NDP leader Jack Layton got a thumbs-up from Quebecers in what should serve as a warning to provincial politicians
_ Photograph by: Patrick Doyle, REUTERS
MONTREAL - In last week’s column, I predicted the tectonic plates of Canadian politics were poised to shift on Monday night, perhaps dramatically in Quebec.
I concluded that Jack Layton might even end up as the new leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.
Still, no one saw coming the pulverization of the Bloc Québécois and the election of an astounding 58 NDP MPs. Not the NDP leader. Not even Thomas Mulcair.
Although the Bloc did manage to win 23 per cent of the vote, the real story was the near annihilation of its caucus – down to only four members.
This led to the inevitable quick resignation of its leader after he’d also lost his riding to an unknown NDP candidate.
For the NDP, this unprecedented “orange wave” means that it owes its official-opposition status to the 43 per cent of Quebec voters who gave it their support.
It will take some time for political scientists, analysts and the parties themselves to decipher the complexities of these spectacular results. And there are other factors that require even more analysis and reflection.
Let’s start with the striking resemblance to what happened in the 2007 provincial election. Mario Dumont’s fledgling Action démocratique won a surprising 41 seats with 31 per cent of the vote and ended up as the government-in-waiting.
Part of that resemblance might lie in what appears to be a growing anti-establishment sentiment in Quebec. The political “establishment,” that is.
In 2007, the rejection of the unpopular Jean Charest and the catastrophic André Boisclair, coupled with Dumont’s flair for capitalizing on the reasonable-accommodation issue, ended up putting a bunch of rookies in official opposition.
On Monday night, it felt as if after only 20 years of existence, the Bloc suddenly got lumped in with the “establishment of Ottawa.” Perhaps not to the extent that the Liberals and Conservatives already had, but it was enough to get booted out by a group made up of mostly unknown candidates as well as to send packing one of their most devoted politicians, Gilles Duceppe.
But that winning group was led by a newly popular leader, Jack Layton, whose main message was not only positive, but geared at the middle class, workers and women, and who even touted a possible reconciliation with Quebec within .
As much as Dumont’s discourse on reasonable accommodation had managed to tap into a prevalent preoccupation that had escaped both the Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois, Layton’s message was particularly timely for many Quebecers.
For the Liberals and the Péquistes, this should come as a serious warning for the next provincial election. This warning speaks louder to Pauline Marois.
Chances are, many sovereignists felt free to vote NDP in part because Marois offers no commitment on trying to achieve sovereignty if the PQ returns to power.
Calling on sovereignists to mobilize for the Bloc as it plummeted in the polls simply wasn’t enough without a clear political objective to provide as motivation.
And like Charest, Marois is perceived as being part of the political establishment.
Finally, there’s a guy out there named François Legault. Although he was part of the dominant political class until only a couple of years ago, he’s now trying his darndest to position himself as a born-again populist anti-establishment politician who, by some strange coincidence, also wants to turn the page on the national question.
With Liberal support down at around 20 per cent among francophones, Legault is hoping to eat away the PQ base if he ends up forming a new party next year.
Of course, there were myriad factors at work in the Bloc’s demise and the NDP’s rise on Monday night. But the combination of Layton’s message and a volatile electorate that is increasingly put off by mounting stories of corruption, and that has a growing difficulty in identifying with all of the established parties, might also have played some part in Monday night’s results in Quebec.
That 43-per-cent NDP support sends another message to the PQ: Look deep inside for your raison d’être and your social-democratic roots. They might come in handy during the next election.