When you kill the beast, rip out its guts and use them to foretell the future, all you really need to do next is have a long, cleansing shower. And that shower is what all the pundits need after Monday’s provincial election in Quebec. The election was a watershed. It told of change. It forecasts a very different future.
The most interesting forecasts were for next year’s federal election. All federal parties took the outcome as a good omen. The drop of the Parti Québécois to just a quartile of the vote was welcome news to all. It left the former Bloc Québécois in limbo. The Bloc lacks the effective base to return to its former point of leverage in Ottawa. It puts the Quebec Orange Wave from 2011 under the microscope and you can expect most of its members will be found wanting.
Barring one of those saviours who tend to crop up occasionally in Quebec, the 2015 election will be a direct contest between Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. With this provincial election producing renewal and change, next year offers little opportunity for Mulcair and his troops in Quebec.
In fact, this might be one of those rare Canadian general elections where the political messages are the same in both languages and from coast to coast. And it is also the first general election to reflect the strongly Western shift of Canada’s voters. Stephen Harper might as well concentrate on Ontario and west. That is where he has to mine his Conservative votes and mine them he will.
If Harper can leave the rest of the country split between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party, he can get that second majority he wants. As his grip is weakened on his own party, he has to spread divisiveness in ridings he cannot win. He has little to win but much to lose in Quebec.
The reason we wanted Justin Trudeau to do something during the Quebec election was to give him an impetus into next year. Quebec Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard said it very well during the campaign that bilingualism is the key to Quebec’s future. We all held our breath at the time as we were not sure of the political feedback. The naysayers lost.
It is Trudeau who can exemplify that future to all Canadians. His pride in his Quebec roots is self-evident. His outlook as a Canadian encompasses everyone’s hopes. He is not his father. He is a leader in his own right.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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