NDP leader Jack Layton waves to supporters during a campaign stop in Toronto. Layton made history Monday by leading his party to its first official Opposition status.Photograph by: Mike Cassese, ReutersMONTREAL — It's not often we see as much history made as in Monday's federal election.
And much of it was made here in Quebec.
Nationally, Stephen Harper's Conservative party has won a majority. The New Democratic Party will form the official opposition, thanks to its breakthrough in this province. The Liberals, with their lowest seat total since Confederation, have been relegated to a third party. and the Green party has elected a member of Parliament.
For all four parties, these are historic developments.
The Bloc Quebecois failed to obtain a majority of this province's seats for the first time in the seven federal elections it now has contested.
Only once before, in 1965, did a party led by an English-Canadian win more seats in Quebec than a major party led by a French-speaking native son. On Monday, all three major federalist parties did it. Even if Gilles Duceppe hadn't announced his resignation on Monday night, there was no party left for him to lead.
But we should not be too hasty in concluding from a single federal election that Quebec has ended its self-imposed political isolation from the rest of the country.
If it has opted back into Canada, it has done so only grudgingly, and maybe only temporarily.
In switching from the Bloc to the New Democrats, it has exchanged representation in one opposition party for another — from one that demands everything to another that promises everything.
It remains suspicious of federal power, and has again refused to participate in the government of Canada.
Such participation would require accepting both responsibility for the government of the country and the need for compromise with its other regions.
For Quebec, it is preferable to have no power at all than to be held responsible for its exercise, and to have to share it.
And with the possibility of an NDP-Liberal governing alliance removed, this province will remain comfortably in the opposition in New Democratic caucus dominated by Quebec MPs.
With the notable exception of Thomas Mulcair, most are cardboard-cut-out stand-ins, absentee campaigners, some unable to speak the language of their constituents, swept into office to their own astonishment and possibly terror in place of more experienced and qualified incumbents.
"The province of Quebec has no opinions, it has only sentiments," said Sir Wilfrid Laurier at the turn of the last century.
Now it has mood swings, like an adolescent with ADHD. Only four years after impulsively swinging to the right with Action democratique du Quebec in the 2007 provincial election, it has swung just as hard to the left with the New Democrats.
(One difference is that while the ADQ caucus was often likened to daycare, the NDP's Quebec caucus will have to be called Mul-care.)
With the Conservatives determined to end public political funding, the Liberals will feel pressure to seek a unite-the-left merger with the NDP.
But it took Harper a decade to unite the right. In the meantime, we shall see whether this province's "orange crush" on the New Democrats lasts longer than its infatuation with the ADQ.
It is the fear of commitment and responsibility expressed again in Monday's election results, even more than the obliteration of the Bloc, that should worry sovereignists.
So should the constant yearning for a third option, something else, something different, something new, such as Layton's NDP — or maybe Francois Legault's future provincial party.
And after what happened to Duceppe in Monday's federal election, it was not beyond the realm of imagination that something similar could also happen to Pauline Marois of the Parti Quebecois in the next provincial one.
dmacpherson LTL montrealgazette.com