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[Delenda]

REX MURPHY: Separatism by another name
REX MURPHY

From Saturday's Globe and Mail


All the observers agree: The Quebec election was a landmark vote. It changed the dynamics of the province. It broke down the pattern of a generation. It sidelined the great contest between federalists and separatists in that province.

And most of all, they agree that the outstanding result for Mario Dumont and his Action Démocratique du Québec, which catapulted the party to second place and him to Opposition leader, was great news for Stephen Harper and for Canada.

After all, the separatists had their worst result since 1970. The PQ may have been mortally injured. Separatists, and the idea they have championed, have aged. Both are now enfeebled and maybe irrelevant.

Mr. Harper caught this euphoric tone when he noted that “two-thirds of Quebeckers voted against having another referendum.” Which is a very exhilarating thing to say, but two-thirds of Quebeckers did no such thing.


It is true that two-thirds voted for parties other than the PQ. But the “not holding a referendum” aspect of the other two parties was but one item on the menu of reasons voters chose when they gave their support to Mr. Dumont or Jean Charest.

Totalling the numbers of people who did not vote for a certain party, and taking that aggregate as the measure of the rejection of a single issue in a multiparty, multi-issue election is dishonest. In our system, it's worth clarifying, we count the votes for parties. Last example: In the most recent federal election, 95 per cent of Canadians did not vote against the Green Party. Five per cent voted for it.

But back to Mr. Dumont. It's true he is not, now, a separatist. He was in 1995, when he voted Yes in that year's referendum. And it is also true he has no interest in promoting or pushing for a referendum on separation from Canada. Mainly, however, I suspect not because he feels a chill at the idea of an independent Quebec, but because a referendum as a tactical instrument for that glorious result is increasingly seen as useless.

Mr. Dumont is not a sovereigntist. He is — clumsy word ahead — an autonomist. He wants more autonomy for Quebec. Canada is autonomous. The provinces and territories within it, by definition, are not. And if someone can point the difference between an autonomous Quebec and an independent Quebec, please alert the dictionary-makers.

The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary defines autonomy as “possessed of autonomy, self-governing, independent.” Now, self-government or independence has been the explicit goal of the separatists as long as they have been separatists.

Why is the embrace of Quebec's autonomy as a goal more welcome by the forces of Canadian federalism than the embrace of its ideal synonym?

Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.

Furthermore, we have had within the past year the passage in our federal Parliament of a resolution that confirms the nationhood of the Québécois. We have also had the extension to Quebec of the right or competence to attend international gatherings, such as UNESCO.

So Quebeckers are a nation. Quebec qua Quebec may attend international conferences. And on the night of the most historic Quebec election in a generation, the star performer is the leader of a party who wants more autonomy for Quebec.

I suggest the reason Mr. Dumont is so obliging in dismissing a referendum from his political arsenal is that he sees it has become a useless ritual toward the advancement of goals ever so conveniently being achieved without one.

After all, if the federal Parliament declares by resolution that “the Québécois form a nation,” if its “powers” are ever more exercised separately from any central mandate, if Quebec has an international presence, and if the goal of the only dynamic party in the province of Quebec right now is to expand the latitudes of its already generously established autonomy — why chatter about some damn referendum? This boat sails better without that dropped anchor.

Quebec is and has been quietly disengaging itself, with the co-operation in particular of Mr. Harper's government, from its provincial status within the Confederation. It is edging toward an equivalent status with the rest of the country seen as a whole.

As for the ADQ's victory this week marking a breach from the independence project, read these portions of the party's platform. It goes . . . “our first allegiance, our passion and our loyalty are toward Quebec. It refers to Canadians outside Quebec as “privileged partners” not fellow citizens, speaks of relations with Ottawa as “bilateral and equal” and finally proposes the official name for what we now know as a province as the “Autonomist State of Quebec.” The rise of the ADQ is not a funeral for separatism. It is a refashioning of the quest, a more beguiling referendum-free path to that fractious future.

[Delenda]

Harper, Dumont share desire to gut federal government
JOAN BRYDEN, Canadian Press

Published: Sunday, April 01, 2007

OTTAWA -- Stephen Harper and Mario Dumont are undoubted soulmates when it comes to decentralizing Canada's federation.

But with Dumont now on the ascendant in Quebec, will the two join forces to reduce the federal government to little more than a glorified automated banking machine?

The jury is still out on that question.

Between them, the prime minister and Quebec's new official opposition leader have certainly left the impression in the past that they'd love nothing more than to strip the federal government down to the bare essentials, ceding powers wholesale to the provinces.

As unity critic in 1995 for the now-defunct Reform party, Harper proposed 20 measures to "modernize and decentralize Canada" and to "assert the autonomy of the provinces." He wanted to transfer federal powers in nine areas - including natural resources, social services, language, culture and manpower training - exclusively to the provinces and forbid any new federal spending in areas of provincial jurisdiction.

He also proposed giving provincial governments the power to appoint Supreme Court judges, Bank of Canada board members and lieutenant-governors.

During a hiatus from politics in 2001, Harper exhibited outright antipathy toward federal authority, famously co-authoring a letter to Alberta's then-premier, Ralph Klein. In it, he argued it was essential to "build firewalls around Alberta to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction."

For his part, Dumont co-founded the Action democratique du Quebec with Jean Allaire, author of a radical 1991 report that called on Ottawa to hand over 22 areas of jurisdiction to the provinces. Under Allaire's prescription, the feds would be left with sole jurisdiction over just five areas - defence, tariffs, currency, the national debt and equalization - and they'd have to share responsibility with the provinces in areas such as foreign policy and the post office.

But while their past musings were unequivocal, it's not clear whether either leader is paying much more than lip service to decentralization these days.

During the recent Quebec election campaign, Dumont's platform called for a provincial constitution recognizing the "autonomous state of Quebec" within Canada. But he was ambiguous about what exactly that would mean. He eschewed the Allaire report's approach of demanding a "grocery list" of federal powers that could be wielded as a "knife to the throat" of English Canada. Nevertheless, he said "the basic philosophy (of the ADQ) is the same."

Dumont also lavishly praised last week's federal budget, in which Harper recommitted himself to ensuring the federal government doesn't make unwanted incursions into provincial jurisdiction, even offering to "formalize" limits on the federal spending power.

Yet, the budget contained $39.4 billion over seven years in additional cash transfers to the provinces, all of it in areas of provincial jurisdiction like health care and post-secondary education, much of it conditional on provinces meeting minimum federal standards for accountability. And the limitation on the federal spending power that Harper offered to formalize is no different from that negotiated with the provinces by former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien, whom Harper and Dumont used to denounce as a domineering centralist.

Constitutional expert Michael Behiels predicts that neither man is going to be in a hurry to clarify where he stands.

"(Harper's) going to be very, very cagey. He's not going to play his cards on this question of devolution until he has a majority."

Moreover, the University of Ottawa historian thinks Harper is unlikely to pursue the matter until Dumont, who will play a pivotal role in determining the fate of Quebec's new minority Liberal government, is actually in the driver's seat.

Even then, Behiels doubts Harper would ever be able to meet the ADQ demands, at least as spelled out in the Allaire report, without setting off a furor in the rest of the country and risking his own political demise.

"The alarm bells would go off, especially in Ontario," Behiels says.

"People would say, 'Wow, this really is the hidden agenda . . . which is the total kind of gutting of the national state, reducing it to really a shell or a banker for asymmetrical federalism, with every province going its own way."

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion contends that Harper hasn't changed his views on radical decentralization and has only refrained from acting on them so far because he doesn't have a majority.

"I think the prime minister did not change. What he wrote some years ago, he still believes in it," Dion said in a recent interview.

But even if Harper remains true to his past views on the subject, Patrick Monahan, dean of Osgoode Hall law school, doubts that Dumont does. He suggests Dumont's talk of autonomy is strictly a "nod" to old-style Quebec politics, allowing him "to parade appropriate nationalist credentials."

But should Dumont become premier, Monahan predicts he would forget decentralization, focusing instead on his centrepiece promise to modernize the Quebec economy and dramatically scale back the role of the state.

"Yes, Dumont was big on the Allaire report. But that was a different era, that was about big government, we've gotta have more Quebec programs, we've gotta have more powers," Monahan says.

"Now, what Dumont is talking about is getting the state out of doing things."

With Quebec consumed by that internal debate, Monahan predicts the entire country will benefit by not having to endure another round of sterile wrangling over the division of powers.

"It's a huge step forward for Canada, just because the nature of the debate is going to change and we're going to finally get beyond the ghosts of (failed constitutional accords) Meech Lake and Charlottetown."





© Canadian Press 2007

[Delenda]

Quebec results good for Canada

Shift in power may lead to interesting political times across the nation
Lorne Gunter, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Sunday, April 01, 2007

Friday afternoon, the co-hosts of a weekly political digest show on a Montreal radio station called to ask me what Albertans thought of the results of Monday's Quebec election.

I couldn't say what Albertans' reaction was, but this Albertan's thought was: It's too early to tell, but things look interesting and positive.

The National Assembly is now split roughly into thirds. The Liberals have 48 seats, a loss of 28 from 2003. The ADQ (which stands for Action democratique du Quebec) have 41, up from four last time. And the Parti Quebecois have 36, down 9.

The popular vote is even more closely split: 33 per cent for the Liberals, 31 per cent for the ADQ and 28 per cent for the PQ. Since no party has clear control, and there are no natural alliances between any two parties, it will take months for the dynamics of power to short themselves out.

Jean Charest, the Liberal leader and premier, is said to be unlikely to stick around until the next vote, even if, as is customary in minority legislatures, that vote comes in less than two years.

For a number of reasons, I doubt these rumours. Just six months ago, Charest and the Liberals were completely written off. They had trailed the PQ in every poll taken in the previous four years. Yet they managed to retain power, albeit in a minority.

As a result, Charest exceeded expectations, which is good for a politician's career, even in defeat.

Yes, there was a time six weeks ago when Charest's Liberals looked as if they might eke out a majority, and that lead evaporated. By that standard, the premier failed. But that will not be held against him as much as he will be given credit for avoiding an anticipated annihilation.

But the biggest reason I suspect Charest will stay is that he has nowhere else to go. Except for four years after graduation from university -- during which time he was an articling student and lawyer -- Charest has been a politician all his grown life. Like Joe Clark, he knows how to do nothing else. He will be reluctant to retire and will resist being expelled.

Thus, he will probably be given the chance to lead his party into a third election if he wants to, although without the enthusiastic support of much of his membership. Let's face it, Jean Charest may be the dullest, most risk-averse politician in Canada today.

Andre Boisclair, the separatists' boss, is already under intense pressure from his party to leave, although for the moment he is fighting these moves.

Unlike Charest, who can claim some consolation in Monday's results, Boisclair failed spectacularly.

In just 17 short months since being selected to lead his party, Boisclair managed to fritter away a lead of more than 20 points in the polls. He was seen by voters as indecisive, frivolous, indolent and intellectually outmatched.

At least until the Liberals and PQ settle their leadership questions, just what is going on in Quebec will remain unclear.

Yet having said that, there are some trends that can already be divined from Monday's results.

Separatism, while not dead, is ailing. The PQ's 28 per cent of the vote is nearly its lowest support since the early 1970s, before Rene Levesque came to power for the first time.

Boisclair's musings since Monday that the PQ may have to drop its commitment to hold a third referendum on independence if it ever hopes to return to power is another indication of the state of separatist desperation. Without a referendum as its central plank, the PQ loses its raison d'etre and becomes just another social democratic party.

The combined showing of the Liberals and ADQ would seem to indicate that Quebec is also more pro-business and pro-Canada than at any time in the past three decades. Charest is not as big a fan of big government as previous Liberal leaders, such as Robert Bourassa. And Mario Dumont, the ADQ leader, is right-of-centre, at least by Quebec standards. (Even Boisclair has a masters of public administration from Harvard, and can hardly be called a flaming lefty.)

To say Quebec is more pro-Canada, though, is not to say it is exactly federalist. Dumont is a fervent believer in provincial rights and Quebec autonomy. He is not a separatist but (and this is good news for Albertans) neither is he a centralist.

A protege of Jean Allaire, Dumont, a former president of the Quebec Young Liberals, was very pleased with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's declaration that the Quebecois should be considered a nation within a united Canada, since that is very close to Dumont's own ideal. Provinces, Quebec among them, should remain in Confederation for economic and political ends, but should be free otherwise to choose their own paths and laws.

Dumont also picked up votes from Quebecers tired of the multicultural excesses of recent years in which the Quebec mainstream had been told to defer its traditions to those of new minorities.

Although Monday's election was inconclusive, it could presage some interesting times for Quebec and Canada.

lgunter@shaw.ca




© The Edmonton Journal 2007

[TheEggman]

Quelqu'un sait si c'est possible d'avoir l'adresse courriel à Rex Murphy ?

[Delenda]

Cork that champagne
Although the Liberals won, they should not be celebrating their shaky victory

DON MACPHERSON, The Gazette

Published: Saturday, April 07, 2007

The political career of Jean Charest is evidence that baseball pitcher Lefty Gomez was right when he said it's better to be lucky than good.

How good a politician Charest has been is debatable. He's the first Quebec premier in nearly 40 years to lose a parliamentary majority after only one term.

But there's no question his career has been characterized by an extraordinary run of luck, including some narrow escapes from defeat - and in one case, from victory.

In 1993, Charest fell just short of a spectacular come-from-behind victory against Kim Campbell for the Progressive Conservative leadership, losing by fewer than 200 of the more than 3,400 votes cast by convention delegates.

He did just well enough to begin to establish his reputation as a campaigner, but not so well as to have to take the leader's responsibility for the party's being all but wiped out in the ensuing election.

Ten years later, U.S. generals delayed their capture of Baghdad just long enough so Quebecers were not distracted from the provincial election leaders' debate.

Then, in the debate, Charest gambled and won not once but twice. In his opening statement, he raised his own controversial proposal to allow municipal demergers, which so surprised Bernard Landry and Mario Dumont that neither mentioned the issue again. And late in the debate, he sprang an unverified, fragmentary report of a comment by Jacques Parizeau on an unaware Landry, putting the Parti Quebecois leader on the defensive for days afterward.

As a result, Charest was the clear winner of the debate, the turning point in the campaign. The Liberals won that election with only 32 per cent of the eligible votes, fewer votes than they had received in losing the previous one.

Finally, in the March 26 election, the weakness of PQ leader Andre Boisclair caused the overwhelming majority of voters dissatisfied with Charest's government to split between the PQ and Dumont's Action democratique du Quebec. As a result, the Liberals were able to slip between them to a minority government, despite otherwise having arguably their worst overall election results since confederation.

But while this narrowest of "victories" has kept Charest's career alive, it might turn out to be not so lucky for his party. In fact, it might be the worst thing that could have happened to it.

The Liberal vote is shrinking, now in absolute numbers as well as relative to the available vote. On March 26, only 23 per cent of registered voters cast their ballots for Liberal candidates. It was the fifth consecutive election in which the Liberals' share of the eligible vote declined.

Now the provincial Liberal Party as well as the federal one has been relegated to third-party status in French Quebec, which is where elections are usually decided. The March 26 election, in which non-francophones kept the Liberals in power, was an exception, and the Liberals shouldn't count on its repetition.

In the two weeks since the election, however, there has been little public discussion by Liberals of what their party needs to do to rebuild. While the newspapers and airwaves have been filled with advice from prominent Pequistes to their party, Liberals seem to have few ideas for their own. And yet the Liberals lost more seats and votes on March 26 than the PQ did.

This is partly due to the different cultures of the two parties; it's the Liberals' nature to trust the judgment of their party establishment.

But this is especially true when the Liberals are in power. This was strikingly illustrated last year when the party's general council all but unanimously rallied around Charest over his politically disastrous decision to sell part of Mont Orford provincial park.

It's usually when parties are in opposition that they submit to painful but necessary self-examination. One reason the PQ lost on March 26 is that it was too complacent following its defeat in 2003.

Instead of learning from the PQ's example, however, Liberals appear to have agreed when Charest said after the election that all that matters is that he's still premier.

But a party in decline that wins an election while being rejected by two-thirds of the voters can't afford such smugness. Even Jean Charest's luck has to run out some time.

dmacpher@thegazette.canwest.com




© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007

[michou]

Quelqu'un sait si c'est possible d'avoir l'adresse courriel à Rex Murphy ?

Tu la trouveras sur CBC.ca (you know, that Canadian Broadcasting Company ? )