MONTREAL—My neighbourhood drugstore was dealing with an acute stamp shortage last week. It had not run out of supplies altogether but some customers did not want to buy the few stamps it still had on offer. When presented with the Diamond Jubilee issue, many opted to take their shopping to a better-supplied counter.
For the record, the drugstore is located in a staunchly federalist section of Outremont.
At about the same time, the Quebec allotment of Jubilee medals was landing on Premier Jean Charest’s doorstep. It never made it to his desk. Instead the Ottawa package was swiftly redirected to the lieutenant-governor for handling.
In Quebec federalist quarters, including the provincial government, the Conservative monarchist rebranding of the country is seen as an ill-advised return to Canada’s colonial past.
Both of the above are mere vignettes but they illustrate in a small way the increasingly large disconnect between Stephen Harper’s government and Quebec’s federalist constituency.
Liberal MP Justin Trudeau’s statement that he would support an independent Quebec rather than live in a Canada where equality rights no longer had their place was only the latest manifestation of that malaise.
(As an aside: Those who presume that his father Pierre Trudeau would have disagreed have forgotten that he devoted his career to turning Canada into a Charter society.)
In a subsequent interview, an unrepentant Trudeau went a step further. “The separatist option is not the bogeyman it used to be. You ask me what the bogeyman is? It’s the one sitting in our prime minister’s chair right now,” Trudeau told the CBC.
Trudeau is not the first front-line Quebec federalist to speak out in strikingly stark terms against Harper’s government.
Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier fired an initial volley last fall when he complained that he did not recognize the Canada he knew in the Conservative approach to law and order.
Since then, Peter White, a former Tory chief of staff, has penned a scathing open letter that argued Harper is presiding over the “de-Canadianization” of Quebec.
As the issues on which Quebec and Ottawa don’t even seem to be able to agree to disagree continued to multiply earlier this month, Premier Charest waded in: “In a democracy, you can’t just say, ‘I won, you lost, I’m going to do what I want,’ ” he said.
If this were a fairy tale, Harper would be the character who keeps poking a sleeping dragon with a tin sword. Unlike in a fairy tale, there is no guaranteed happy ending to this story — not for Canada but also not for the Conservatives themselves.
The deteriorating Ottawa-Quebec climate could be the gift of life to both the Parti Québécois and the federal Liberals.
Quebecers are never more likely to install sovereignists in power than when they feel collectively threatened and, on that score, most don’t take their cues from self-interested sovereignists but rather from the body language of federalists.
That body language has not exhibited as much discomfort with the direction Canada is taking since the 1990 Meech Lake constitutional crisis.
The virtual disappearance of the Bloc Québécois and the less-than-stellar performance of the NDP is increasing Quebec’s sense of vulnerability.
These days, Quebecers are weekly treated to the sight of their new NDP MPs making fools of themselves in Parliament. The latest installment featured Manicouagan MP Jonathan Genest-Jourdain combing his hair before indulging in a nap in his House of Commons seat.
Because they were on the front line of the last two referendums, the Liberals make up the party most associated with the unity issue.
Precious few Conservative MPs have pictures of themselves campaigning for Canada in Quebec in 1995 in their scrapbooks. The ranks of those then missing in action include the current prime minister.
To put it in the partisan terms that the Harperites understand so well: Nothing is more likely to bring voters back to the Liberal fold — starting with Quebec federalists — than a spike in the temperature on the unity front.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Chantal Hebert
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