Whither the Bloc Québécois?

[August1991]

Good analytical piece in the Globe & Mail today:

Everything is up in the air for the Bloc Québécois as sovereigntist forces struggle to deal with the hangover from Monday's bitter defeat in the Quebec provincial election.

From leadership to policy to political positioning, the Bloc faces a number of questions, with no easy answers at hand.

Central to the party's future is the issue of leadership. Will Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe stay in Ottawa? Not likely if his provincial counterpart, Parti Québécois Leader André Boisclair, is ousted in the wake of his party's historic electoral meltdown.

Once the leadership issue is resolved, other questions come into play. Will the Bloc continue its efforts to modernize and broaden its version of Quebec nationalism in a bid to keep its seats in multicultural ridings on Montreal Island?

....

In the next federal election, the Conservatives will focus in large part on these ADQ strongholds, and the Bloc's survival as a political force depends on its ability to beat back that Conservative offensive.

To reach its goal, the Bloc will face key decisions that centre on one big question: What does the Bloc do in Ottawa?

G & M

There are rumours that Duceppe will replace to Boisclair as head of the PQ and Bernard Landry will become BQ leader in Ottawa.

That almost makes sense. Boisclair has to go but I don't know if Duceppe will manage any better than the previous four PQ leaders.

Landry would be a good federal politician, and he'd drive Harper & Dion crazy.

I don't think the BQ is in the same position as the PQ. Whatever happens to the PQ, the BQ will not lose its position as the "defender of Quebec's interests" in Ottawa. In fact, that will become the main debating point of the next federal election in Quebec. Is it better to have an MP on the government side or in the BQ?

If Harper manages to make the Cosnervatives flexible and "autonomous-friendly" (IOW, if MPs can feel comfortable defending Quebec's interests while sitting as Conservatives), then Harper will get a broad sweep and the BQ will be decimated in rural areas. It will be reduced to east Montreal and a few seats in csome regions.

Good quote of Duceppe from the article:

"We cannot confuse our objective and our strategy. The objective is sovereignty. But if I said tomorrow morning that we are launching a petition to convince the new National Assembly to launch a referendum on sovereignty, it wouldn't be the best of strategies," Mr. Duceppe said.

[M.Dancer]

I certainly hope the Bloc withers.....

[Michael Bluth]

It's amazing how quickly things change in politics.

Two months ago pundits were saying that the Conservatives would be lucky to hold the seats they have in Quebec. Now it looks like they could add upwards of 15 to 20 which puts them within striking distance of a majority.

Maybe this is the election Quebec returns its history of plaing kingmaker for a majority in Ottawa.

Is "holidng him by the gonads" really an appropriate use of language in a national newspaper article?

[jdobbin]

Landry would be a good federal politician, and he'd drive Harper & Dion crazy.

I don't think the BQ is in the same position as the PQ. Whatever happens to the PQ, the BQ will not lose its position as the "defender of Quebec's interests" in Ottawa. In fact, that will become the main debating point of the next federal election in Quebec. Is it better to have an MP on the government side or in the BQ?

If Harper manages to make the Cosnervatives flexible and "autonomous-friendly" (IOW, if MPs can feel comfortable defending Quebec's interests while sitting as Conservatives), then Harper will get a broad sweep and the BQ will be decimated in rural areas. It will be reduced to east Montreal and a few seats in csome regions.

CP is running a similar story.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/070329/...nty_scuttlebutt

One Montreal La Presse political columnist wrote Thursday that the new Bloc leader, if Duceppe did make the jump, could be none other than former Quebec premier Bernard Landry.

The disenchantment within the PQ stems from the party's third-place finish in Monday's election when it lost 10 seats to the Action democratique du Quebec and won only 36 of the province's 125 ridings.

"The party must redefine itself, its strategy," Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, a political commentator who was a longtime PQ member of the legislature, said in an interview.

The one problem: If an election is coming in the next 10 to 14 days, can any of this take place?