recession management belongs at least as much to Ottawa, that the budget did little to tackle Quebec's real fiscal problems, and that infrastructure investments are increasingly seen as economically dubious - the Liberals needed, and found, something to cheer about.
It might be, too, that current support for the Parti Québécois is, as the saying goes, a mile wide but an inch deep. Asked by one pollster who would make the best premier, a mere 15 per cent chose Charest but only 25 per cent chose Marois; a solid majority of respondents, answering another question, said they think corruption would be as bad under any party.
In the long run, cynicism about the whole political system might prove more corrosive than disdain for the current government. After the sponsorship affair at the federal level, last year's Montreal municipal scandals, and construction-industry issues in Quebec, the public is understandably cynical about integrity at all levels of government.
So Charest faces a double challenge, to revive his own party and to help Quebecers understand that the whole system can work well.
Last week's 50,000-strong demonstration in the streets of Quebec City demonstrates the magnitude of that second challenge: Protesters, many of them civil servants, want ever-greater government services but no new taxes. Magical realism has a certain charm in literature, but it's no sound basis for a political platform or a budget. Finance Minister Raymond Bachand knows that even with his new taxes, the red ink is still lapping at our ankles.
How to explain these realities to Quebecers, while at the same time rebuilding the Liberal Party's badly tarnished image? Charest, in a fighting mood on the weekend, declared himself ready for new challenges and we hope that's true, because these truly daunting tasks demand his attention right now.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/editorials/Charest+going+need+fighting+mood/2927827/story.html#ixzz0lkxW4442