Must Gilles Duceppe Ruin Everything?

The BQ leader has never pretended to care about the rest of Canada, but his attitude doesn't help Quebec's economic prospects either.

In the Globe and Mail, André Pratte attempts to convince Canadians living outside of Quebec that there are some people on the other side of the francophone curtain that don’t share Gilles Duceppe’s “me first” attitude towards Canadian politics. These people presumably see what the rest of the country sees when Duceppe demands $5 billion for his province in exchange for supporting the federal budget, or suggests crippling Alberta’s oil industry with taxes while simultaneously siphoning off profits of said industry through equalization payments. “Many [Quebeckers] would like nothing better than being represented in Ottawa by MPs who want to work with their colleagues of the rest of the country, for the good of Quebec and of Canada,” Pratte writes. “Unfortunately, opposition to the Bloc is still too divided to topple that party’s domination.” It’s a heartening column if you’re an optimistic federalist, but of course the Bloc Québécois near 20-year electoral grip in the province doesn’t appear likely to be broken anytime soon, suggesting the attitude Pratte trumpets hasn’t yet reached meaningful levels.

The “culture of entitlement” that Duceppe represents is not only annoying to the rest of Canada, writes the Montreal Gazette’s Henry Aubin, but a serious drag on the province’s economic wellbeing. This attitude of self-centeredness is endemic in Quebec, he says. “You can see it in the way students practically act as though they were demonstrating in Cairo's Tahrir Square every time the provincial government dares consider raising university tuitions within hailing distance of the Canadian average. You can see it in the way we expect the rest of Canada to pay, via transfer payments, for social programs that other provinces do without. And you can see it, too, in the [inflated] absenteeism rate in Quebec.” This pervasive attitude is even worse among unions, which is why labour disputes keep pushing corporations like Shell and Electrolux, Aubin explains, noting that Montreal “ranks dead last in per-capita GDP among major North American metropolitan areas.” Which begs the questions, since when is East St. Louis moving up in the world?