Kelly McParland - Let’s say Thomas Mulcair wins the NDP leadership this weekend.
I have no idea if he will, but he seems to be favoured, and his opponents even rolled out Ed Broadbent in a spoiler operation to try and stop him. So, just for the sake of argument, let’s say he pulls it off.
Let’s also pretend that the Parti Quebecois isn’t really dead after all, as everyone was suggesting a couple of months back. All of a sudden Pauline Marois is no longer yesterday’s dinner, and a Léger Marketing poll shows the PQ is back in first place among voters at 33%, with the Liberals at 28% and the Coalition Avenir Québec at 24%. No one is pretending things will stay this way: For most of last year the CAQ was the darling of the province and a lock to form the next government; now it’s in third spot and everyone is trying to remember the name of that guy who invented it … older guy, looks a little like Peter Kent… oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Given the speed with which Quebecers change their mind, by lunchtime the Liberals could have a commanding lead again.
But let’s just say the PQ stays semi-popular and wins the next election. First thing it does is start making demands on Ottawa for more money, more power, more protection for the French language, a bigger slice of the equalization pie. (Ontario is up to 44% of Quebec’s equalization take, which you know will have hackles rising in Quebec City). The PQ does all it can to whip up sovereigntist fervor, reminding everyone in Canada how badly it’s been treated lo these many centuries. It is cheered on by the remnants of the Bloc Quebecois, which also seems to be regaining some of the ground it lost in May’s federal election. Relations with Ottawa grow worse.
The Tories stand their ground against the separatists. But, wait a minute … what do we have here? The official opposition is in the hands of the NDP, now headed by a fiery, ambitious, take-no-prisoners Quebec MP, keen to fend off the Bloc revival and wedded to a party platform that replicates many of the separatists’ core demands. The PQ and the BQ demand the primacy of French language laws be extended to industries that come under federal regulation — banking, telecommunications, transportation — and the NDP agrees. Ottawa, says Mulcair, must recognize and enforce Quebecers’ right to work in French, deal with their employer in French and have their job guaranteed if they demand those rights be respected. Forget about two official languages — this is Quebec, not Canada, and Bill 101 has priority.
Yes, of course, says Mulcair. “It’s taken for granted,” he said in October. “We’re trying to extend [Bill 101 rights] to hundreds of thousands of workers who work for enterprises that are covered under the Canadian labour code.”
Next, Marois declares that if Quebec doesn’t get what it wants, it will hold another referendum, choose the question itself, write up the wording however it sees fit, and leave the country if it wins by just one vote over 50%. And Muclair agrees. The NDP’s policy, adopted in 2005, agrees that Quebecers can separate on the barest of majorities, no matter how distorted or manipulative the question might be, and Canada has no say in the matter. It has reaffirmed this stand many times since.
So Canada could find itself with a separatist Quebec government making the usual vexatious demands, supported in Ottawa by an official opposition that’s overwhelmingly beholden to its Quebec support and under pressure to match the separatists, demand for demand. It has happened before, when the Bloc placed second in the 1993 vote, but the Bloc never pretended to be anything but a regional separatist party with no interest outside its borders. The NDP, on the other hand, professes to be federalist in nature and aims to form the government of Canada.
If the scenario arises — and it’s not a longshot — how will Mulcair handle it? If he wavers even slightly in parroting the Quebec line, the Bloc will let every voter in the province know about it in a nanosecond, using it as an opportunity to undermine support in NDP-held ridings. Mulcair will have every reason not to let that happen, raising the spectre of a Bloc-NDP competition for the hearts of sovereigntists.
Will the rest of the NDP be comfortable with that? A historically federalist party doing all it can to fire up nationalist feelings in Quebec? What about its seats in the rest of the country: would the voters in the NDP’s other 44 ridings really feel comfortable with a party that’s stoking the fires of division between Quebec and the rest of Canada?
Maybe it will never happen. Maybe Mulcair will find some way to hold onto the party’s Quebec base, oppose the separatists and promote federalism, while remaining within the confines of the party’s nationalism-friendly Quebec policies. And maybe he’ll do so while retaining the confidence of Quebec voters, and the support of Canadians in seven other provinces where the NDP holds seats, and who want no truck with separatists in any form.
Maybe. As Chris Selley showed in his profile of Mulcair on Saturday, he has long demonstrated an ability to twist and turn with the prevailing winds. If I was an NDP supporter, though, I’d feel extremely uncomfortable about the future.
National Post