On May 2, Canada went to the polls. Quebec went wholeheartedly New Democratic Party. The rest of the country voted into power a majority Conservative government.
Like people everywhere, Quebecers voted the way they did because they believed it served their interests.
But there is inevitably a danger in staying on the fringes of power, and now that risk seems to be slowly taking shape.
Nearly four months after Quebec helped the NDP to a record number of seats in Parliament - 103 - this province does not seem to be enjoying any favours from the Harper government. Instead: It looks like the Champlain Bridge, a feder-al responsibility, might be left to Quebec and Montreal to patch together for as long as they can.
The Harper government has insisted in imposing its law-and-order agenda, including on Quebec, despite the fact that Quebec favours a rehabilitative approach to fighting crime.
There will be no special concessions to Canada's demographically diminished French Fact when the House of Commons seats are redistributed this fall to reflect the country's current population.
And, in the face of strenuous objections from Quebec, Ottawa went ahead last week and agreed to sign a loan guarantee to help develop the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project in Labrador.
Is this the price the province will pay for having played no part in electing that majority government?
Quebecers, who know from the patronagestrewn days of Maurice Duplessis the importance of voting du bon bord, took their chances in May's federal election.
They swung in a bloc to the NDP, the social democrat soulmate of many in this province, and reduced the number of Conservative seats in Quebec to five from 11. They gave Harper's party only 16.5 per cent of the vote.
It was the second campaign in a row in which the Conservative vote had fallen in Quebec.
It must have looked to the Conservatives on May 2 as though Quebecers are not going to warm up to their party or its platform for the foreseeable future - so why should they bother to play to Quebec interests?
Why indeed? This is a troubling question for Quebec, whose relegation to irrelevancy in the corridors of federal power looks like a distinct possibility. It was a reality lost on no one that the Conservatives did not need Quebec, its seats or its voters to form a majority government on May 2.
And not only did Quebec not vote on the winning side, it didn't vote for a separatist opposition either.
Quebecers repudiated the Bloc Québécois as much as they did the Liberals and the Conservatives.
With the shock diminishment of the Bloc, Quebecers can no longer claim to be ready to wield a "knife to the throat" of confederation. They voted for a federalist party.
By choosing to put their fate in the hands of the NDP, Quebecers have left themselves vulnerable to being ignored by the country's federal powers, in matters large and small.
For example, when Premier Jean Charest proposed that Quebec set up its own gun registry after Ottawa announced it will shut down the federal registry, he was told by the Conservatives that if he went ahead he would get no help from Ottawa. No money, no data, nothing.
Is it paranoid to think that Ottawa's refusal to step forward and say what it plans to do about the Champlain Bridge is a result of Quebec's waning political influence? Quite possibly.
But as time drags on and Ottawa does nothing toward replacing or repairing the bridge - the busiest in Canada - relations between Quebec and the federal government can only suffer. This is not a good turn of events.
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