Turmel's Turmoil, Day 2

The avalanche of knee-jerk criticism of Nycole Turmel's past political associations continues apace.

The country's political class, starved for a good scandal in the depths of summer, has jumped on the fact that interim NDP Leader Nycole Turmel was a member of the Bloc Québécois before joining the NDP. The usually astute Tim Harper of the Toronto Star claims that “Tuesday’s revelations rip the bandage from a nagging scab that has been there since Layton’s Quebec breakthrough last May.” Turmel's switch, says Harper, is worse than any other recent floor crossings, partly because her departure is still “too fresh” for her to be taking the reins of the NDP and also because the Bloc was committed to separation. Curiously, Harper raises the point that this revelation means nothing to Quebeckers, who are mature enough to understand that one can support the progressive policies of a party but not necessarily their commitment to separation, but refuses to follow it himself. That English-speaking Canada is by and large unable to recognize that not everything associated with the Bloc is prima facie tainted is a sad indication that the two solitudes still do persist. Harper merely reinforces the questionable position that we can only be defined by the parties we support, and not policies or beliefs that might extend beyond them.

A far more nuanced approach to the Turmel affair is undertaken by the editorialists at The Montreal Gazette, who say “it's not too much to ask that Turmel address the Canadian public, in a lot more detail than she did Tuesday, to explain who she is and what she stands for.” Heck, the NDP could even spin that into a demonstration of how they've brought in soft nationalists under their tent to work for all Canadians, and that they're the only ones capable of making sure the separation menace remains under wraps, or what have you. “The black-and-white distinction between federalism and separatism made by voters in the rest of the country doesn't hold so tenaciously here,” the Gaz reminds us. While that by no means excuses the party for not making sure that Turmel's past affiliations wouldn't become a controversy, political minds west of the Ottawa River would do well to note that marginalizing the political arrangements to their east serves no one well except separatists.

And finally, because no newspaper was willing to do the work themselves, John Baglow takes to the National Post to share his experiences of working with Turmel as a labour leader throughout the past 20 years. According to Baglow, “she was a Quebec NDPer when the NDP in that part of the world was little more than a groupuscule,” and that she's displayed a kind of cross-party pragmatism required of her former career. “As a retired labour leader now living in the Quebec milieu, she supported the regional parties there who stood for social justice,” says Baglow. “Until the Orange Crush earlier this year, the NDP in Quebec presented no viable alternative to the status quo, provincially or federally: its miniscule support in the polls made it irrelevant on the Quebec scene.” Thus, to do her job, it's not too much of a stretch to see why she would align herself, even superficially, with the lone party in that province that was keen on workers' rights. While it's refreshing to hear somebody (beside us) defend Turmel and take on the adverse reactions to anything Bloc, it would be even better to hear her say it.