Breaking Up with the Bloc

Quebecers, the country's most reliably unpredictable voters, take a chance on the NDP.

Quebec was once again the most exciting province on election night, casting out the Bloc Québécois on its rear end in favour of its federalist social-democrat cousins, the NDP. But that move was more a rejection of the Bloc's failure to deliver on sovereignty than it was an endorsement of Confederation, says Don Macpherson in The Gazette. “[Quebec] has exchanged representation in one opposition party for another, from one that demands everything to another that promises everything,” he writes of the province's fickle voting habits. “It remains suspicious of federal power, and has again refused to participate in the government of Canada.” As such, political observers should remain wary of the spectre of sovereignty – especially if the NDP, bloated with rookie MPs who didn't expect to win, proves to be an ineffectual opposition.

The National Post's Roy Green begs to differ by bringing up former Bloc leader Lucien Bouchard's assertion last year that he wouldn't see separation in his lifetime. Green guesses “the record will show Quebecers on Monday voted to send to Ottawa a federalist party and reduce the Bloc Québécois to the joke I’ve heard at least a dozen times since, 'what has more seats than the BQ? Your car.'” The Bloc lived past its expiry date, and while its provincial equivalents stand to take over the Assembly Nationale, Green intones “if sovereigntists are honest, they will admit meeting those objectives became significantly more challenged this week.”

Even if Quebec's relationship with the NDP is just a rebound, Jack Layton's achievement is stunning given the party's prospects not two decades ago, writes Jeff Sallot in the Ottawa Citizen. During the 1993 campaign, then leader Audrey McLaughlin couldn't even fill a church basement with a promise of a free lunch. Now, Layton gets ovations as rousing as Arcade Fire when he packs convention halls. And what accounts for that? “Young Quebecers are bored with the sovereignty debate and never really believed the separatist myth that somehow a Constitution with a Charter of Rights is a betrayal,” says Sallot. “Yes, maybe their profs and their parents will sigh and say, 'je me souviens.' But the kids don’t.” 1993 was 18 years ago – and kids born that year voted yesterday for the first time. Their voice demands to be reckoned with.