Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has made a critical error. When she called the Quebec election, she did not realize who her enemies really are. Her separatists have not just taken on a novice provincial Liberal Leader Philippe Couilard and an inconsequential center-right Coalition Avenir Québec led by François Legault. She had no idea that in her Quebec election she is challenging Captain Canada in the person of federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.
This is a fight that Justin Trudeau can win and he has everything to win by doing so. While the tradition in Canada is for federal politicians to stay away from direct participation in provincial election campaigns, it is the rest of Canada egging on the young Trudeau. And if he can “win his epaulets” as Quebecers say, he will have a strong leg up to win the federal election in 2015.
By involving himself in the Quebec election, Trudeau will be doing something that Prime Minister Harper and Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair cannot do: win in Quebec. It is hardly a secret that Quebecers despise Stephen Harper and the size of his Quebec caucus tells the story. He would cause nothing but trouble interfering in Quebec matters and the rest of Canada knows it.
Thomas Mulcair is a Quebecer as is Trudeau but that hardly helps him when he has to pander to the soft separatists of the moribund Bloc Québécois to keep his shaky New Democrat seats in Quebec. Mulcair needs to worry about his own federal seat in Quebec before he thinks about keeping any of the seats won by Jack Layton in 2011.
But Trudeau is free to challenge Pauline Marois and the separatists and their bigotry. She needs a Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge against her use of religious symbols as a political weapon in the Supreme Court of Canada to create her “conditions for a referendum.” Marois has laid out her path and it is Trudeau that can stand in her way.
Trudeau’s argument against the Marois Charter of Values is the embarrassment for Quebec in the eyes of a more tolerant English-speaking Canada. And he can make that argument at a time when Quebecers are more worried about the economy than another foolish “never-endum” referendum.
Other than that, Trudeau does not even have to promote the provincial Liberals in the Quebec election. All he has to do is show the weaknesses of the Parti Québécois position. Quebecers can sort the rest out for themselves.
But Trudeau’s real audience is outside of Quebec. If he just keeps Marois to a minority, he will be a hero to the rest of Canada.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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