With only 11 of Quebec's 75 seats in the House of Commons and their current support here hovering around 20 per cent, you'd think the Conservative minority government would be going out of its way to be nice to this province. Or at least to avoid offending it unnecessarily.
But this being a government led by Stephen Harper, you'd be wrong.
Actually, federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice didn't so much offend Quebecers as mystify them this week when he attacked the Charest government's new motor-vehicle emission standards as "folly."
Relations between the two governments have deteriorated since Premier Jean Charest criticized the Harper government's environmental policies at the recent summit in Copenhagen and then in a joint appearance with Harper in Rivière-du-Loup.
Prentice's attack, delivered in his hometown of Calgary, might have pleased Albertans resentful over Charest's ingratitude in complaining about the environmental impact of their province's tarsands development while sharing in its economic and financial benefits.
And for all the self-righteousness it derives from having an abundance of clean, renewable, hydroelectric energy, Quebec's environmental record is hardly spotless.
Charest's latest foreign trip, to India, has been marred by criticism of this province for marketing its potentially hazardous asbestos to Third-World countries and thereby exposing workers there to health risks.
And this week, his government quietly announced that the province's greenhouse-gas emissions actually increased from 2006 to 2007 under the Liberals, putting in doubt Quebec's ability to meet the objectives in the Kyoto accord that it supports.
But Prentice's attack wildly missed the mark. As environmentalists as well as politicians from this province were quick to point out, it misrepresented the Quebec standards and ignored Ottawa's announced intention of adopting the same ones.
Coincidentally, Prentice delivered his attack on Monday, the same day that researchers for the Liberal opposition dug up several past anti-French positions taken by a new Conservative senator.
Bob Runciman is one of five "outstanding Canadians" whose appointments to the Senate were announced by Harper last Friday.
The 67-year-old Runciman is well-known in Ontario provincial politics. At the time of his appointment as a Senator, he was house leader of the Conservative opposition in the provincial parliament and a former cabinet minister and two-time interim leader of his party. During his nearly 30 years at Queen's Park, he had acquired the nickname "Mad Dog."
And, as the federal Liberals subsequently revealed, he had been an outspoken opponent of official bilingualism at the federal level and French-language services at the provincial one.
Not only had Runciman made several anti-French statements over a seven-year period from 1986 to 1993, he had also been a supporter in the late 1980s of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada (APEC).
In an incident shown repeatedly on Quebec television, APEC members wiped their feet on a Quebec flag in a 1989 protest in Runciman's home town of Brockville.
And APEC was behind a movement in 1990 to get Ontario municipalities, notably Sault Ste. Marie, to adopt resolutions declaring themselves officially English-only.
Both actions, which occurred during the demise of the Meech Lake constitutional accord recognizing Quebec as a "distinct society," increased linguistic tensions and helped revive the Quebec sovereignty movement.
Harper's spokesman responded that the prime minister shows his support for official bilingualism by speaking French in all his speeches and starting his news conferences in the language. But actions speak louder than words.