Post Mortem on Quebec Election

With the Quebec election results decided, now is time to look at what happened and the impact it will have. What happened was truly historic and could be a political re-alignment in Quebec. On the whole, the results were generally what I was hoping for. While my preference would have been a Liberal majority, if he had to choose which order I wanted the parties to finish in, my choice would have been Liberals first, ADQ as official opposition, and the PQ in third. One thing is certain about last night's results is another referendum won't being happening anytime soon, which is a good thing for Canada as a whole.

Liberal Party of Quebec

Certainly their failure to win a majority must be a huge disappointment and the fact it initially appeared Charest had lost his own seat was great cause for concern. In the end Charest did though hold onto his seat, but his minority government definitely will have some people calling for his ouster. I believe he should stay on as leader for now since a minority government can fall at any time and without a permanent leader in place, this can only mean bad news for the party. If he decides not to stay on as leader, he should resign when the summer recess is called and have the leadership convention before the National Assembly returns for the Fall sitting this way they will have a leader in place for the next election. I think he did a reasonably good job, but clearly many outside of Montreal felt their interests were being ignored and therefore he needs to do more to reach out to these people, so the Quebec Liberals can win a majority next time around.

Action Democratique du Quebec

If there was any winner last night, it was Mario Dumont since he took his party from a fringe party to official opposition and came very close to winning the election. Not only did he make a breakthrough in Quebec City as most expected, he even won in some of the outerlying suburbs of Montreal, which I don't think anyone expected to see happen. Even though I agree with his fiscal policies and believe Quebec needs a real shake up to move into the 21st century on economic policies, I could not vote for his party in good conscience for two reasons:
1. With the party at the beginning of the election just trying to gain official party status, there were few candidates capable of being cabinet ministers. Had he won, he would have faced the same scenario as Bob Rae did in 1990 in Ontario, which is have a caucus full of people not expecting to win their seats and unprepared for cabinet. Next time around, the party will likely attract stronger candidates as they now have the potential to form the next government.
2. The party's talk about reasonable accomodation with immigrants and the fact some members made xenophobic remarks and the party was willing to appeal to xenophobia is something I cannot accept. This may have greatly helped the party, but that still doesn't make it morally right. A true leader would stand up to xenophobia and try to stamp out rather than play to people's fears.

Still this at least might mean a slightly more conservative government, which although not a conservative, I do believe that from time to time, places need a shake-up when they drift too far to the left as was the case in Britain before Margaret Thatcher and Ontario before Mike Harris. Neither would be good leaders for Britain or Ontario today, but they were both the right ones for the time. Right now Quebec is in a simliar situation as those places were back then.

Parti Quebecois

I am obviously very pleased the PQ came in third. Rather than making the election about important issues such as taxes, economy, health care, environment, and education, the PQ made having another referendum the central issue and although many Quebecers may still vote Yes in another referendum, clearly having another one is not a top priority. Andre Boisclair made this his central theme and he lost big time and this is a good thing for all of Canada and all federalists. Although he hasn't resigned as leader yet, I highly doubt he will stick around for the next election

Federal Implications

For the Conservatives, on the whole this was good news since the PQ came in third and the ADQ who are ideologically closest to Harper made a huge breakthrough. If Harper could win a third of the seats in Quebec (that is the share the ADQ got), this would put him very close to a majority, so obviously he would be pleased with the results. Still one should not assume all ADQ votes will go Conservative. The BQ got 14 points higher than the PQ while the Quebec Liberals got 12 points higher than the federal Liberals, so it is probably not unreasonable to say many ADQ voters will go Bloc Quebecois federally and likewise many provincial Liberals will go Conservative federally, so one must be careful about drawing conclusions on how it will affect things federally.

For the Liberals, it was both good and bad news. The bad news is Dion won't be able to use his strength in terms of fighting separtism, which he would have been able to do had the PQ won. The good news is Dion is a strong federalists and last night was a clear victory for federalism. In addition the fact Harper's open federalism failed to deliver Charest a majority may make some Canadians wonder if the amount of pandering to Quebec was worth it.

For the Bloc Quebecois, this is definitely bad news as if they have similiar results to the PQ it could be serious trouble for them. The only good thing for them is Gilles Duceppe is a more popular leader than Andrew Boisclair, but thats about it.

As for an election, certainly Harper will try to do everything he can to trigger one, while trying to make sure the opposition takes the blame for his government falling, since if he calls one without falling on a confidence motion, he will likely get punished at the polls. By the same token, the Bloc Quebecois is probably not going to be keen about going to the polls soon, so really too early to tell.