Twenty years around the Bloc
Last Updated: May 29, 2010 12:00am
It was 20 years ago that Lucien Bouchard - or Benedict Bouchard to some editorialists of old - got in a hissy fit over suggested changes to the Meech Lake accord, abandoned federalism and his pal Brian Mulroney, and took some sovereigntist Tories and two Liberals to the dark side of Canada's two solitudes.
Hence, the formation of the Bloc Quebecois.
Excuse us if we do not celebrate its anniversary.
For those who would argue giving the separatists a vote in Ottawa has somehow kept this country together, we would argue a one-trick pony show with a one-province fixation has no place throwing its pile of politics into the federal mix.
What next? A federal Wild Rose party should Diane Ablonczy, for the sake of argument, suddenly decide to pull a Bouchard in Alberta?
The Blocquistes have it too good, and they know it.
As the longest-serving leader on the federal stage, Gilles Duceppe gets to cash his substantial federal pay cheque while working against the very country that has made his life so comfortable.
Is there any better gig than that?
Lucien Bouchard was a turncoat.
Duceppe, meanwhile, is what he is: A single-minded opportunist.
The Bloc Quebecois of today is on the wane, with its popular vote undeniably shrinking. As a result, no politician in his right mind will resurrect the Quebec "problem" simply because no "problem" exists - not since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's 2006 appeasement declaration that "the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada."
But how do you make the Bloc go away so our federal democracy can once again become a true federal democracy, with better than long-shot odds of having an occasional majority government without the PM being from Quebec?
Throughout the last six elections, the Bloc has averaged in the low 40s in the popular vote but has nonetheless laid claim to two-thirds of Quebec's seats in the House of Commons.
Proportional representation would cut those seats almost in half. It would be the beginning of the Bloc's end, and a return to a truly federally-minded democracy.
For a one-trick pony show, 20 years has been 20 years too long.
The Bloc belongs in the history books.
WFDS
Amen!
ReplyDeleteI think the critique of Duceppe here is wrong and wrong-headed. First of all it is wrong to call him an opportunist because he has worked in the interests of his constituency. We may not like it but he has for years been the most straight-forward, least deceptive of the National leaders. He says that what he thinks on each piece of legislation and is always honest about why he supports or doesn't support it on the basis of his mandate which is looking out for the interests of Quebec. There is nothing hypocritical in this. Furthermore, it is problematic to call him a hypocrite simply because he will receive a pension for his time in Ottawa. He worked for Quebec separation and if that had come he would, I am sure, been much happier to receive his pension from a separate Quebec.
ReplyDeleteAs for the other issues, fair enough. The voting system is problematic and the Bloc has received too many seats for their vote count. But I have not heard you be an advocate of PR which is the only way to overcome this problem. (If you have been an advocate of PR and I have missed it, fair enough, I stand corrected) And criticizing the MO of the Bloc is a fair target for someone who doesn't believe in Quebec separatism. But a ad hominem attack on Duceppe seems to me to just contribute to the degrading personal discourse that dominates politics in Canada. At least when Duceppe has been much more straight-forward and upright than most federal politician have been in the past 20 years. I can understand attacking men like Harper or Baird who are mean spirited and fundamentally undemocratic, but that is simply not true of Duceppe.
in any other civilized nation the Bloc will be deemed a treasonous party and their members would be thrown in jail or drawn & quartered :)
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