Quebecers between a rock and a hard place

Faced with a corrupt federalist party, should voters suck it up and keep the country together or vote in the PQ?

Today two very smart columnists have involved themselves in the kind of punditary back and forth that is political catnip to us here at the Deep Dive.

The Toronto Star’s Chantal Hebert got the ball rolling with a column outlining the perennial problem Quebecers face when they go to the polls. Provincial politics is a two-horse race between the federalist Liberals and the separatist Parti Quebecois. The federalists have a long history of corruption in the province, and the PQ have positioned themselves as reformers, which means “Quebecers are routinely called upon to balance their natural desire to punish their governments for their failings with the consequences of (voting for a separatist party).” With Liberal Premier Jean Charest’s popularity at an all-time low thanks to several corruption allegations, at the next election Quebecers will be “choosing between a fatigued and increasingly discredited federalist party and one committed to rekindling the language and the sovereignty debates.” Those debates are something most Quebecers and the vast majority of Canadians do not want, but the Liberals are so loathed at this point that a PQ victory looks likely.

Hébert is one of the country’s most respected commentators and is rarely criticized by her colleagues, but Maclean’s blogger Paul Wells writes today that her piece was “rather spectacularly beneath her usual standards.” Wells takes issue with her framing Quebec’s only choice as being between two questionable parties. “There is another option: the government we already have could govern better.” He says he “was really surprised to see Chantal arguing, in effect, that Quebecers should put up with an awful government because at least it’s a federalist one” and urges Quebecers to start holding bad politicians of all parties to account. Of course, the easiest way to do that is to vote them out, but Wells says Quebecers “engagement does not end with their vote. It also includes, or should, a daily and indeed automatic expectation that the winners of the last vote live up to certain standards until the next.”

Find a politician who lives up to expectations, and you've done well indeed.