One of the crucial goals of the federal Liberals is to win back their political legitimacy in Quebec so that some day they can again win a majority of seats there. What made the Liberals the country’s “natural governing party” was Wilfrid Laurier’s success in the election of 1896 in decisively winning Quebec over to his party. From that date until 1980, the Liberals won a majority of seats in Quebec in all but two federal elections, those of 1930 and 1958. Going forth from their Quebec bastion into the rest of the country gave the Liberals the edge for nearly a century and relegated the Conservatives to the status of the party that won office only when Canadians were fed up with the Grits.
But the era when Quebec was reliably Liberal is long gone. The Liberals have not won a majority of seats in Quebec in a federal election since 1980. Jean Chretien managed to win three successive majority victories without once winning a majority of seats in his own province. He was the only Francophone Liberal leader ever to fail to win a majority of seats in his own province. Wilfrid Laurier, Louis St. Laurent, and Pierre Trudeau all lost elections, but they won a majority of seats in Quebec every time out.
We now live in the new and unsettling political universe of three solitudes---with the Conservatives in the West, the Bloc in Quebec and the Liberals in their dual bastion of Ontario and the Atlantic Provinces. The truth is that the role of Quebec in the fortunes of the Liberal Party is very different than it was in the golden age when the Liberals could count on Quebec the way U.S. Democrats could depend on the South until the late 1960s. The Liberals can no longer win in Quebec, but a successful Liberal leader still has to convince the electorate in Ontario that he or she is sufficiently acceptable to Quebecers to hold the country together.
Naturally, the Liberals would like to return straight away to their historic domination of Quebec. That, however, involves a long and uncertain journey.
While Pierre Trudeau achieved many things, a part of his legacy is that a very substantial portion of the Quebec electorate is permanently alienated from the federal Liberals. And the divide is not simply between federalists and sovereignists. Trudeau’s variety of federalism insisted that there must be no special constitutional deal for Quebec in Confederation. No special status, no asymmetrical federalism for him. Years after leaving office, he vehemently opposed the “distinct society” clause in the Meech Lake Accord.
What few English Canadians realize is that Trudeau’s strict federalism is anathema to most Quebecers including not only Pequistes, but provincial Liberals as well. Liberals cast in the same mould as Trudeau have been doomed to a minority role in Quebec for the past quarter century. The great failure of Jean Chretien’s career is that he could not make retake Quebec as a Liberal bastion.
Which brings us to the Liberal leadership race. As the architect of the Clarity Act, Stephane Dion is, and will remain, relegated to a minority role in Quebec. Bob Rae is perceived as a friend of Quebec and could make inroads there as a post-Sponsorship Scandal Liberal. Michael Ignatieff, who is wrong for Quebec because of his positions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the one leadership candidate with a new idea on the Quebec question. His notion that Quebecers should embrace Quebec as their nation and Canada as their country has definite merit as a way to address the Quebec question which has been frozen in an unresolved state since the defeat of the Charlottetown Accord in 1992 and the Quebec Referendum in 1995. But then Ignatieff screws it up by musing about the potential for civil war, which drives most people back to the Bob Rae view that the constitution is too prickly to touch.
This time around, odd as it may seem, the best way forward for the Liberals is a leader from Toronto (the heart of darkness) who is not hopelessly labeled as a partisan in Quebec’s long running internal struggle. And that takes us back to Rae or Kennedy.
But the era when Quebec was reliably Liberal is long gone. The Liberals have not won a majority of seats in Quebec in a federal election since 1980. Jean Chretien managed to win three successive majority victories without once winning a majority of seats in his own province. He was the only Francophone Liberal leader ever to fail to win a majority of seats in his own province. Wilfrid Laurier, Louis St. Laurent, and Pierre Trudeau all lost elections, but they won a majority of seats in Quebec every time out.
We now live in the new and unsettling political universe of three solitudes---with the Conservatives in the West, the Bloc in Quebec and the Liberals in their dual bastion of Ontario and the Atlantic Provinces. The truth is that the role of Quebec in the fortunes of the Liberal Party is very different than it was in the golden age when the Liberals could count on Quebec the way U.S. Democrats could depend on the South until the late 1960s. The Liberals can no longer win in Quebec, but a successful Liberal leader still has to convince the electorate in Ontario that he or she is sufficiently acceptable to Quebecers to hold the country together.
Naturally, the Liberals would like to return straight away to their historic domination of Quebec. That, however, involves a long and uncertain journey.
While Pierre Trudeau achieved many things, a part of his legacy is that a very substantial portion of the Quebec electorate is permanently alienated from the federal Liberals. And the divide is not simply between federalists and sovereignists. Trudeau’s variety of federalism insisted that there must be no special constitutional deal for Quebec in Confederation. No special status, no asymmetrical federalism for him. Years after leaving office, he vehemently opposed the “distinct society” clause in the Meech Lake Accord.
What few English Canadians realize is that Trudeau’s strict federalism is anathema to most Quebecers including not only Pequistes, but provincial Liberals as well. Liberals cast in the same mould as Trudeau have been doomed to a minority role in Quebec for the past quarter century. The great failure of Jean Chretien’s career is that he could not make retake Quebec as a Liberal bastion.
Which brings us to the Liberal leadership race. As the architect of the Clarity Act, Stephane Dion is, and will remain, relegated to a minority role in Quebec. Bob Rae is perceived as a friend of Quebec and could make inroads there as a post-Sponsorship Scandal Liberal. Michael Ignatieff, who is wrong for Quebec because of his positions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the one leadership candidate with a new idea on the Quebec question. His notion that Quebecers should embrace Quebec as their nation and Canada as their country has definite merit as a way to address the Quebec question which has been frozen in an unresolved state since the defeat of the Charlottetown Accord in 1992 and the Quebec Referendum in 1995. But then Ignatieff screws it up by musing about the potential for civil war, which drives most people back to the Bob Rae view that the constitution is too prickly to touch.
This time around, odd as it may seem, the best way forward for the Liberals is a leader from Toronto (the heart of darkness) who is not hopelessly labeled as a partisan in Quebec’s long running internal struggle. And that takes us back to Rae or Kennedy.
5 comments:
The fact Dion is doing so well in Quebec shouldn't be surprising, nor should it allow anyone to claim the wounds are healed. Afterall, this is a Liberal leadership and you would expect the good soldier to have strong support within the narrow confines of party. I have read some polls that show Dion would do okay in Quebec, but there is lingering doubt there no question. When your claim to fame is your role as Chretien's hatchetman, you have to wonder if all is really forgotten, or this isn't convienient spin from supporters. I don't think you can assume Dion would do well in Quebec, although it would be fun to watch him undress Duceppe a time or two.
Me again. Just thought I would point out Kennedy's French before someone brings the easy bash. Given how well his French has improved in a relatively short timeframe, does anyone doubt that come next spring it won't be on par with Harper. Plus, the added bonus, most Quebecers might actually endorse Kennedy's agenda. To say Quebec is dead to Kennedy is pre-mature and necessitates a short memory, given who are PM is currently and his own evolution with French and the province. Kennedy's policies are a natural fit with Quebecers, which should be the key consideration afterall. The French will be fine in time, that seems obvious.
Excellent blog - gave me alot to think about with regards to the Liberals and Quebec.
I think Kennedy or Rae are the Liberal Party's best hope -- and ironically Jack Layton's worse nightmare.
Between the Bloc Quebecois' and the Conservatives' extreme distrust of the Grits and the Red Team's recent history I think that Quebecer Grits have a LOOOONG way to go before they regain the trust of the people of that province. They might want to pay attention to their New Brunswick counterparts but what they need to do even more is truly commit themselves to eradicating fraud and deception...and they might want to watch the Tory-Bloc coalition in Ottawa and take some notes. Even without the same ideology they could still learn in order to rebuild...
I must say James, and I intend to democratically seed my comment at the appropriate posts throughout your site, that your recent rants regarding the NDP are bizarre, and the group of Liberal losers you have supporting them are a laugh. They often, as with the ill-informed Lib who did not seem to realize that that the NDP was the ONLY party to vote against the government on all three confidence motions, seem determined to find some obscure moral justification for voting Liberal while pretending that doing so makes them still progressive.
Well, to paraphrase your recent rubbish in the Globe, that it simply a fiction.
One could go over the same old tired but true territory that the Libs ran the most right wing government since the end of the second war when they felt no threat from the left. (The 95 budget being one of the great disgraces of modern Canadian political history... but hey as long as they are not Tories in name I guess you don't care if they are Tories in deed).
One could point out that, your silly attack at Layton to the contrary, the ONLY reason the NDP had to try to work with Rona Ambrose as environment minister was due to the fact that the Libs had refused to vote against her as environment minister when the NDP proposed a Bloc backed motion to do so. (But to you and other Lib apologists it is always tactical when the Libs betray promises, the public trust, etc...when the NDP do anything tactical to advance the interests of Canada's socialist movement it is somehow a "betrayal". This is hypocritical crap, two-faced, and pure proof that the real objective is to serve as an apologist for the Libs. How about ONE SINGLE article critical of Lib positions and self-serving actions. Till I see one I must say that your whole line is a little hard to take seriously.)
One could point out that the Libs have consistently put short term political goals ahead of the interests of the Canadian working class, native peoples, women, gays, even your own personal bugaboo of nationalism (never did renegotiate that free trade agreement did they?), but you only ever seem to notice what you perceive as the NDP putting their political interests first. Well, political parties exist to win elections to advance the interests they support and while you seem to accept this when the Libs do it (and I will come back to this) you reserve all your scorn for the NDP. Why not stop pretending, just join the Liberal Party.
Why not? Well you would lose all that left wing credibility you feel you have built up. So, without having actually done anything politically for years you take cheap shots, dripping with psuedo-leftist sanctimony, at the only political movement that makes this country worth living in, heaping scorn in the process on tens of thousands of actual activists who are the real bulwark that keeps this country out of the union to the south.
One could point out that while you say that the NDP was duped by the Tories, it was really your tired old vision of a 70's nationalism that has duped you into supporting Libs at the expense of Canadian children, social programs, NDP provincial governments, transfer payments, health care, the environment, etc...out of the vague belief that doing so would somehow bolster Canadian nationalist interests by keeping the Tories out of office. Well done. All those who stayed silent during the Liberal majority years as they ripped the heart out of the post war consensus and damned a million Canadian kids to poverty on the backs of fiscal responsibility sure managed to keep this country strong by getting so enraged by the NDP standing up to this same regime after 13 years. Frankly maybe a few too many years of academics has made you lose touch and forget why we are fighting this fight. In this new era your old lines of demarcation are particularly wrong.
One could say all these things, and more (and I will be happy to follow up on any brave bloggers who are so certain to change the world glued as they are to their laptops and poli-sci classes)but in fact the most obvious indication that your approach hides a whole tapestry of hypocrisy can be exposed by bringing up your own son.
Michael, if I am not mistaken, ran against Jim Karigyanis ( I may have got the name wrong, but we all, sadly, know who I mean) in Scarborough in 2000 ( I think he also ran for the party in 2003 provincially). He did not do well, but hey, why should you Lib lovers care? But he did run hard against one of the ugliest, pro-life, pro-death penalty, anti-gay, mean spirited and plain old useless Lib MPs out there. A man even the Star said was a horrible MP. By your own logic he either should not have run, or he should have only attacked his Tory and, at that time, Alliance opponents, despite Jim K.'s disgraceful record.
Were he to run again against Jim K. would you support him? Wouldn't doing so aid the Tories?
This is the huge flaw in your logic. Many great NDP candidates, like your own son, are undermined and destroyed by the strategic voting logic. While you may say, hey I didn't mean it to apply to "bad" Liberals, in the public’s mind it always will. And well you may say, my son had no chance so go ahead and vote for him, your logic defeats many candidates who did have a chance like Sid Ryan. Instead, what you have to live with, as Dion affirmed by once again proving Lib gutlessness and allowing a free vote on the gay marriage issue, is that you have laid with a group of people who, unlike the NDP, will tolerate the Jim Ks, the Tom Wappels, the Dennis Lees and the countless other right wing, anti-gay, pro-life, pro-death penalty and, on a constituency level, useless MPs that populate the Liberal ranks.
Which brings us to a final point. For all your crap about the NDP putting seats first, when the time came to stand up for gay rights the NDP threw Bev Desjardins out of caucus even though this doomed them to lose a seat they otherwise would certainly have won. The Liberals, in a policy reasserted by Dion, tolerate all levels of such bigotry in their ranks so as to keep a few seats here or there safe for vile, bigoted candidates who will, in the end, vote for a Lib Budget. What a principled bunch of folks they are!
Frankly, I would rather vote for your son.
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