PING!
Posted on 03/12/2007 1:04:42 PM PDT by GMMAC
Dawn of a Conservative era?
Susan Riley, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, March 12, 2007
In her stimulating new book, French Kiss, journalist Chantal Hebert suggests we could be moving into a period of majority Conservative government, depending partly on how successfully Stephen Harper continues to woo Quebec. If true, this pending sea change will have as much to do with complacency and confusion on the centre-left as with the appeal of Harper's personality and policies.
Starting with the Liberals, Hebert suggests the natural governing party was undone in the last election, not solely by the sponsorship scandal or over-familiarity, but by its decades-long drift toward irrelevance in Quebec and Alberta.
Jean Chretien delivered impressive majorities during this period, but largely because of divisions on the right -- and because the Bloc Quebecois took up much of the available oxygen in francophone Quebec. (Gilles Duceppe, she argues, persuasively, has done more to preserve federalism than any number of desperate Liberal stratagems, by putting the French language and Quebec values at the heart of national debate.)
When you strip away the siding, the federal Liberal party's only remaining support beam is Ontario. Liberals have become "intellectually lazy" about Quebec, says Hebert, and, by the time Paul Martin became prime minister, they were "running (it) as if it was a distant colony."
This seems counter-intuitive, given the power francophones have always held within the Liberal party, but Quebecers are no longer so worried about protecting their language and culture, Hebert writes. What alienated Quebec is the centralizing, often arrogant, approach of successive Liberal regimes. This tendency was sometimes obvious, sometimes overstated, but it runs directly counter to Quebecers' desire for autonomy -- not necessarily independence, but self-determination.
As for New Democrats, Hebert suggests they, too, suffer from their belief in the moral superiority, and practical necessity, of a strong central government to enforce uniform social programs across the entire country.
While Quebecers share many social values with New Democrats -- on same sex marriage, Afghanistan, gun control and the environment -- they form a different political ecosystem.
They also supported free trade and are less hostile to private health care than other Canadians.
Indeed, Quebecers are more likely to see the interventionist NDP as greater threat than the hands-off Conservatives, says Hebert -- mostly because Quebec has led the country in creating a generous safety net, and sees "Ottawa" as an untrustworthy ally and poor role model. Until the NDP understands this, it won't matter how bilingual or personable its leader is.
By contrast, Harper's vision of a smaller, more focused federal government that "sticks to its knitting" and leaves the rest to the provinces, appeals to Quebec.
It sounds clinical, but it resonates at the level of emotion and symbols. Hebert says Harper's manipulation of the Bloc Quebecois' "Quebec as a nation" motion, may have done as much to blunt the sovereigntist cause as the failure of the more ambitious Meech Lake accord did to inflame it.
The compromise Harper crafted -- that the Quebecois be recognized as a nation within Canada -- can be seen as merely descriptive. It confers no extra powers. But it has been widely embraced in Quebec as a gesture of respect in the rest of Canada of Quebec's uniqueness. Unless Harper was just lucky, this suggests an apparently prosaic prime minister understands well the politics of emotion.
That said, he is on the wrong side of Quebec opinion on crime, gay rights, the environment and foreign policy. To secure his majority, he has to convince Quebec voters that his climate change policies are "realistic" rather than inadequate, and that Canada is in Afghanistan to help rebuild a poor country, rather than to lend moral support to George W Bush.
The challenge for the Liberals is more daunting. Stephane Dion has to overwhelm the NDP and marginalize the Greens since he is unlikely to win over centre-right voters.
He is, arguably, the first "progressive" leader the Liberals have had since Trudeau.
For a few weeks after his surprise victory, this looked possible. It looks less so today, not from lack of conviction on Dion's part; in fact, he may yet surprise naysayers. His problem is a habit of caution ingrained in his party, a disabling disinclination to make a crisp, clear choice.
There is still a large constituency for a party of the centre-left. Without direction, however, it may settle for Harper's tinkering -- while it waits for the other side to find its leader, and its nerve.
Susan Riley's column runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail: sriley@thecitizen.canwest.com
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
PING!
That's a man, Baby!
In quebec it is whatever it decides to be - sort of an arbitrary decision.
I just knew this could not be about the USA. Even this site had someone propose a GOP ticket with Lieberman on it. Woe is us. Let's limbo everybody - how low can conservatives go.
Word (name) Association:
with Chantal Hebert ...
If we see a friendly article from Janice Kennedy,
I'll know we're in majority territory. LOL!
There are almost 300K posters here, with hundreds coming and going all the time.
The trolls wouldn't show up if we weren't directly over the target.
;-)
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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