Nycole Turmel’s induction in the federalists’ wonderland

Surprise, surprise! Belatedly, the Globe & Mail “discovers” that an elected NDP member of parliament — in this case interim party leader Nycole Turmel — has been a member of a Quebec sovereigntist party. And not just one but two!

Turmel acknowledges that she was a member of the Bloc Québécois for five years, surrendering her membership card in January of this year as she was about to accept the NDP’s nomination in Hull. And it seems that Turmel — as well as some other recently elected NDP MPs (how many is unclear) — is a member of Québec Solidaire, “a provincial party dedicated to socialism and sovereigntism,” warns the Globe. Sufficient reason to doubt her loyalty to Canada, let alone to the NDP!

In fact, Turmel’s opponents, and the media, baited Turmel repeatedly during the election campaign over her past public support of Québec Solidaire. Whatever the effect of this witch-hunting, Turmel was elected with a hefty 23,000 majority vote over the Liberal incumbent on May 2.

The Globe’s editors — and, in their train, a pack of baying commentators in the business media — have seized the occasion to lecture the NDP on its “responsibilities” to uphold the federal regime. Just days after effusive expressions of sympathy for party leader Jack Layton, forced to relinquish his post by a renewed bout with cancer, they have returned the spotlight to a central contradiction facing the federal NDP: the obvious clash between its ambitions to pose as a staunchly federalist “government-in-waiting” in Ottawa, and its attempt to build an electoral base in Quebec, where progressive-minded voters are for the most part inclined to favour Quebec sovereignty or independence.

“Not since [BQ leaders] Lucien Bouchard and Gilles Duceppe has someone whose loyalty to federalism appeared so tepid and fair-weather served as leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition,” fulminates the Globe. If the NDP’s federal council, which endorsed Layton’s nomination of Turmel for interim leader, knew of her history, they are “reckless” and “if they did not, then they are incompetent. Either way, the NDP’s suitability for the role of government-in-waiting is at best tenuous, unless the government in question is that of a sovereign Quebec.”

‘Sovereigntists, Go Home’

Federal office, you see, is closed to any Québécois who harbours doubts about the nature of the existing federal regime. When it comes to federal party leadership, only “an outspoken federalist” may apply, the Globe pontificates. And its editors point to several modest proposals by Layton’s NDP that it claims justify “concerns over the NDP’s Quebec caucus and indeed its Quebec policies,” citing “its support for the extension of Quebec’s provincial language law to federally regulated employers and Mr. Layton’s commitment to protect Quebec in any redistribution of House of Commons seats on the basis of population.”

Nycole Turmel, for her part, has been less than clear in her own defense. Yes, she has taken out BQ membership, but she voted no in both the 1980 and 1995 sovereignty referendums. She notes there is no contradiction in belonging to both the NDP and Québec Solidaire, as the latter, unlike the NDP, is a Quebec-only party and they do not compete; but she will drop her QS membership anyway. As a member of the NDP for 20 years, including a stint on its federal executive in the 1990s, she says she supported the BQ and QS for other parts of their programs. And indeed, as president of the Public Service Alliance union, she worked closely with both the BQ and the NDP.

All true, but how to explain her ambivalence between Canadian federalism and Quebec sovereignty? In fact, Turmel is by no means alone in this confusion among Quebec supporters of the NDP.

The NDP’s dilemma – a failure of leadership

A good part of the explanation is outlined in a major op-ed piece[1] in today’s Le Devoir by political scientist André Lamoureux, author of the book Le NPD et le Québec 1958-1985 (Éditions du Parc, 1985), a book that has unfortunately never been translated into English. He documents the NDP’s chronic failure to address the Quebec national question and to confront what the Québécois struggle for self-determination entails for building a mass party of the left in the Canadian state.

In 1961, the party’s founding organizers in Quebec wanted the new federal party to recognize the existence of two nations in Canada (at the time, there was little consciousness of the aboriginal “first nations” among Canada’s settler communities). Some even thought of putting the issue of Quebec’s right to self-determination to the founding convention, although they dropped this proposal as “premature” when faced with strong opposition among the party leaders in English Canada. Instead, they decided to focus on amending the party’s proposed statutes, to substitute the word “federal” in place of “national” in describing its structure and elected bodies. After tumultuous debate, they were successful on August 3, 1961 — 50 years ago to the day. “A timorous victory,” says Lamoureux, “since it was not reflected in any real and convincing translation in the party’s program.” And he notes:

“The concept of Quebec people or Quebec nation was not yet fully developed in the thinking of the New Party’s supporters in Quebec. So there was no question of recognizing the Quebec people and their right to self-determination in 1961, contrary to what has often been repeated since the most recent federal election campaign.”

This initial ordeal encountered by the Québécois at the NDP’s founding convention was followed by a series of even more difficult ones in succeeding years, Lamoureux writes, as “successive leaderships in the party consciously decided to turn their backs to the national aspirations of the Québécois, which they considered contrary to the objectives of Canadian social-democracy.

“The refusal of the NDP’s convention in 1977 to recognize the right to self-determination of the Quebec people (in the wake of the Parti Québécois’ election); the party’s participation in the Pro-Canada coalition on the eve of the 1980 referendum; its unconditional support to Trudeau’s constitutional power grab in 1982; the centralizing orientation favoured by the various leadership teams, overriding provincial powers; the campaign against the Meech Lake Accord during the final phase of that constitutional bargaining; the support given to the infamous referendum ‘clarity law’ (C-20) — so many insults to Quebec, which led the party to marginalize itself and suffer an uninterrupted series of setbacks before the surprise of the May 2 federal election.”

True, the party opposed the War Measures in 1970, but that could not alter the party’s course in regard to Quebec, Lamoureux adds.

An unresolved issue

Today, in the wake of its stunning victory in Quebec on May 2, he says, there is a real danger that it will dodge the Quebec national question and try to sweep it under the carpet. This is the primary challenge facing the NDP: “If it does not fully come to terms with this issue in its positions and its actions, the problems of the past will surely reappear.”

Is it simply inadvertence that the party’s web site lists Nycole Turmel as chair of the “national caucus” not federal, he asks. Is the party’s support for Harper’s 2006 motion recognizing the “Québécois nation” completely meaningless?

The so-called Sherbrooke Declaration, likewise adopted in 2006, was brandished by Layton and deputy leader Thomas Mulcair during the recent federal election to compensate for the complete lack of commitments to Quebec in the party platform. It can no longer substitute for an orientation concerning Quebec, writes Lamoureux. Adopted in the wake of the divisions within the party over the Clarity Act, it recognized the right of self-determination, a constitutional right to opt out of federal programs with full financial compensation, and the rule of a simple majority in any future referendum on sovereignty. But it is just a statement of intention, with no real influence. There is no prospect of reopening the constitutional issue, so the Sherbrooke Declaration is nothing more than vague conjecture.[2]

Most disquieting, says Lamoureux, is that there was no resolution concerning the Quebec question put to the NDP’s federal convention in Vancouver in mid-June. “Astonishingly, nothing. Quebec, which had just supplied more than half the NDP’s parliamentary deputation, remained in the waiting room. No statement, even of general intention, was developed.”

This, despite the fact that the convention delegates voted on a resolution aimed at establishing a new “nation to nation” relationship with the indigenous peoples of Canada, so as to defend their rights and interests and establish the basis for a new equitable relationship in Canada. “Why was something similar not voted on for the people of Quebec?”

Lamoureux ends his article by noting that Nycole Turmel says the party’s parliamentary caucus will be establishing their strategic framework for the coming session in September. “Let us hope that the Quebec question is not left high and dry, once again.”

Why the ambivalence?

Nycole Turmel’s apparent equivocation on the issues of Quebec sovereignty and Quebec’s relation to Canada reflects the ambivalence of many Québécois, including many in the labour movement — especially among those like Turmel with a long history of activity in unions operating in the federal jurisdictions. Not untypical perhaps are the mixed feelings so clearly articulated by former postal workers’ leader Jean-Claude Parrot, an outstanding labour militant who played an instrumental role in building the Canadian Union of Postal Workers into one of the more progressive unions in Canada today. In his autobiography, My Union, My Life (Fernwood Publishing, 2005) Jean-Claude writes:

When I moved to Ottawa after my election in 1971, I had already long been a strong supporter of Québec independence. While still working in Montréal, I supported the formation of the Rassemblement pour l’Indépendance Nationale and later became a member of the Mouvement Souveraineté Association, and then of the Parti Québécois (PQ). I was a great admirer of Pierre Bourgault and André D’Allemagne, who both wrote and spoke in the 1960s on Québec independence.

I first became involved in the early 1960s when Marcel Chaput, a federal government employee in Ottawa, began a fast to protest the lack of recognition of the French language in federal government departments. I collected money to support his cause at the postal station on St. Laurent Street in Montreal where I worked. ...

When I first moved to Ottawa, I attended PQ meetings in Hull but, because I lived on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River, I was soon told that I could no longer be a member. This made sense, and I stopped going to PQ meetings, but I never stopped supporting the cause.

After the PQ came to power in 1976, the issue of Québec’s relationship to the rest of Canada was the subject of sharp discussion across the country. This was certainly true of the labour movement, and at CUPW’s 1977 National Convention in Halifax, delegates adopted a policy that called for the right to self-determination for the people of Québec. It took no particular side on the issue of Québec’s place in Canada, saying only that this was a matter for the people of Québec to decide on.

The first to speak on this resolution was Brother A. Galley from the Burlington local. He raised concerns that this could divide our union in two. He ended his comments by saying, “First and foremost, I am a Canadian, and I wish and hope that there will be no such thing as the withdrawal of the Québec region from this union and that we stay as one united national union.”

The next speaker, Brother Marcel Perreault from Montréal, indicated that there was no question of making a regional union with this resolution, only that Québec was one of two nations within Canada.

One speaker, Brother T. Penney, said that twenty-eight years earlier Newfoundland, which had the right to self-determination, had used that right to join Canada and that nobody was going to tell him that today the people of Newfoundland didn’t have the right to leave Canada if they wanted to. “This is a right that Québec must also have,” he said.

Brother [Evert] Hoogers from Vancouver also spoke, saying that he stood irrevocably for the principle that the people of Québec had the absolute right to determine their destiny:

“I stand here as a Canadian worker, and I say that the only way I can have unity with my brothers and sisters in Québec, with Québécois workers, is to underline and actively work for their right to decide on their own destiny themselves. When people, workers especially, in English Canada respond to the phony issue of national unity, I just want to bring to their attention that what they are responding to is the call of a man — and the call of a government — who has hardly been the friend of CUPW. If we look over the history of the regime of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, we see a Prime Minister who has consistently worked in the interests of big business and large corporations. Never once has he worked in the interests of workers in this country. Why do we think, because he is calling for us to unite with him around the issue of national unity, that somehow he is working in our interests now? To the call of Prime Minister Trudeau for unity with him, I say never.”

All other speakers spoke in favour of the resolution, and it was adopted unanimously.

Brother Hoogers was certainly correct in his comments on Prime Minister Trudeau. Although Trudeau oversaw the implementation of the Official Languages Act in 1969, which recognized the French language in Canada, he never had the courage to meet the aspirations of the people of Québec.

Trudeau pretended to never recognize that people in Québec were looking for sovereignty-association with the rest of Canada, not outright independence. To him, they were just a bunch of “separatists” who wanted to destroy “our country.” Trudeau used the term “separatist” in a very derogatory way, and because of this many Canadians turned against the people in Québec.

Trudeau was admired in English Canada because of his intelligence and charisma. He came from Québec, was fluently bilingual, and he made it look to many in English Canada as if the country was under attack by Québec. Many in English Canada had been asking, “What does Québec want?” Trudeau managed to get many of these people to change that question into a statement: “If Québec gets it, we want it too.”

Trudeau successfully put Québec in the position of being just one among ten provinces. He never tried to find a solution to the aspirations of the people of Québec. On the contrary he encouraged many in English Canada to oppose any accommodation with Québec.

Whenever I hear people say that Trudeau saved Canada, or that he united it, I get a knot in my stomach. This guy never united Canada: he divided it. Many people in the rest of the country don’t want to hear about the aspirations of the people of Québec. In some parts of the country, there is even hatred against people from Québec. Bilingualism in federal government services is seen by some as a way to give jobs to French-speaking people ahead of English speakers. In 1980, some even suggested that the army be used if the people of Québec voted “yes” in the referendum on sovereignty-association that was held that year. The appointment of a francophone as director of an Ottawa hospital was denounced fanatically, despite his recognized competence, because at one point he had shown sympathy to the PQ.

It was never properly explained to the rest of Canada what the PQ was really asking for in the 1980 referendum. There was a clear difference between sovereignty-association and full independence. René Lévesque’s position was quite clear, and he never deserved to have the term “separatist” used against him in the derogatory manner Trudeau did.

Today the provinces are demanding that the federal government give them more power, yet, strangely, nobody calls them “separatists.” This is all that Québec under René Lévesque had demanded, that more power be delegated to Québec without affecting the existing status of the other provinces. Québec wanted much more responsibility in such areas as immigration, social programs, and a larger voice in the international field.

I wasn’t at all surprised when the Bloc Québécois was formed as a strategic move to let the Liberals and others in English Canada understand that, whether they liked it or not, Québec is a distinct society. Indirectly, that “great Canadian,” Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was largely responsible for the formation of the Bloc.

The fact remains that people in Québec believe in a strong Canada, and whatever happened in the past or will happen in the future, Québec will never be a province like the others. Québec, whatever form its relationship to the rest of Canada may take in the future, will always be a good thing for Canada, especially once Canadians accept Québécois as friends, not enemies.

The policy CUPW adopted in 1977 in support of Québec’s right to self-determination has been renewed at every convention since, and it remains the policy of CUPW today. Not long after we adopted this position, it was also adopted by the CLC [Canadian Labour Congress].

I was happy to see, in 1994, the CLC, on behalf of all the provincial Federations of Labour, sign an agreement with the Fédération des Travailleurs et des Travailleuses du Québec (FTQ). We in the labour movement love to call it our sovereignty-association agreement. It allocated more funds to the FTQ to allow it more autonomy on issues that had before been strictly the responsibility of the CLC. It also recognized a role for the FTQ in the international activities of the CLC. It was agreed that one of Canada’s two seats on the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions be given to the President of the FTQ. The role of the CLC in the francophone countries around the world was also transferred to the FTQ.

I hope that someday our politicians will have the courage to act in a similar manner regarding the relationship between Canada and Québec. The CLC-FTQ agreement shows that Canadians and Québécois can find solutions that work for both parties. [pages 288-291]

Like Nycole Turmel, a good many other new MPs from Quebec may think that membership in the NDP is not necessarily incompatible with support of Quebec sovereignty — although, of course, Turmel, who is under tremendous pressure from the media, the other parties, and no doubt her own party, strenuously affirms her support for federalism. That is her — and their — contradiction. It is understandable, however, and Jean-Claude Parrot’s defense of “sovereignty-association” between an autonomous or sovereign Quebec and a “strong Canada,” his (naïve?) hope that an accommodation can yet be reached between the people of Quebec and Canada short of independence, but also his typically understated indignation at the violence and ignorant abuse with which Quebec’s aspirations are met on a daily basis, tell us much about the challenge facing the workers movement in the days, months and years ahead.

Incidentally, when I last attended a meeting of the federal NDP in my riding, Ottawa-Vanier, Jean-Claude Parrot (still a sovereigntist, he assures me) was chairing the policy debate — as always in both English and French, in equal measure.

-- Richard Fidler, August 3, 2011

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[1] Entitled, in translation, “50 years after the NDP’s founding — from the ordeal of Jack Layton to the issue of Quebec,” the article argues that Layton’s current illness is not the only cause for concern about the NDP’s future. “The Quebec national question as a whole, contrary to what some may think, has not been eclipsed, either, by the NDP’s dazzling victory in the election of last May 2.”

[2] For a detailed critique of the Sherbrooke Declaration, see “The federal NDP’s electoral breakthrough in Quebec: A challenge to progressives in Canada.”

Behind those resignations from the Parti Québécois

It’s “an earthquake that could become a tsunami,” said former Parti québécois leader Bernard Landry, reacting to the sudden resignation of three prominent PQ members of the National Assembly from the party’s caucus June 6.

The resignations were ostensibly in response to the party’s support of a private bill that would shield a management deal between Quebec City and Quebecor Media Inc. from being challenged in the courts, even before formal contracts have been signed to build the proposed amphitheatre that would, the City hopes, lure back the Québec Nordiques professional hockey team.

Quebecor Media is Quebec’s second largest media chain, and publishes some of its largest-circulation tabloid newspapers. It has become notorious for its anti-union policies. Only recently it ended a two-year long lockout of its employees at the Journal de Montréal, who continue to publish an on-line daily newspaper they started during the conflict, Rue Frontenac.

The bill, sponsored by PQ MNA Agnès Maltais, has prompted outrage among PQ members at the blatant attempt to infringe the right of citizens to take legal action against the deal, which was struck without public tender.

But much more is at issue than Pauline Marois’ determination to force her MNAs to support the bill. The members who have resigned are among the strongest supporters of Quebec independence in the party’s caucus. As Landry says, the hope is that their departure will prompt a reconsideration of Marois’ reluctance to campaign for sovereignty — what he hopes will be the “tsunami” to follow the resignations earthquake. They accuse Marois of imposing her views through increasingly authoritarian practices.

Marois wants the project of holding a referendum on sovereignty — the PQ goal, article 1 in its program — to be put on hold indefinitely, and says that winning voters’ support for sovereignty would not be her main objective in government. Instead she has focused on identity issues, such as proposing adoption of a Quebec citizenship with fluency in French as a precondition for eligibility. She has sought to woo supporters of the right-wing Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), which favours more autonomy for Quebec, but not sovereignty. And she hopes to frustrate efforts by François Legault, a former PQ cabinet minister, to establish a new right-wing party that includes both sovereigntists and federalists.

Soon after assuming the PQ leadership in 2007, Marois engineered the expulsion from the party of a leftist “club”, Syndicalistes et Progressistes pour un Québec Libre (SPQ-Libre), which campaigned for a clear commitment to independence and the reinforcement of Quebec’s legislation protecting French-language rights.

But this failed to stifle criticism of her strategy. In March, former PQ leader Jacques Parizeau, in a widely publicized article, urged delegates to the party’s April convention to adopt a clear position in favour of sovereignty and to prepare and promote it in government through a campaign using public funds. However, a resolution to this effect by his wife Lisette Lapointe, the MNA for Crémazie riding, was rejected by party leaders, who refused to include the Crémazie motion in the proposals put to the convention delegates. Lapointe was one of the three who resigned from the party’s caucus June 6, the others being Louise Beaudoin and Pierre Curzi. (Another, Jean-Martin Aussant, resigned today, and called for Marois’ resignation as leader.)

Marois successfully engineered a 93% vote in support of her leadership at the convention. But unease continued to simmer in the party, and it has flared up in the wake of the May 2 federal election, which resulted in a catastrophic drop in support for the PQ’s federal pendant the Bloc québécois, its vote dropping from 38% in the 2008 election to 23% and its seats from 49 to 4, while the federal New Democratic Party’s Quebec vote ballooned from 12% in 2008 to 43%, the NDP winning 59 seats in the province.
The NDP surge has been interpreted by many as an indication of an incipient realignment of Quebec politics, long polarized around the national question, along left-right lines as well.

Did the voters’ rejection of the Bloc spell trouble for the Parti québécois, which in recent months seemed headed for government in the next election, polling well in advance of the governing Liberals? Some péquistes have voiced concern that the party could be losing support to Québec solidaire, the new left pro-independence party whose sole MNA, Amir Khadir, has been rated Quebec’s most popular politician owing to his outspoken attacks on the neoliberal politics of the capitalist parties, the Liberals, the PQ and the smaller right-wing Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ).

It was Khadir who brought the issue of the Quebec City-Quebecor deal to a head in the National Assembly. Owing to a technicality, the PQ member’s private bill ratifying the deal had to receive a unanimous vote if it was to be sent for debate and adoption in the current session, which ends this month. Khadir initially refused to vote for it, thus frustrating the bill’s supporters in both the Liberal government and PQ opposition. Later, Khadir said he would allow debate to proceed in committee, but would vote against the bill, which has been criticized on legal grounds even by the government’s own lawyers.

In fact, given QS opposition, the bill was doomed from the start. And Premier Jean Charest has today put the bill on ice until September. According to Le Devoir, “Mr. Charest announced this decision after finding that the Québec solidaire MNA, Amir Khadir, was going to obstruct adoption of the amendment [to the Cities and Towns Act] demanded by [Quebec City mayor Régis] Labeaume.”

Khadir has been the target of some vitriolic attacks in recent weeks by prominent PQ leaders and supporters. When Khadir wrote, following the May 2 election, that he personally had voted NDP, the PQ president Raymond Archambault accused Québec solidaire of making defeat of the PQ its primary objective, ahead of beating the Liberals. The PQ, you see, thinks it should monopolize the independence vote. (The full text of Khadir’s article is translated below.)

Khadir’s opposition to the Quebecor-Quebec City private bill brought down further calumny upon him. Columnist and essayist Denise Bombardier, in a particularly defamatory piece, compared him to a follower of Mao, described him as a “phobic opponent of modernity” and a macho politician, and even questioned his Québécois authenticity (“an heir of the great cultivated bourgeoisie of Iran”).

However, Le Devoir political columnist Michel David took a more generous view. “Of the 125 elected members of the National Assembly,” he wrote, “Amir Khadir seems to be the only one to convey the point of view of the millions of taxpayers who are already opposed to having the construction of an amphitheatre primarily intended to enrich a multimillionaire [Quebecor head Pierre Karl Péladeau] entirely financed by their taxes. And who now see their MNAs ready to adopt, even if it means holding their nose, a bill that would legalize an agreement that the government’s own lawyers suspect is illegal.”

Some corporate media commentators have speculated that the new wave of dissidence in the Parti québécois will bolster the prospects for Legault’s new right-wing party project. I think it is more likely to bolster pro-sovereignty forces to the left, in the first place Québec solidaire.

Those resigning from the PQ caucus, as mentioned earlier, are among those long associated with the independence cause. Their resignations from caucus are not necessarily resignations from the PQ itself (at present, there is some unclarity on this). Some péquistes, such as Bernard Landry, evidently hope that the open crisis will provoke a debate within the party over party strategy that has largely been sub rosa in recent years. On the other hand, it may simply be a new stage in the crisis of the traditional bourgeois sovereigntist leadership, which seems unable to rally popular enthusiasm for its neoliberal “governance” strategy, looking to some new crisis in federal-provincial relations to foster the “winning conditions” for a referendum yes vote to “sovereignty.”

In fact, the resignations this week bear a certain resemblance to the 1984 resignations of Finance Minister Jacques Parizeau and several other ministers from the PQ government in protest against René Lévesque’s decision to postpone the battle for sovereignty in favour of the “beau risque” of gambling on hopes for post-Trudeau constitutional change that would accommodate Quebec. The crisis at that time was followed by the party’s election defeat in 1985 and a decade-long exclusion from office.

However, it is Québec solidaire which — from its founding five years ago — has articulated, with increasing force and credibility, a strategy for independence that is transparent, democratic and activist-oriented — a strategy for building a new “country of projects.” In mid-April, it launched a campaign along these lines, in accordance with a resolution adopted at its November 2009 convention.[1] The campaign web site sets out the party’s vision of sovereignty and the approach it favours for achieving it. It also outlines the party’s approach to strengthening the status of the French language, especially in Montréal. As the web site explains:

“Some of these projects can be achieved here and now, without affecting Quebec’s constitutional status. However, the people’s ambition to realize many other projects will soon be hobbled by the total or partial absence of any latitude for Quebec in areas as fundamental as the environment, foreign policy, foreign trade and even language. The full mastery of our destiny is therefore indispensable for achieving all of the projects of our dreams.”

Associated materials (all on-line) include an historical survey that dates a Québécois quest for sovereignty back to the 18^th century, a critique of Canadian federalism and the failure of past efforts to reform the system and a critique of “the impasse of the PQ and its referendum strategy,” to which it counterposes Québec Solidaire’s proposed grassroots campaign to build support for sovereignty and, eventually, the election of a democratic non-partisan Constituent Assembly to adopt a constitution for an independent Quebec. Associated articles cite and describe parallel “inspiring experiences” in Bolivia, Ecuador and, most recently, in Tunisia.

In the fall of 2011, the campaign will feature a tour of Quebec by QS president Françoise David and public meetings “on themes chosen by local party associations.”

This campaign can boost Québec Solidaire’s profile as the left wing of the independence movement, with a “project for society” and a “country of projects” that points toward an anticapitalist alternative vision that breaks sharply with the PQ-Bloc strategy for independence, one “based on alienation from Canada,” and “fuelled by resentment,” as Amir Khadir describes it in the article below.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

After the federal elections – The Quebec that awaits us

by Amir Khadir, MNA (Mercier)
Spokesman for Québec solidaire
Le Devoir, May 14, 2011 [my translation]

The forceful rise of the New Democratic Party was desired by many progressive sovereigntists like me. But not at the price of such a sweeping defeat of the Bloc québécois. Québec solidaire had called for voting for progressive candidates, whether of the Bloc or the NDP. Would I have voted for the NDP candidate had I known that my MP and friend Gilles Duceppe was in danger in his riding? No, without a doubt. But now, I confess, I have no regret. The one for whom I voted, Hélène Laverdière, will make an excellent MP for Quebec.

Nonetheless, I am sad about Gilles and so many others of his colleagues. Duceppe did not deserve that. My “useful vote” — anti-Harper and intended to strengthen the rise of the NDP in Canada — was not against my Bloc MP but it contributed to his defeat. It seems that many other sovereigntist voters had the same experience. An incongruous election experience, which highlights two major problems that must be addressed frankly in the independentist movement: (1) the effects of the “useful vote”; (2) the political exhaustion of a certain sovereigntist orthodoxy.

The downside of the useful vote

The May 2 results are explained, first, by a rapid shift of a major share of the Bloc’s electorate (4 out of 10) very largely toward the NDP. In five weeks, BQ support sank from 40% to 23%. Five weeks earlier, a major share of the 17% of voters who abandoned the BQ were independentist or nationalist. Did they abandon en masse their sovereigntist convictions?

That is not plausible, we don’t change convictions so abruptly. Rather, the Bloc was a victim of a massive shift of its electorate, a major part of which voted pragmatically. The useful vote is based on an individual’s political calculations, not on convictions. But the May 2 results indicate above all the aberration of this type of vote, a product of our non-proportional electoral system. The BQ garnered a quarter of the votes, but obtained only a twentieth of the seats. Those who would prefer to forget the necessity to reform Quebec’s foully undemocratic voting procedures must now grasp the danger that the lack of a proportional representation system constitutes for any sovereigntist formation.

Other reasons have also been offered to explain the orange wave that overtook Quebec last May 2, whether or not they are complementary to the useful vote: hostility to Harper; weariness with the Bloc, either because it is considered responsible for a sterile impasse in Ottawa or because it is too closely associated with the PQ, with its disappointing wait-and-see approach [to sovereignty]; eagerness for change associated with rejection of the governing political elites; a new electoral alignment on a left-right axis instead of sovereigntist-federalist, especially among young people, etc.

These elements of a new electoral dynamic have their equivalent in Quebec’s political landscape: emergence of a new left-right electoral alignment; massive rejection of the Charest government; lack of enthusiasm for the PQ, perceived by some as belonging to the power elite and distressing others by its refusal to engage in the necessary fight for independence.

One possibility comes to mind, then: the electoral dynamic that drove thousands of sovereigntists to vote in an unorthodox way and create the orange wave could reproduce itself in the Quebec elections. But to whose benefit? Everyone thinks of QS, but our formation still has a long way to go before it can arouse such passion. However, no party can now consider itself the proprietor of the sovereigntist vote. With all the actors present and to come on the Quebec election chessboard, no party is immune to reverses from the useful vote and the aberrations of the present electoral system.

The orthodox sovereigntist strategy is becoming exhausted

Another observation resulting from the new electoral dynamic is that the BQ’s defeat is not so much the defeat of its leaders or structures as it is the exhaustion of the strategy that the leadership of the sovereigntist movement has pursued federally through the BQ. This strategy for independence, elevated to orthodox status by many sovereigntist leaders, was summarized in this way by Duceppe when he addressed the Parti québécois convention during the election campaign: “Elect as many sovereigntists as possible in Ottawa... for the next stage, elect a Parti québécois government in Quebec City... [and] it all becomes possible again, as far as sovereignty is concerned.” This orthodoxy has been dropped by a large number of sovereigntist voters and the stageist project is cracking.

The situation may discourage some. But without prevarication, we should recall the words of Miron: “With my stubbornness... my pigheadedness, I have endurance, I have a tough skin, a raw hide.”[2] Those who have acted for 20 years in accordance with a strategy for independence based on alienation from Canada were no doubt right to try. But the approach has failed; it is time to try something else. And this cannot be strictly electoral, derived from above by some elected members lying in wait for those fleeting “winning conditions”.

Quebec, this country of projects

Quebec, this country of projects that awaits us, can only be born from the firm will of our people and the dreams that sustain it. Quebec’s march toward its independence cannot be fueled by resentment. We have to imagine a strategy by which the acts taken for Quebec are aimed toward a ‘rupture de dépassement’ [freely, a challenging break from the present]. Innovating socially and economically. Taking the ecological and political turn that can reveal the exciting potential of freedom to our own people.
It must be positive, and necessarily involve huge popular mobilizations. Québec solidaire imagines it in the framework of a constituent assembly, which secures a formidable relationship of forces and a compelling legitimacy. (Consult the web site http://www.paysdeprojets.org/ for further details.)

It will be up to our people to decide. And when they have decided, since any independence will involve negotiations for new collaborations and agreements, Quebec will have every interest in seeing that a more open Canada emerges, under the leadership of principled, generous and open people — like Jack Layton and the NDP, who have undertaken to respect our right to self-determination.

---

[1] See “Quebec left debates strategy for independence.” The interactive campaign web site may be accessed at Pays de projets.
[2] A free translation. The original: “avec ma tête de tocson... ma tête de semelles nouvelles j'ai endurance, j'ai couenne et peau de babiche.” From L’homme rapaillé, by Gaston Miron (Montréal: Éditions TYPO, 1998).

Layton chooses Supreme Court, Clarity Act over NDP’s Sherbrooke Declaration

It did not take long for the NDP’s contradictory positions on the Quebec national question to surface within its new parliamentary deputation.

Yesterday, as Jack Layton presented his full caucus of 103 MPs — 59 of them from Quebec — to the media, on Parliament Hill, there was no denying the existence of deep rifts among them on whether Quebec has the right to self-determination, and what it means to defend that right.

In an earlier post, I pointed to the contradictions in the 2005 Sherbrooke Declaration, the NDP’s major statement on Quebec. A central one involves the party’s attitude toward a future Quebec referendum on sovereignty. The Declaration says the NDP “recognizes... that the right to self-determination implies that the Assemblée nationale [the Quebec legislature] is able to write a referendum question and that the citizens of Québec are able to answer it freely.” But it immediately adds: “It would be [up] to the Federal government to determine its own process in the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling” on the 1998 Secession reference.

The problem is that the Supreme Court ruling — and the federal Parliament’s Clarity Act, adopted in 2000 pursuant to that ruling — made Quebec sovereignty following a successful “yes” vote contingent on agreement by the federal Parliament. The Sherbrooke Declaration does not mention the Clarity Act. In 2006, Layton endorsed the Clarity Act, reversing his previous opposition to it.

The Declaration says the NDP “would recognize a majority decision (50% + 1)” in a referendum on Quebec’s political status. But the Supreme Court, in the Secession Reference, said the referendum vote must represent a “clear majority” on a “clear question” — as determined not by Quebec but by Ottawa and the other provinces, in clear violation of Quebec’s right of self-determination. Those conditions are now entrenched in the Clarity Act.

Responding in yesterday’s press conference to repeated questions by Quebec reporters, Layton first dodged the issue, then stated his own position.

“We’ll follow the decision of the Supreme Court judges,” he said. “We think that’s an appropriate framework. We don’t need to be revisiting legislation.” At the same time, he said in French that he stood by the Sherbrooke Declaration.

Other members of his caucus expressed differing opinions. Among those saying they would recognize a 50% + 1 vote for sovereignty were Quebec MPs André Boulerice (Rosemont-La Petite Patrie) and Guy Caron (Rimouski-Neigette-Témiscouata-Les Basques). Boulerice is also a member of the left independentist party Québec Solidaire. Caron is a former president of the Canadian Federation of Students. Both are trade union officials: Boulerice with the Canadian Union of Public Employees; Caron with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.

West Coast MP Peter Julian likewise said a simple majority vote was the party’s position.

"The NDP has for years recognized Quebec's right to self-determination and for me it's clear that means the 50-percent rule must be respected," said Boulerice.

Among those expressing instead their support for the Clarity Act were Nova Scotia MP Peter Stoffer and Winnipeg MP Pat Martin. The latter maintained that there was no contradiction, that a simple majority was enough — provided there was a “clear question” however.

Le Devoir political columnist Manon Cornellier aptly summed up Layton’s dilemma. “Yesterday’s scene was the perfect illustration of a leader caught between a rock and a hard place,” she wrote. “And it won’t be the last time.” Layton says he wants to create “winning conditions” for Canada in Quebec and thereby avoid the referendum threat. “But one of those conditions is to speak frankly and forthrightly about the rules by which he intends to play. But can he do so at this point without upsetting the rest of the country, or Quebec?...

“For Jack Layton, the solution is through a Parliament that functions, that improves things for families, that produces changes in people’s lives. But the Harper government has a majority and is under no obligation to take account of the opposition, even if it is full of good will.

“The Mulroney and Chrétien [majority] governments sometimes gave a helping hand to the opposition parties, but only when the policies they defended divided their own caucus, as on the issues of abortion, the long-gun registry, gay rights and same-sex marriage. If not, the steamroller was the rule. To impose the GST, reduce transfers to the provinces, slash government spending, limit access to employment insurance.... It will be no different this time around.”

Layton’s fundamental problem is that he is trying to square the circle — claiming to support Quebec self-determination, and the nationalist aspirations of the vast majority of Québécois, while hoping to convince them of the merits of the federal regime and fend off hard-line federalists within his caucus. Layton’s “winning conditions” require as a first step a progressive federal government and a “parliament that functions”, impossible goals in today’s conditions.

The solution will not be found in Parliament. Nor will it be found in the Clarity Act or a judgment of the Supreme Court. And still less in the Sherbrooke Declaration. The Declaration was a transparent attempt to paper over contradictory positions, to reconcile rhetorical support for Quebec’s right to national “self-determination” with a commitment to federalist hegemony over any attempt by the Québécois to exercise that right.

For as long as the NDP had no real presence in Quebec, and no Quebec members of its parliamentary caucus other than Thomas Mulcair, a committed federalist and opponent of Quebec sovereignty, these contradictions could be covered up. But no longer. They are now mirrored within the NDP’s parliamentary deputation.

The NDP has no choice but to confront the Quebec question and attempt to develop a coherent and principled position. This can only be done through a wide-open discussion throughout the ranks of its members and supporters, and through engagement with the movement for Quebec independence — and especially with the progressive leading edge of that movement, Québec Solidaire. The debate must be conducted above all within the working class and its organizations outside Quebec, in the other provinces and territories. It is long overdue, and the NDP will pay a serious price for any further attempts to evade it.

It should be clear by now that no lasting resolution of Quebec’s national aspirations can be found short of a fundamental change in its constitutional status. It should be equally clear that only a successful drive toward Quebec independence can lay the basis for any genuine partnership of equals between the peoples of Quebec and Canada — including the aboriginal First Nations.

Canada’s ruling class, including its Québécois component, are firmly opposed to a sovereign Quebec and the prospect of losing control over what is at present a key component part of their state. They will use every resource at their disposal to fight the movement for Quebec self-determination and political independence. This poses an enormous challenge to the working people of Canada, who must be won to consciousness of the need for ongoing solidarity and active support to their Québécois sisters and brothers.

This will be no easy task. As the Le Devoir columnist says, it will “upset” a lot of people — conditioned as we are by the constant trivialization of “the Quebec question” by a hostile mass media and capitalist politicians.

“My message to Quebecers is clear,” said Jack Layton yesterday. “You can count on me to defend your interests.”

Layton may think he can be the sole arbiter of their interests. But the more than 1,628,000 Québécois who voted for the NDP on May 2 were not just voting for Jack Layton; their vote was for the NDP. It was their way of saying — within the constraints of our electoral system — that they wanted a closer connection with progressive opinion in the Rest of Canada than the Bloc Québécois was able to provide.

We cannot afford to disappoint them.

-- Richard Fidler

More on that election

Some further thoughts about Canada’s May 2 federal election and its implications for the left...

A reader asked me what I thought about the significant decline in the combined votes for the capitalist parties over the last decade — from 78.5% for the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and Alliance in 2000, to 59% for the Liberals and Conservatives in 2011.

I think the figures reflect three developments, essentially.

1. The ongoing decline of the Liberals. The combined Tory/Reform/Alliance vote in 2000 is 37.7%, exactly the same percentage as the Tories got in 2008. They increased this only slightly, to 39.6%, in 2011. But the Liberals have declined steadily throughout this period: from 40.8% in 2000, to 36.7% in 2004, to 30.2% in 2006, to 26.3% in 2008, to 18.9% in 2011.

2. The shift between the Bloc Québécois vote and the NDP in Quebec in 2011. The BQ took 39.9% in 2000, 48.9% in 2004, 42.1% in 2006, 38.1% in 2008 (about where it was in 2000). But in 2011 it sank to 23.4%.

3. The ongoing increase in the NDP vote, and of course the surge in 2011. The NDP polled 8.5% in 2000 (1.8% in Quebec), 15.7% in 2004 (4.6% in Quebec), 17.5% in 2006 (7.5% in Quebec), 18.2% in 2008 (12.2% in Quebec). Then the party surges to 33.1% in 2011 (42.9% in Quebec).

A closer analysis might show that the NDP has been steadily gaining support against the Liberals, and in 2011 it also overtook the Bloc. More than 4.5 million people voted for the NDP on May 2, about 2 million more than in 2008 — a huge shift in the popular vote.

A possible hypothesis: The trends reflect a polarization of opinion, with the Liberals being the main losers (especially outside Quebec), mainly to the NDP. In 2011, Quebec caught up with this trend in the Rest of Canada (ROC); a Léger post-election poll published in Le Devoir indicates that a desire to forestall a Conservative majority in Ottawa was the primary factor motivating Quebec’s NDP voters. Harper and the mass media campaigned for a majority government, free at last to implement their “full” program. In turn, the broad “left” and “progressive” milieu in the ROC made the danger of a Harper majority the main issue. This was noticed in Quebec, where it was interpreted by many as well as a further threat to Quebec’s national interests and integrity. This fed into a debate that had been developing for some years: was the Bloc’s presence a sufficiently effective means of warding off these dangers? Could the NDP, the only potential alternative, be of use?

And Francophone Quebec, when it detects a developing shift in opinion, tends to vote as a nation, particularly in the federal context, a reflection of its consciousness as a national minority that is wary of federal intrusion on its jealously guarded jurisdictions, especially in the realm of language and culture. In 2011 public opinion seems to have reached a kind of tipping point, when the NDP vote in Quebec suddenly ballooned at the expense of the declining Bloc (already down from almost 49% in 2004 to 38% in 2008).

I should add, perhaps, that the shift to the NDP from the Liberals (and now the Bloc) is most remarkable because it largely occurs outside of any real increase in extra-parliamentary mobilization.

What the NDP seems to offer for many of its voters, I suspect, is a way to compensate for their perceived lack of perspectives; a means to fend off worse attacks by the capitalists, but without much sense of taking a radical turn. Layton’s campaign seemed cleverly calculated to appeal to that lowest common denominator of potential support: modest tinkering in the interests of “working families”, with a cheerful message that no one need feel threatened. Nevertheless, the voters’ turn to the NDP, elevating it to Official Opposition status — within striking distance of forming the federal government — represents a huge collective protest against the right-wing thrust of politics in this country.

Obviously, there is much more to be said — for example, about the nature of this electoral polarization, and the development of the Reform-Alliance formations in the 1990s, their takeover of the Progressive Conservative party a decade ago, and the social bases, content and aims of this very conscious right-wing formation (and social and ideological coalition) now enjoying unprecedented control of the federal government. But for socialists the key question to think about now is what the election means for the course of working-class politics in Canada in the next period.

Amir Khadir: Quebec vote shows need for a left strategy for independence

In the coming weeks, I plan to report and sometimes comment on various interpretations of the results that are being made within left and progressive circles. I will start today with a major op-ed article in the May 14 issue of Le Devoir by Amir Khadir, the Québec Solidaire member of Quebec’s National Assembly: “After the federal elections: the Quebec that awaits us”. Khadir makes a number of points worth pondering.

He begins with a comment similar to earlier ones he made, to the effect that the NDP surge in Quebec is a good thing, but he regrets that the Bloc suffered such a defeat. (In passing, he says he voted NDP in his riding against his good friend [BQ leader] Gilles Duceppe, and would not have done so had he known Duceppe would personally be defeated; but he adds that the elected NDPer, Hélène Laverdière (a long-time Canadian foreign service officer) “will make an excellent MP for Quebec.”

Khadir says he was voting pragmatically, against Harper and to strengthen the NDP’s rise in Canada. This “vote utile”, he says, by contributing to the defeat of Bloc Québécois MPs like Duceppe, illustrates a problem “that must be addressed frankly in the independentist movement”: the lack of a system of proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system resulted in the Bloc, with almost a quarter of the votes in Quebec, getting only one-twentieth of the seats. We now have to grasp, he says, “the danger that the lack of a proportional voting system poses for any sovereigntist formation”.

The second lesson of the Quebec results, says Khadir, is “the political exhaustion of a certain sovereigntist orthodoxy”. He points to “a new electoral dynamic”: “emergence of a new left-right electoral anchorage; massive rejection of the Charest [Quebec] government; lack of enthusiasm about the PQ, which is perceived by some as belonging to the power élite and distresses others by its refusal to engage in the necessary fight for independence.”

Who will benefit from this new configuration of the political landscape, he asks. “Everyone thinks of QS, but our formation still has a long way to go before it can arouse such passion. However, no party can now consider itself the proprietor of the sovereigntist vote.... No party is immune to reverses from the ‘useful vote’ and the aberrations of the present electoral system.”

Québec Solidaire has consistently campaigned for reform of the electoral system to include some form of proportional representation. A poll released May 14 in Le Devoir shows QS with 9% popular support; a system of PR could give it 10 seats or more with a vote like that. (Khadir is so far its only elected member.)

As to the defeat of the BQ, says Khadir, the “new electoral dynamic” reflects “the exhaustion of the strategy that the leadership of the sovereigntist movement has pursued federally through the BQ.” He quotes Duceppe, at the PQ convention in April: “Electing as many sovereigntists as possible in Ottawa... for the next stage, electing a Parti Québécois government in Quebec City... [and] it all becomes possible, as far as sovereignty is concerned.”

The basic problem with the BQ-PQ scenario, says Khadir, is that it bases a strategy for Quebec independence on alienation from Canada. “But the approach has failed; it is time to try something else. And this cannot be strictly electoral, derived from above by some elected members lying in wait for fleeting winning conditions” — a reference to the PQ’s oft-repeated formula for a referendum victory based on taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by a conjunctural set of circumstances, such as the 1990 defeat of the Meech Lake constitutional amendment package.

“Quebec, this country of projects that awaits us,” says Khadir, “can only be born from the firm will of our people and the dreams that sustain it. Quebec’s march toward its independence cannot be fueled by resentment. We have to imagine a strategy by which the acts taken for Quebec are aimed toward a ‘rupture de dépassement’ [freely, a challenging break from the present]. Innovating socially and economically. Taking the ecological and political turn that can reveal the exciting potential of freedom to our own people. It must be positive, and necessarily involve huge popular mobilizations.”

Khadir then draws attention to Québec Solidaire’s concept of moving toward sovereignty through a constituent assembly that would help build a stronger relationship of forces in favour of independence, with a compelling legitimacy. The party counterposes this to the PQ’s top-down referendum strategy that excludes popular participation in formulating a program for an independent Quebec.

Khadir concludes:

“It will be up to our people to decide. And when they have decided, since any independence will involve negotiations for new collaborations and agreements, Quebec will have every interest in seeing that a more open Canada emerges, under the leadership of principled, generous and open people — like Jack Layton and the NDP, who have undertaken to respect our right to self-determination.”

Optimistic language, to be sure — and at this stage, excessively so! But the point is well made: The Quebec independence movement cannot overlook the need to win friends and allies in the Rest of Canada. And the NDP victories in the recent election, in a context of developing or deepening ideological, political and class polarization in the electorate in both Quebec and the Rest of Canada, open some new perspectives for doing this.

-- Richard Fidler

The federal NDP’s electoral breakthrough in Quebec: A challenge to progressives in Canada

If Jack Layton’s election-night speech to his Toronto supporters is an indication of what lies ahead, the NDP is going to have a hard time coming to terms with a parliamentary caucus now composed of a majority of MPs from Quebec.

To a crowded room in which nearly everyone was waving Canadian flags, the NDP leader delivered two thirds of his remarks in English without ever mentioning the expression “Quebec nation”. The scene, televised across Canada, did not go unremarked in Quebec, where most of the NDP’s sudden support had come from nationalist-minded voters, including many sympathizers of Quebec independence.

The NDP breakthrough was the big surprise of the May 2 federal election. In a wave of support that developed into a veritable tsunami, the NDP took 42.9% of the Quebec popular vote, winning 58 of the province’s 75 seats under the first-past-the-post system and defeating most MPs and candidates of the pro-sovereignty Bloc Québécois, now shrunken from a caucus of 50 to only four MPs in the House of Commons. And along the way the NDP candidates reduced the much smaller contingents of Quebec Conservatives and Liberals to six and seven seats respectively.

In the Rest of Canada (ROC), the NDP share of the popular vote increased from 17.5% in the previous federal election (2008) to 26.3%, largely on the coattails of the Quebec surge. But the party’s net gains outside of Quebec were limited to five new seats.

With a total of 102 seats — 60% of them from Quebec, where in 2008 the party took 12.2% of the vote and only one seat — the NDP now constitutes the Official Opposition. This is clearly a major achievement for the party. It was won despite the almost unanimous opposition of the big-business media: 31 Canadian newspapers editorially endorsed Harper’s Conservatives; one, the Bloc Québécois (Le Devoir); and one, the NDP (Toronto Star).

However, it is an Opposition with little parliamentary clout. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, the “Tories”, with just 39.6% of the popular vote, elected 167 MPs, giving them a clear majority in the 308 seat House. As for the Liberals, they elected only 34 MPs, an all-time low for that party.

The NDP can abandon its dream of “making Parliament work.” It will work well, but not for the NDP’s natural constituency — what it referred to in the campaign as “working families.”

A new Conservative hegemony

Over the next four or five years, the reinforced Harper government can be expected to pursue even more vigorously the right-wing agenda it has followed for the past five years of its minority government: more war and militarization, privatization of social services and federal institutions (Canada Post?), the weakening or abolition of many regulatory bodies, more “free trade” and investment deals, increased spending on police and prisons, and a complete flouting of the most minimal environmental measures that has already turned Canada into an international pariah petro-state. Quebec will be further marginalized through the addition of new parliamentary seats in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, where the Tories are strong.

With the crushing defeat of the Liberals, Harper has now established the Conservatives as the hegemonic party of capital. But this hegemony comes at a price. Capital in Canada has traditionally ruled through a system of alternance between Liberals and Conservatives, each ready to replace the other if defeated in Parliament or by the electorate. However, with the crushing defeat of the Liberals, and the victory of the NDP, the scenario has radically changed. Although the Tory government’s parliamentary majority is secured for four or five years, the alternance is now up for grabs. For Canada’s ruling circles, this poses a dilemma. Should they bank on rebuilding the Liberals? Or should they start thinking of the NDP as an acceptable option at the federal level, as they already do in some provinces where the NDP has governed for many years?

Provincial office is one thing. But the central government, with its crucial jurisdiction over banking and finance, foreign affairs, the military, trade and commerce, criminal law and the senior courts and judiciary, etc. — and above all its role in protecting the territorial and institutional integrity of the state and forestalling any challenge by Quebec to that integrity — that’s a somewhat different matter.

The difficulty here, of course, is that the NDP, created at the aegis of the trade unions in English Canada, has historically been viewed by Capital and labor alike as a workers party and for that reason has never enjoyed the confidence of big business — despite all the efforts of NDP leaders down through the years to neutralize and overcome that antipathy.

For the time being, a choice between a reconstituted Liberal party and the NDP as the party of federal alternance remains open for debate. The outcome will depend very much on how the situation in Quebec evolves. Meanwhile, Harper is being reminded that he must rule in the interests of the entirety of the capitalist class, and not just a right-wing faction of the class. Whether or not that will require him to rein in some of the more extreme rightist elements in his caucus remains to be seen.

Little policy debate

Despite the serious stakes involved, the election campaign was characterized by a remarkable absence of discourse on the major issues confronting the country — from the wars in Afghanistan and now Libya to the looming climate and environmental catastrophe, the economic crisis and the “national question,” the ongoing disaffection of Québécois with their place as a nation in the Canadian constitutional setup. In the media and party platforms, voters were essentially asked to choose between competing menus of promises that purported to increase their disposable income in various ways, as if politics and citizenship itself involved little more than a consumer marketing exercise. Most media analysis during the campaign centered on speculation as to how many seats the shifting percentages in the polls might yield to each party as a result of tactical vote-splitting between parties in the multi-candidate ridings. But serious policy debate? There was very little of that. It is not easy, therefore, to decipher what the May 2 vote indicates about shifts in public opinion.

Le Devoir’s Josée Boileau expressed the frustration of many on the lack of substantive policy debate, in an April 29 editorial on the federal election:

An ageing Canada is spinning its wheels [s’autosuffit]. It does not dream, does not assume new challenges, does not see itself as a source of inspiration, nor does it draw inspiration from what is done elsewhere. ...

Last week Le Devoir interviewed Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, who reported on his moves to get the UN to adopt a Charter of the rights of nature. Bolivia itself, seeing the climate changes that have melted its glaciers by one third, adopted similar legislation last December and has appointed an ombudsman to enforce it.

Moreover, the country dreams of an international tribunal of climate justice, and of replacing the notion of GDP by an indicator of sustainable development. In short, Bolivia is talking 21^st century! Here, we are still talking ancient Greek.

It was also — and even more importantly — an election campaign nearly devoid of serious mobilizations outside the electoral arena around issues of importance to working people that could have contributed to policy debate. The antiwar demonstrations in mid-April were small. Despite the threat to abortion rights and equality legislation posed by a Conservative victory, the women’s movement was largely unheard. A Parliament Hill demonstration on May Day, initiated by the Hamilton Steelworkers union locked out by US Steel, attracted only a thousand or so demonstrators, although it was addressed in part to an issue of great concern to millions — the vulnerability of pensioners who are being deprived of their life savings and old-age security by corporate bankruptcies and downsizing.

In the youth-based environmental and social movements, many activists are inclined either to abstain from electoral politics or to focus their political action on the community rather than “national” level.[1] Some who did become involved in the election were initially at least attempting to forge an informal “anybody but Harper” coalition that could elect candidates of any party but the Tories. The NDP’s sudden surge in pre-election polling tended to convert many of these to NDP votes, which on election day helped to defeat a few Liberals and allow the election of some Tories.

Notwithstanding the lack of substantive debate, a few observations can be made, I think, about the trends revealed in the May 2 voting. With special reference, as usual, to Quebec, that deep and decisive fault line in Canada’s political landscape.

The Liberal fall from grace

For the Liberals, now down to 34 seats with only 18.9% of the popular vote — their worst result ever — the election was catastrophic. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, defeated in his own riding, resigned as party leader the next day. Ironically, the voters’ immolation of “Iggy” coincided with the news on election eve of the U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden; Ignatieff first sprang to public prominence in the wake of 9/11 as a Canadian professor at Harvard who authored newspaper articles defending torture in the pursuit of terrorists.

Throughout most of the 20^th century, the Liberals ruled as Canada’s “natural governing party,” the party’s parliamentary representation traditionally drawn from most parts of the country, including Quebec. That hegemony originated in the late 19^th century when a Conservative government suppressed the Northwest Rebellion of French-speaking Métis and Indigenous peoples and hanged its leader Louis Riel. Quebec’s resulting hatred of the Tories endured for well over half a century.

The Liberals’ slow decline began almost 30 years ago, in the wake of the Trudeau government’s unilateral patriation — despite unanimous opposition from Quebec’s National Assembly — of Canada’s constitution imposing a complex amending formula that virtually rules out fundamental constitutional change and a Charter of Rights specifically aimed at overruling crucial features of Quebec’s language laws. Their unpopularity in Quebec crucially paved the way for the victories of Brian Mulroney’s Conservative governments in 1984 and 1988.

The Liberals enjoyed a decade-long return to government beginning in the early 1990s in the wake of the defeats of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional agreements, which broke up Mulroney’s alliance of western provincial autonomists and Quebec “soft” nationalists and produced the Reform and Bloc Québécois parties. In 2000, the Liberals were even able to outpoll the Bloc in Quebec as a result of popular disaffection with the Parti Québécois, the BQ counterpart, and the PQ government’s “zero deficit” austerity program. But the Liberal party was massively rejected shortly afterwards when the sordid details emerged of the “sponsorship” scandal in which the federal Liberals had spent millions of government dollars on illegal funding to subvert the Quebec sovereigntist movement. The Bloc Québécois recovered its lead and the Liberals were once again relegated to their largely Anglophone enclaves.

Having gone through three leaders in the last five years, the federal Liberals are now in existential crisis.

In 2006 the Conservatives regained office, this time as a merged and blatantly “neoliberal” Reform-Conservative party under Stephen Harper. But they had few seats in Quebec, and now they have lost their tiny enclave of ridings in Quebec City to the NDP.

The Bloc Québécois: An exhausted strategy?

The big loser in Quebec was of course the Bloc Québécois. How did this happen?

The BQ originated as a party of disappointed federalists; its first MPs, in 1991, were Conservatives and Liberals who broke from their parties in the wake of English Canada’s rejection of the Meech Lake constitutional agreement, which had been intended to legitimate Canada’s Constitution in the eyes of the Québécois. The Bloc was to be Quebec’s agency in Parliament during the negotiation of Quebec’s independence following the 1995 Referendum.

When the Referendum narrowly failed — just under 50% of the voters opted for the “yes” — the Bloc evolved into an insurance policy for Quebec, a means of avoiding the conflict of legitimacy for the Quebec nation that had arisen in the early 1980s when the National Assembly voted against the patriation deal but the Quebec MPs in Ottawa voted for it. As such, the Bloc’s MPs, for five successive elections comprising two-thirds of Quebec’s deputation in the House, became an enduring symbol of Quebec’s alienation from the Canadian Confederation. They purported to defend “the interests of Quebec” conceived as a purely nationalist non-class specific counterpart to the Parti Québécois and its bourgeois independentist perspective.

The Bloc’s program was similar to the NDP’s in many respects, excepting the Bloc’s allegiance to a sovereign Quebec — at best, proposals for modest reforms within a neoliberal context. Where it differed, it was sometimes to the right. For example, while the NDP promised to “review” the Tories’ decision to spend billions on the purchase of new F-35 fighter jets, the Bloc demanded only that a “fair share” of the planes’ manufacture, deployment and maintenance be done in Quebec — a position that grated on the antiwar sensibilities of many Québécois. However, both Bloc and NDP voted with the Tories and Liberals in favour of Canada’s participation in the NATO assault on Libya. And the NDP program promises to “maintain the current planned levels of Defense spending commitments.” This general all-party agreement on Canada’s massive increase in military spending under recent Liberal and Tory governments helped to preclude debate on foreign policy during the election campaign.

In recent years, with little prospect of an early move toward sovereignty under the PQ, progressive opinion in Quebec increasingly questioned the Bloc’s utility in Ottawa and began to look for potential allies in English Canada. During the 2008 federal election campaign, a debate opened up within the pro-independence left over whether to vote for the Bloc or the NDP. It foreshadowed the movement from below that suddenly erupted during this year’s campaign. And when the polls this April indicated swelling support for the NDP, the Bloc reverted to its specifically sovereigntist base, hoping to mobilize support through speakers like PQ leader Pauline Marois and former premier Jacques Parizeau, ghosts of elections past. This reinforced the popular perception that the Bloc had outlived its claim to represent Quebec’s interests, broadly defined, on the federal level.

The NDP: A vote for the party, not the candidates

The NDP’s Quebec candidates surfed into office on a wave of popular disenchantment with the Tories, Liberals and Bloc. A post-election survey by Léger Marketing published May 7 reveals that the uppermost concern among Quebec voters, including many former Bloc supporters, was to find some way to block the Conservative government and that the Bloc was no longer seen as the best rampart. The NDP was perceived as the one party that offered some prospect of change. At the same time, NDP voters indicated that the potential for constitutional change was not a major factor in their decision. The Québécois have largely abandoned any expectation of constitutional change coming from Ottawa or the ROC — which does not mean they have abandoned their desire for greater national autonomy or independence.

The huge majorities the NDP registered in many ridings were gained without real organization or presence of the party. However, it fielded a candidate in every riding, not only to sustain the illusion of a potential party of government but also to benefit from the generous state funding for every vote a party gets under the election laws.[2] Many of these candidates were poteaux (“poles”), as they are known in Quebec — stand-in placeholders without known roots as activists in unions or social movements in the respective communities. At the outset of the campaign, they were not expected to win. Some are already proving an embarrassment to the party, such as the young woman elected in a rural 100% Francophone riding who does not speak French, lives a three-hour drive from the riding, and vacationed in Las Vegas during the campaign.

There are some notable exceptions, of course. One is Nicole Turmel, a former president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, one of Canada’s largest unions. Another is Romeo Saganash, elected in a far northern riding, a Cree leader who was one of the negotiators for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. At least one new MP, Alexandre Boulerice, a trade unionist and environmental activist, is a member of the left-wing pro-independence party Québec Solidaire; he was communications director for the NDP campaign in Quebec and says he is a supporter of Quebec independence.

Two of the party’s Quebec MPs are former Liberals. Thomas Mulcair, deputy federal leader, was once a cabinet member in the province’s Charest government and is former legal affairs director of Alliance Quebec, the Anglophone lobby that has led the fight against Quebec’s language laws. Françoise Boivin is a former Liberal MP. They are committed opponents of Quebec sovereignty. The particular views of most of the other new MPs are not known. It is a safe bet that many support Quebec’s traditional nationalist demands for linguistic, cultural and jurisdictional autonomy; some probably harbour sovereigntist sympathies. This ensures a sharp conflict within the party if the Layton leadership pursues the NDP leadership’s longstanding dream of replacing the Liberals either through elimination (their original project) or merger — an attractive goal to them today, when they could be in the drivers’ seat in any such agreement. We had a foretaste of this in December 2008, when the Liberals and NDP signed onto a coalition government agreement (with Bloc support) in an unsuccessful effort to defeat the Harper minority government.

The electoral breakthrough in Quebec will — at least for the next four or five years, the term of Harper’s majority government — bring the NDP face to face with the reality of Quebec and the national question. This will be a new and no doubt unsettling experience for the party and its hundreds of thousands of members and supporters across Canada. If the NDP is to develop a meaningful understanding of the national question and foster relations of active solidarity with the progressive forces within Quebec, it will have to jettison a lot of baggage from its past. This will involve much more than a rhetorical adherence to Layton’s concept of “asymmetrical federalism” — which, by the way, was not mentioned in the party’s formal election program. The pressures will grow exponentially if, as opinion polls predict, the PQ forms the next government in Quebec.

A dismal history of failed encounters

Historically, the NDP has failed to gain even a modest foothold among Quebec’s French-speaking majority. Shortly after its founding in the early 1960s, the party’s Quebec supporters split, a largely Anglophone minority refusing to follow the majority in establishing an autonomous albeit sympathizing Quebec counterpart, the Parti Socialiste du Québec. The PSQ advocated a new constitutional relationship of two “associate states”, Quebec and Canada, but was outflanked by the pro-independence RIN[3] and later the development of the Parti Québécois. (PQ founder René Lévesque incorporated the “associate states” formula in his party’s program, with the proviso that Quebec had first to separate before it could negotiate a new relationship with the ROC; he called it “sovereignty-association”).

In the early 1970s, the NDP’s exceptional opposition to the War Measures repression in the October Crisis attracted to the party a contingent of Francophones led by union leader Raymond Laliberté.[4] At the party’s 1971 federal convention, most of them allied with the left-wing “Waffle caucus” delegates around resolutions in support of Quebec’s right to self-determination; they lost interest in the party when it subsequently expelled the Waffle.

In the early 1980s, the party leadership under Ed Broadbent endorsed unilateral patriation of the Constitution without Quebec’s consent, and in 2000 the party voted in favour of Bill C-20, the Clarity Act, which (among other things) made Quebec sovereignty following a successful “yes” vote contingent on agreement by the federal Parliament — a blatant violation of Quebec’s right to self-determination.

This brief historical sketch omits many incidents of a similar nature in the course of the NDP’s problematic relationship with the Quebec national question. It is now 50 years since the party’s founding. Whatever excuse there may have been in 1961 for the party’s ambivalence on the Quebec question, the electoral breakthrough today occurs in a very different context — characterized most notably by the existence of a powerful pro-sovereignty movement and the existence in Quebec politics of a fledgling left-wing party, Québec Solidaire, which seeks to arm the independence movement with a progressive social agenda that differs radically from that of the capitalist PQ and BQ.

Yet in every major confrontation over the national question that has arisen, the NDP’s Canadian nationalism — its commitment to the federal state structures — has trumped any sympathies for Québécois nationalist challenges to those structures.

It need only be added that this blindness if not hostility to Quebec’s concerns and demands has not elicited major opposition within the NDP’s ranks. Globe & Mail political columnist Jeffrey Simpson notes: “As we saw during the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional debates, rank-and-file NDPers are no more inclined to humour Quebec than supporters of other [federalist] parties.” However, I would argue that such indifference more often than not reflects ignorance of what is at stake than it does conscious opposition to Quebec’s fundamentally democratic aspirations as a nation with its own dynamic of development. Getting up to speed on these issues now becomes a major challenge facing NDP members and supporters in the Rest of Canada. Let us hope that the new contingent of MPs from Quebec can assist them in this task.

The Sherbrooke Declaration

When Jack Layton took the leadership of the NDP in 2003 he undertook to shift the party’s approach toward a more sympathetic stance on some longstanding Quebec demands.[5] In 2005 the General Council of the party’s Quebec section adopted a document now commonly known as the Sherbrooke Declaration. Entitled in part “Federalism, Social-Democracy and the Québec Question,” it was subsequently endorsed by the federal NDP at a 2006 convention and is the most complete statement of the NDP’s current position on the national question.[6] What does it indicate of current NDP thinking?

The Declaration is thoroughly federalist in orientation. It rules out any prospect of constitutional change, the usual way the national question is posed in Canada. It admits that the refusal of successive Quebec governments (both sovereigntist and federalist) to sign on to the 1982 Constitution “is a real untenable problem in the long term” but states the party’s objective “in the medium term” is “to get results that could allow Quebec to embrace the Canadian constitutional framework.” In the TV debates, Layton referred to this as “creating winning conditions” for Quebec.

The document refers to Quebec only once as a “nation” (quotation marks in the original) and says that Quebec’s national character “can be expressed in the context of the Canadian federation.” It “recognizes Quebec’s right to self-determination,” but emphasizes that in the NDP view this right can be “exercised within Canada,” and that in any case it “is not useful or necessary” to “legally formalize this process.”

It says the NDP “would recognize a majority decision (50% + 1)” in the event of a referendum on Quebec’s political status but cannily formulates this as 50% + 1 “of the Québec people” (and not voters!). And it adds that the federal government must “determine its own process in the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling” on the Quebec Secession question (1998). That ruling specifically denied that Quebec could secede without the consent of the other provinces as well as the federal Parliament, or without determining the borders of an independent Quebec. (Significantly, the Sherbrooke Declaration, in its definition of the Quebec “nation”, does not include a reference to territory.[7])

The Sherbrooke Declaration does not repudiate past positions of the party on the Quebec national question. In fact, it is explicit that the Declaration “does not make obsolete the other positions taken earlier,” citing (inter alia) NDP positions on bilingualism and multiculturalism. French is defined as the “language of work and the common public language” in Quebec; but Quebec’s Charter of the French Language (Law 101) says French is the official language and the common language, full stop, not simply of the “public” sphere. Instead, the Declaration proclaims the party’s support of the federal Official Languages Act within Quebec — a law that grants equal rights to English in federal institutions.

There is nothing in this document that is incompatible with the parliamentary NDP’s support of the infamous Clarity Act.[8] In fact, these positions are largely incongruent with the Québécois nationalism that has fueled the province’s emergence as a self-conscious nation in recent decades and — in the face of intransigent resistance from Ottawa — stimulated the movement for sovereignty or independence.

However, these issues were not aired much in this campaign, other than in the French-language leaders’ debate, when Layton sidestepped Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe’s challenge to support the Bloc position on applying the provisions of Law 101 to federal government institutions in Quebec.

A repudiation of sovereignty?

It is unlikely that many of those who voted for the NDP were aware of the party’s actual positions and record on these issues. For most, it was probably enough to know that the party differed in significant ways from the Tories and Liberals, and seemed more sympathetic to some of Quebec’s outstanding national grievances. In any event, a commonly expressed theme of voters’ comments in talk shows and media interviews was that Quebec’s constitutional status would and should be determined in Quebec, not Ottawa. Thus the “poteaux” phenomenon; people voted for a party, not the individual candidates.

Does the NDP sweep denote a repudiation of Quebec sovereignty by the Québécois, as alleged by prominent NDP supporters in the ROC such as Stephen Lewis? No serious commentator in Quebec — from committed federalists to disappointed Bloc Québécois supporters — makes that argument. Sovereignty still registers about 40% support in opinion polls, and the Bloc, while reduced to four seats, still managed to win the support of 23.4% of Quebec voters. It broods on the sidelines, hoping no doubt that the NDP’s neophyte deputation in Ottawa will implode before the next federal election, when the Bloc could again be a potential contender!

It is significant, however, that once again the Québécois have voted overwhelmingly for parties that do not form the government in Ottawa, a manifestation of their alienation from the federal regime. (Prior to the Bloc’s formation, Quebec tended to vote in federal elections for the party perceived as likely to form the government, in the hope that this would guarantee it a voice in the cabinet.)

The durability of the NDP’s gains in Quebec is by no means certain. The party faces many challenges as the Layton leadership strives to incorporate its new Quebec MPs into a functioning caucus in Parliament, and the latter in turn face a major challenge in the need to build understanding and support for Quebec aspirations within the party, and among its working-class supporters, in the ROC.

And Québec Solidaire?

The NDP victory is naturally attracting much interest, and speculation as to its meaning, in Québec Solidaire, the independentist party of the left that seeks office only within Quebec. In a post-election statement, QS co-leader Amir Khadir expressed regret at the Bloc defeat, but praised Layton for his “intelligence and understanding of Quebec.” The NDP, he said, “will show itself worthy of the confidence the people of Quebec have placed in it, and will reject the opportunism of the federalist elites who interpret that support as rejection of the idea of sovereignty.” And he added, in this optimistic vein:

Quebec has shown once again to what degree it is a distinct society. The Québécois have demonstrated a thirst for change and an attachment to progressive values. When the day comes that we decide to be independent, no one will be able to prevent us. Independence does not belong to a political party, it belongs to the Quebec people.

Responding to a reporter’s question at his media scrum April 21, Khadir noted:

I think a Quebec in which Québec Solidaire were in power might be better able to negotiate Quebec’s future, a sovereign future decided by the Québécois, with a Canadian government led by Jack Layton rather than a Michael Ignatieff or a Stephen Harper. It seems to me that this should be obvious for most sovereigntists.

Writing in the May 3 issue of the webzine Presse-toi-à-gauche, Bernard Rioux, a leader of the QS collective Gauche Socialiste, welcomed the NDP’s gains and the division in the sovereigntist vote between Bloc and NDP.

It is the sign that we in Quebec can no longer present sovereignty as being beyond the left-right polarization. Already, on the Quebec scene, the birth of Québec Solidaire posed this need to link the project of an egalitarian, feminist and ecological society, the project of national independence, and the democratic process of achieving independence, as the three dimensions of a redefinition of our struggle for national emancipation. This is the orientation that should inspire us to redefine the struggle for real social transformation and for our national independence.

Rioux pointed as well to the internal dynamics of the NDP. These, he thought, will also be radically transformed.

As Official Opposition, the NDP will be placed in the centre of Canadian politics. It will be traversed by a series of strategic debates: over orientations in opposing the Conservative government, over relations with the Liberal party, over Quebec’s place in the Canadian confederation. With more than half of its caucus from Quebec, it cannot be content with an economistic discourse in abstraction from all the questions related to Quebec’s national oppression.... With the Canadian nationalism that oozes from this party, and the presence of sovereigntists in its caucus, other waves could shake the party.

The election result is a startling reminder of the volatility of Quebec politics. At the same time, it underscores the centrality of events in Quebec not only to Canadian politics but especially to the fate of progressive forces in the Rest of Canada. It demonstrates the potential for Quebec to become, once again, a bulwark of resistance to the aggressive rightist program of the Harper government.

Socialists in the ROC will have to think about possible means of taking advantage of this new situation, and especially of engaging positively with Quebec progressives and independence supporters who will be encouraged by the NDP’s electoral advance to take a new interest in developments in the Canadian state.

May 8, 2011

---

[1] A notable exception to this pattern occurred on Vancouver Island, where a community-based electoral mobilization managed to elect Green Party leader Elizabeth May, that party’s first (and only) Member of Parliament. In that riding, Saanich-Gulf Islands, the voter turnout was 75.3%, the third highest in the country. Overall, only 61% of the electorate voted, not much higher than in the 2008 election.

[2] Harper has promised to put an end to federal state funding of political parties. This will be a harsh blow to the Liberals, while also depriving the NDP of its major source of funding. As for the Tories, the new “natural ruling party” of big business, they don’t need it.

[3] Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale, led by Pierre Bourgault.

[4] Laliberté was a former president of the then teachers’ union (now the CSQ).

[5] For an account of some of the key steps in this process, see “How the NDP managed to win nationalist voters in Quebec.”

[6] To my knowledge, the federal NDP has never published the Sherbrooke Declaration, although it was frequently cited in the Quebec media during the recent campaign. A few NDP candidates in Quebec linked to it on their web sites. The English version cited here was published bilingually by Layton’s then “Quebec lieutenant” Pierre Ducasse when he ran unsuccessfully in the 2008 election campaign.

[7] This is not a trivial question. As Pierre Dubuc, editor of the left sovereigntist monthly L’aut’journal notes, “When Stephen Harper speaks of the Québécois nation, he refers to the ‘Québécois’ and not Quebec — as a diplomatic note of the U.S. Embassy, revealed this week by Wikileaks, has just reminded us. This does not involve recognition of Quebec territory.... This opens the door to partition of Quebec territory. Soon after the 1995 referendum Harper, a [Reform party] MP, tabled a private bill describing the procedure to be followed for partitioning Quebec in the case of a possible victory of the Yes.” Just as the British did in separating Northern Ireland from Ireland when conceding the latter’s independence! Divide and rule...

[8] Jack Layton was critical of the Clarity Act, adopted before he was an MP, but later repudiated his opposition.

How the NDP managed to win nationalist voters in Quebec

The Canadian media are now forced to devote some attention to figuring out how the NDP happened to win major support in Quebec, as recent opinion polls suggest. Among the more perceptive accounts is this one by William Johnson, a former president of the Anglophone "rights" lobby Alliance Quebec. He underscores a point that socialists in the Rest of Canada should absorb: that the NDP's apparent surge in Quebec does not by any means put paid to the importance of the Québécois national question in Canadian politics. On the contrary. A lot of expectations will be riding on the NDP in the next period, not least in Quebec.

The apparent surge in NDP support in English Canada is not unrelated to the initial surge in Quebec. As some of us have long maintained, the NDP's credibility as a party of government at the federal level has always been largely contingent on its ability to pose as a credible alternative in Quebec. In this election, at least, the party seems to have managed to make major strides in responding to that challenge, partly because Québécois hopes for meaningful change in their constitutional status within Canada are admittedly quite limited by now.

The Bloc's decline -- in the last analysis, it was never more than Quebec's "insurance policy" in the hostile federal environment -- has been developing for more than a decade, staved off until now only by the popular response to the Liberals' sponsorship scandal and the widespread antipathy to Harper's Tory agenda. In all but the national question, the Bloc and NDP don't differ radically, although the NDP has managed to appear more consistently antiwar; that too, is undoubtedly a factor in its progress.

It remains to be seen how popular support for the NDP will translate into parliamentary seats on May 2, under the undemocratic "first past the post" system. But, whatever the result, my Socialist Project comrades will have to ponder an important implication: that as far as the NDP is concerned, "the party is [NOT] over”... yet.

-- Richard

 

 

Ottawa Citizen, 28 Apr 2011

How Jack Layton courted Bloc voters

By William Johnson

William Johnson is the author of the biography, Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada.

The game-changer of the 2011 election campaign is the New Democratic Party’s surge in Quebec while the Bloc Québécois declined.

None had predicted it. It took all by surprise. But was it an entirely unaccountable phenomenon? Hardly.

From the time he won the NDP leadership in 2003, Jack Layton manoeuvred to build his party in Quebec from the ground up by courting the nationalist clientele of the Bloc Québécois. His strategy followed that of Brian Mulroney when the Progressive Conservative party was defunct in la belle province. The Tory leader built support in Quebec by recruiting separatists like Marcel Masse and Lucien Bouchard, then launching nationalist messages like treating the 1982 patriation of the Constitution as an infamy.

In his first election campaign as leader in 2004, Layton sent out two messages targeting Bloc supporters, as reported in The Globe and Mail on May 29 by Steven Chase. “NDP Leader Jack Layton, trying against tough odds to win the first Quebec seat for his party in 14 years, said yesterday he would repeal Ottawa’s 2000 Clarity Act on secession.”

On that same occasion, Layton repudiated the 1998 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the secession of Quebec, which said that secession was not a right, it could only be accomplished legitimately with the consent of the other provinces and the Parliament of Canada, and that it would require a number of conditions, such as determining the new borders of an independent Quebec.

As Steven Chase reported, “Mr. Layton also said the NDP would recognize a unilateral declaration of independence by Quebec after a referendum vote.”

To understand what is happening now in Quebec, one should consult a 2,782-word portrait of Layton published in the July 1, 2003 issue of l’Actualité magazine. There, the new leader of the NDP revealed himself and his intentions to an ultra-nationalist journalist, the late Michel Vastel. The title was significant: “The left, Quebec and Jack Layton.” More significant was the subtitle: “We will see Jack Layton a lot this summer because, to revivify the NDP, Jack Layton has undertaken to court the supporters of the Bloc Québécois.”

As Layton described himself, he had always supported Quebec nationalist causes. He was a student at McGill University in 1969 when a huge demonstration was held under the slogan, “McGill français.” Some 10,000 people marched to have McGill transformed into a French-language university. Vastel wrote: “During an agitated demonstration in 1969, Jack Layton found himself at the sides of turbulent personalities like union leader Michel Chartrand, as well as Robert Lemieux, official lawyer for the Front de libération du Québec bomb placers, and the separatist professor Stanley Grey who had invited him to the event.”

Layton revealed that he had been a pacifist who joined demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. He said he converted to the NDP when he heard Tommy Douglas denounce the invocation of the War Measures Act during the 1970 October Crisis.

He described with approval how his father, Robert Layton, broke with the Liberal party: “He left the Liberal Party when Pierre Elliott Trudeau pushed through a new Constitution in 1982 without the consent of Quebec. ‘ He thought that Trudeau had committed a grave mistake, and had acted arrogantly besides,’ the son recalled.”

Already, in 2003, Layton was anticipating supplanting the Liberals and evoking the possibility of a coalition: “Our program and the list of our candidates will be such as to convince people that we are ready for everything,” he promised, “to govern, to form the official opposition or to participate in a coalition.”

In the years since 2003, Layton has consistently taken positions dear to Quebec nationalists. He is for conferring special status or distinct society status on Quebec, which is what he calls “asymmetric federalism.” He is for applying to federally regulated industries in Quebec — such as banks or VIA Rail — the restrictions on the use of English contained in the Charter of the French Language. He favours a law that would prevent the appointment of any judge to the Supreme Court of Canada who was not fluently bilingual. And he opposes the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision that would allow some students who have studied long enough in unsubsidized private schools to acquire a right to public English schooling.

Finally, in pacifist Quebec, he has called constantly for the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan.

On December 5, 2005, during the federal election campaign, Jack Layton stated: “If you are absolutely convinced that there is no place for you in Canada and you don’t see your future within the Canadian federation, then you will vote for the Bloc.” He later explained away those words, just as he had later withdrawn his promise to rescind the Clarity Act. But a message had been sent.

Layton’s pitch, fundamentally, is that Quebecers are wasting their vote on the Bloc when they can get exactly the same policies from a Canada-wide party that can hope some day to form the government or be part of a governing coalition.