Tag Archives: canada

Canada, Ontario

Kennedy falters as Pupatello and Wynne lead race to become Ontario premier

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pupatello

When Dalton McGuinty announced late last year that he would step down simultaneously as both leader of the Ontario Liberal Party and Ontario’s premier, it made this month’s Liberal leadership contest also a contest to become Ontario’s next premier.Canada Flag Iconontario

It’s not the best of times for McGuinty, who lost an opportunity to regain a majority government in Ontario’s unicameral legislative assembly after losing two by-elections last autumn.  The losses came after McGuinty passed — with the support of the opposition Progressive Conservative Party — a bill that froze wages for public teachers and denies the right to strike for the following two years.  The bill was seen as a massive betrayal by teachers’ unions that were key to McGuinty’s electoral victories since first becoming premier in 2003.

So his stepping down, after a decade in power, was seen as an opportunity for the Ontario Liberals to reboot before what’s likely to be an upcoming election (although the next election need not take place before October 2015) — and polls show his party in third place, behind both the Tories and the progressive New Democratic Party, and only leading by the narrowest of margins in the greater Toronto area, one of the last bastions of support for provincial and federal Liberals alike.

Originally, it seemed like the runner-up to McGuinty in the previous 1996 leadership race, Gerard Kennedy, was the frontrunner. But poor organization and his unpopularity among party insiders have pushed him to the background.

After delegates were selected over the weekend for the Ontario Liberal conference scheduled for January 25 to 27, two frontrunners have emerged — Sandra Pupatello (pictured above, bottom) and Kathleen Wynne (pictured above, top).

Pupatello won the greatest number of pledged delegates with 27%, followed closely by Wynne with 25%.  Kennedy fell far behind with just 14%, with Punjab-born MPP Harinder Takhar in a narrow fourth place with 13%.  Two remaining candidates — Charles Sousa (11%) and Eric Hoskins (6%) — followed far behind.

While there are independent and other ex officio delegates who will also be able to participate in the leadership vote, the pledged delegates clearly seem to indicate that the race will come down to Pupatello and Wynne who, like Kennedy, have all held the position of Ontario’s minister of education in the past decade.

Wynne, who would be Canada’s first openly-gay provincial premier, has been a member of the Ontario legislature since 2003, and she served as minister of education from 2006 to 2010; thereafter, she served as minister of transportation and then minister of municipal affairs and housing and aboriginal affairs.  Ideologically, she’s to the left of Pupatello, which could help her steal voters who might otherwise support the NDP in any future election.

Pupatello served in the Ontario legislature from 1995 to 2011, when she resigned to take a job as director of business and global markets at PricewaterhouseCoopers.  Aside from a stint as minister of education in 2006, she served as minister of economic development and innovation for much of the last five years of her legislative career.  She’s seen as more center-right than either Kennedy or Wynne, and she’s also perceived as the ‘establishment’ candidate as well.

Pupatello, 10 years younger than Wynne, is also seen as the more spirited campaigner, a quality that Liberal voters might like to see in a leader who will have to fight tooth-and-nail to retain power after the next provincial election.   Continue reading Kennedy falters as Pupatello and Wynne lead race to become Ontario premier →

United States

What can the internal gun politics of other countries teach the United States?

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Certainly, today’s sad news from Newtown, Connecticut — the site of a gun massacre that left, so far, 18 children and nine adults dead, will once again ignite a debate over the proper role of gun laws in the United States. USflag

The reality is that, despite the efforts of officials such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg (pictured above) in favor of stricter gun control, after the horrific headlines fade, Newtown will join a growing pile of similar incidents — Columbine in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007, Aurora just earlier this summer — each one more numbing than the last, with no appreciable change to U.S. federal policy on firearm control.  The last major effort was the federal assault weapons ban prohibiting certain kinds of semi-automatic weapons, in effect from 1994 to 2004.  The ban hasn’t been subsequently renewed, not even in 2009 and 2010 when the relatively pro-gun control Democratic Party controlled Congress and the White House.

But the fact remains that the United States has one of the world’s highest firearm-related death rates in the world at 9 persons per 100,000 annually, which puts it in company with South Africa, the Philippines and Mexico.  The United Kingdom’s rate, by contrast, is 0.22.  That, Americans should agree, is a problem, although Americans remain split over gun control laws — even after the Aurora shooting, 50% of Americans said in an August CNN poll that they oppose significantly more restrictions on gun ownership.

The Second Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights ratified in 1791, is a one-sentence guarantee to the right to bear arms:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The amendment is informed by the precedent of the English Bill of Rights of 1689 that protected the right of Protestants against disarmament by the English monarch (at the time, the Catholic James II).

Since that time, the American devotion to the right to bear arms has become a peculiarly American sensibility, especially since the 1980s saw a rise in pro-gun activism among the American right and especially within the Republican Party — the National Rifle Association is now one of the most powerful interest groups in U.S. politics (as recently as 1969, the NRA was so relatively weak that Republican U.S president Richard Nixon disavowed an ‘honorary life membership’).

In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has strengthened Second Amendment rights.  In 2008, the Supreme Court in its landmark District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment extends to the right to possess firearms for self-defense within the home, and in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment is ‘incorporated’ by the 14th Amendment to extend not only federally but within the individual states.

Despite the efforts of officials like Bloomberg, who have argued that, at minimum, the federal government should tighten up and enforce loopholes in existing gun laws, just today, Michigan governor Rick Snyder was set to sign into law a bill that would allow concealed weapons in gun-free zones.

Indeed, most pro-gun advocates argue that concealed-carry laws — allowing anyone to carry concealed weapons — provide disincentives to potential gunmen.  Such state-level concealed-carry laws have become increasingly popular since the 1990s, and the vast majority of U.S. states now feature some form of concealed-carry permit law.  Pro-gun advocates also argue that free-gun zone laws that designate schools, hospitals and other areas as firearm-free have inadvertently made those areas ever more tantalizing targets for would-be assailants.

But certainly there are lessons from gun policy in countries outside the United States that can inform a reasoned statistics-based policy debate in the United States, right? Maybe not.

What’s most astonishing is that throughout the world, even among the closest U.S. allies, gun control remains relatively uncontroversial.  That makes the example of other countries fairly inapposite.

The general trend seems to be that in countries with relatively stricter gun laws, gun-related homicides are relatively lower, but pro-gun advocates note that there are essentially too many other cultural and political factors about the United States and crime in the United States to draw a straightforward line between the two.  As Ezra Klein noted earlier this year, the United States –and the U.S. south where pro-gun sentiment runs strong — is generally a more violent place than much of the rest of the developed world, generally (with or without guns).

The other trend worth noting is that many countries have adopted stricter gun laws in the wake of a horrific shooting spree or gun violence incident, but despite a worrying proliferation of such mass shootings in the United States, such incidents have failed to dent a political consensus against major gun control reforms.

In the United Kingdom, the closest thing to a ‘pro-gun’ position is the silly House of Lords showdown with Tony Blair’s government in the early 2000s over the 2004 ban on hunting with dogs — the hopeless cause of a fox-hunting aristocracy that was more about farce than force.  Otherwise, the United Kingdom has some of the world’s most rigorous anti-gun laws — if you want to own a firearm in the United Kingdom, you need to be prepared for a lengthy and bureaucratic process during which police determine whether you’re fit to own a weapon, and once you’ve obtained a permit, it can be easily revoked by the police.  Continue reading What can the internal gun politics of other countries teach the United States? →

Canada

Trudeau will seek leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party

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For better or worse, Justin Trudeau is expected to announce next Tuesday that he will seek the leadership of the beleaguered Liberal Party in Canada.

Trudeau, the son of beloved former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, is the last, perhaps best, hope of an endangered party.  As John Ibbitson noted in The Globe and Mail yesterday, Trudeau’s assets make him an almost prohibitive favorite.

At age 40, however, the Montréal-area MP has been a member of the House of Commons since just 2008, and he will face doubts that he’s seasoned enough to become prime minister.

If he wins the leadership, he’ll first face the task of winning back supporters from the New Democratic Party, who made such incredible inroads in the 2011 election under the late Jack Layton that they far eclipsed the Liberals to become the Official Opposition and the main alternative to prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party.

Currently, polls show the NDP, under new leader Thomas Mulcair, within striking distance of the Tories and Liberals trailing in distant third place.  But a National Post poll today shows that the Trudeau-led Liberals would win 39% to just 32% for Harper and 20% for the NDP.  Those numbers, I believe, represent a best-case scenario for Trudeau — when he really represents nothing more than nostalgia for his father and before he’s had to contend through a long leadership fight and go head-to-head against not only Harper, but Mulcair as well.  Trudeau will have to sideline the NDP (or otherwise engineer a merger or alliance with the NDP) and then win not only a sizeable number of ridings in Quebéc, but also in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada.

There will be much more to say in the months leading up to the leadership race — it doesn’t start until November 14 and it won’t end until April 14, 2013.  Since the 2011 election that saw the Liberals reduced to just 34 seats, former (NDP) Ontario premier Bob Rae has served as interim leader.

There will a lot of rebuilding for whomever wins the leadership — and since Rae himself ruled out running for the leadership in a permanent capacity earlier in June, it’s seemed like the leadership is Trudeau’s for the taking, despite a number of candidates also expected to run — the most serious potential challengers to Trudeau include Dominic LeBlanc, a New Brunswick MP since 2000 and currently the party’s foreign affairs critic and, perhaps more intriguingly, Marc Garneau, a retired astronaut and former president of the Canadian Space Agency from 2001 to 2006, who has served as an MP since 2008, also from Montréal, and is the current Liberal House Leader.  Each candidate will pay a $75,000 entry fee — it’s thought the steep price will limit the number of contenders to just serious challengers, and campaign spending will be capped at $950,000.

It’s difficult to fathom just how far the Liberals have fallen in just little over a decade.

Continue reading Trudeau will seek leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party →

Canada, Ontario

Ontario by-election loss leaves Liberals with minority government

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Attention on Canadian politics has been mostly on Québec over the past month, but it’s worth noting that Ontario held two by-elections last Thursday that may augur early provincial elections soon.

The Liberals needed to win both seats in order to win back a majority government for premier Dalton McGuinty (pictured above).  While they easily held the Vaughan constituency, they lost the Kitchener-Waterloo constituency to the New Democratic Party.  The loss is attributed to the unpopularity of McGuinty’s government fight to cut public-sector wages, and in particular, to cut the wages of public teachers.  McGuinty’s government, with the support of the Progressive Conservative Party, this week passed a bill that implements a wage freeze on public teachers and denies them the right to strike for the next two years, which has been seen as a betrayal of public unions that have consistently supported McGuinty’s Liberal government.  That 180-degree turn against teachers’ unions could well be a fatal strategic error for McGuinty, because it not only freed them to support the New Democratic Party (which shows signs that it could be as ascendant in Ontario politics as it has been federally) in the recent by-election, but potentially throughout the province in the next election.

So it’s a difficult loss for McGuinty, who became premier in 2003, and was reelected in 2007 and in 2011, albeit with a minority government, watching a 70-seat majority cut to just 53, with the Progressive Conservatives gaining 11 seats to hold 37 seats, and the New Democratic Party gaining seven seats to 17.  By and large, McGuinty has been seen as a moderate and business-friendly premier, but has always been supported by teachers — until recently.

The NDP won the longtime Tory stronghold in what was seen as a three-way toss up — Catherine Fife, who won the seat, won 39.8% to just 31.8% for the Tory candidate and 24% for the Liberals.

With the NDP’s win on Thursday, the Tories fall to 36 seats in Ontario’s unicameral legislative assembly, and the NDP rises to 18, but the Liberals remain, tantalizingly, just one short of a majority.

Ontario politics has, generally speaking, been a two-party affair, with a one-time NDP breakout — current federal Liberal interim leader Bob Rae was premier in Ontario under the NDP banner from 1990 to 1995 — but a resurgent NDP that’s now leading federal polls for the next Canadian general election is now a lethal threat at the Ontario provincial level once again.  The Tories generally dominated Ontario politics from 1995 to 2003 under the premiership of Mike Harris, who was often mentioned as a potential federal Tory leader.

The next Ontario election, which must take place before October 2015, are expected to occur much sooner upon the fall of McGuinty’s minority government — thus, the significance of last week’s by-election, which could have pushed those elections back out to 2015.

Current polls show that the Tories, under leader Tim Hudak, generally lead in advance of the next election, with the Liberals tied with the NDP.  Polls show that Hudak is the least popular of the three Ontario party leaders, with the NDP’s Andrea Horwath increasingly gaining favor among Ontario voters.

Canada, Quebec

What next for Liberal leader Jean Charest?

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Jean Charest stepped down yesterday as the leader of Québec’s Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ), following his loss in Tuesday’s election for the 125-seat Assemblée nationale.

His party finished less than 0.75% behind the soveriegntist Parti québécois (PQ), and it won just 50 seats to the PQ’s 54.  But those four extra seats mean that the PQ will form a minority government under Pauline Marois, bringing Charest’s nine years as premier to an end.  Charest himself lost the seat that he has held since 1998 in his election district of Sherbrooke (where he also held a federal seat in the House of Commons from 1984 until leaving federal politics to take the helm of the PLQ).

The race is on to replace him, although outgoing justice minister Jean-Marc Fournier has already said he’s not running, and the remaining candidates are hardly well-known figures:

  • Raymond Bachand, Charest’s finance minister since 2009, has only been a MNA since 2005 and, at age 64, may be viewed as too old for the leadership.
  • Pierre Moreau, an MNA since 2003, was most recently Charest’s transportation minister.
  • Sam Hamad, also an MNA since 2003, the is Syrian-born, a former minister of labour, employment and transport, and most recently minister of economic development.
  • Pierre Paradis, an MNA since 1980, who clashed with Charest and never served in Charest’s cabinet, was previously a candidate in the 1983 leadership race that Robert Bourassa won.

In fact, the 1983 contest that Bourassa won was the last contested PLQ leadership race.  Bourassa, who was premier of Québec from 1970 to 1976, resigned after losing the 1976 election to the PQ, only to return in 1983 to provincial politics — he would thereupon return as premier from 1985 to 1994.

After nearly three decades at the pinnacle of Canadian and Québécois politics, surely Charest deserves a break — to be a grandfather and to reclaim a bit of his own life.

But was Charest’s decision the right one politically? Continue reading What next for Liberal leader Jean Charest? →

Canada, Quebec

An amazing 48 hours in Québec

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Well, there’s not much I can add to what the Canadian — and indeed, the Québécois, media — have covered in the past 48 hours.

But let’s just recount:

  • In Tuesday’s election, the Parti québécois (PQ) finished first with 31.94% with 54 seats.
  • Premier Jean Charest’s Parti liberal du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) came a very-much closer-than-expected 31.20% with 50 seats.
  • The newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) trailed narrowly with just 27.05%, but won just 19 seats.  That’s surely somewhat of a disappointment for its leader, François Legault, but the party did very well in the Québec City region and former Montréal police chief and anti-corruption figure Jacques Duchesneau won a seat.  Nonetheless, the CAQ was the significant gainer in the election and Legault has an excellent chance to build upon his success.
  • As such, the PQ leader, Pauline Marois, will form a minority government, and Marois will the first woman to become Québec’s premier, although it seems likely that we’ll see new elections long before the five-year government runs its course.
  • Marois’s victory speech was marred by a horrific assassination attempt, which left one man dead and another injured.
  • Léo Bureau-Blouin — the articulate 21-year-old and student spokesman — won his seat for the PQ in Laval-des-Rapides.
  • The leftist Québec solidaire won both seats for Amir Khadir and rising star Françoise David, but achieved a total vote of just 6.03%.  That, however, combined with the 1.90% that the breakaway sovereigntist Option nationale won likely hampered the PQ in its efforts to win a majority government — that’s nearly 8% of the electorate that would likely not have supported the PLQ or the CAQ.
  • Charest stepped down as leader yesterday after three decades in political life and after nine years as Québec’s premier.  Charest lost his own election district, Sherbrooke, which he has represented in either the federal House of Commons or Québec’s Assemblée nationale.
  • Marois has already started to move forward on ending Charest’s planned tuition hikes on students, the controversial Bill 78 limiting street protests and introducing changes to Bill 101, strengthening and enhancing the French-language requirements in the province.

Canada, Quebec, Romania

Québec votes today

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Canada’s only French-speaking and second-largest province goes to the polls today to elect the 125-member Assemblée nationale — Quebec’s politics are a fascinating subset of Canadian politics (notwithstanding the fact that the election will likely have a minimal impact on federal Canadian politics).

Rather than try to provide my own rundown and projection, I’ll leave it to Éric Grenier of ThreeHundredEight: his ridiculously detailed (and amazing) projection calls for a majority government led by the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ), although just barely.

Polls show three top parties since premier Jean Charest announced snap elections and kicked off the campaign on August 1:

  • Charest’s own Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) — Charest has governed the province since 2003, and the Liberals are seeking their fourth consecutive mandate in the face of charges of corruption (the Charbonneau Commission is looking into whether the government traded construction contracts in exchange for political financing) and a government that’s not done enough to boost the economy, despite a flashy plan to develop northern Québec.
  • The PQ, led by Pauline Marois, which is looking to return to provincial government after nearly a decade.
  • The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), led by François Legault, which was formed just last year and which lies vaguely to the right of the PLQ, although not in every way, and which lies somewhere between the sovereigntism of the PQ and the federalism of the PLQ (Legault, a former PQ minister, once supported the 1995 referendum on Québec’s independence, but has said any CAQ government will not pursue a new referendum).  The CAQ’s recruitment of quality candidates has been a boost, none of which more so than former Montréal police chief Jacques Duchesneau, whose presence in the election has been a constant reminder of potential PLQ corruption.

Grenier forecasts 63 seats for the PQ, just 33 seats for the Liberals and 27 for the CAQ.  If true, it would be a bloodbath for Charest’s Liberals, who would stand a chance of being pushed not only out of government, but into third place (while the CAQ becomes the Official Opposition) — it would likely also mean that Charest himself would lose his seat in Sherbrooke, a district where he’s been winning elections since 1984.

Roughly speaking, the PLQ is expected to hold its own in Montréal and its suburbs, where most of the province’s anglophones live (although they comprise 10% or so of the electorate, English-speakers tend to vote en masse for the Liberals, even though there are signs that some may be considering the CAQ).  The CAQ is expected to do well around Québec City further north, and the PQ is expected to do well everywhere else.

A key question will be whether two smaller more radically leftists and sovereigntist parties, Québec solidaire (whose spokeswoman Françoise David performed well in the party leaders debate) and Option nationale, succeed in taking away votes form the PQ — Marois has tread very lightly on the sovereignty issue, making it clear that she’s more interested in governing the province than arranging another referendum.

Increasingly less important over the course of the campaign has been the tuition fee issue — student protests over tuition hikes that shut down Montréal universities, and Charest’s police-heavy (some might say unconstitutionally repressive) response, brough international attention last spring.  Despite Marois’s opposition to tuition hikes and a high-profile PQ candidate in 20-year-old student leader Léo Bureau-Blouin, the issue has not had the salience you might have expected just a few months ago.

I am traveling most of Tuesday, but hopefully will have some brief thoughts much later tonight when we have an idea of which party — PLQ, PQ or CAQ — has won the most seats and whether they’ll command enough seats to have a majority government.

In the meanwhile, a little Céline Dion to help set the election day mood, and of course you can follow all of Suffragio‘s coverage of the election here.

À bientôt!

Canada, Quebec

Plan Nord and the Québec election

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Lurking behind the sexier issues at the forefront of tomorrow’s Québec provincial elections — sovereignty, federal-Québec relations, health care, corruption inquiries, tuition fees and student protests — lies an issue that will be quite strongly affected by who wins.

That issue is premier Jean Charest’s Plan nord — a plan announced in May 2011 to exploit the natural resources in the great expanse that comprises the northern two-thirds of Québec.  The idea is that over the next 25 years, the Plan will attract up to $80 billion in investments for mining, renewable and other forms of energy and forestry.  Charest, whose Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) is struggling to win a fourth consecutive mandate, has made it one of his government’s top priorities, although it’s been met with some resistance from environmentalists as well as from the native Innu people, around 15,000 of whom inhabit Québec’s far north, to say nothing of Charest’s political opponents.

His government claims that northern Québec contains deposits of nickel, cobalt, platinum group metals, zinc, iron ore, diamonds, ilmenite, gold, lithium, vanadium and rare-earth metals, and that, with a warming climate and melting polar ice, extracting the mineral wealth will be easier than in past generations.  The region, although fairly undeveloped and remote, already produces 75% of hydroelectric power in Québec.

Pauline Marois, who leads the sovereigntist — and more leftist — Parti québécois (PQ), which leads polls for tomorrow’s election, has said that she will not scrap the plan if elected, but will instead raise royalties on mining companies from 16% to 30% for mining companies that achieve a certain level of profits, with a minimum royalty of 5% on all mining companies.  Charest’s government has already raised royalties from 12% to 16%.

François Legault, the leader of the newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), has argued that Charest’s government is “putting all its eggs in one basket” with Plan nord, but he hasn’t said he wants to scrap it — he’s criticized Marois as well for trying to extract more royalties from mining companies.  Legault has proposed using $5 billion from the province’s $160 billion Caisse de depot et placement (its public pension fund) to capitalize a new natural resources fund.

In announcing Plan nord, Charest stressed the developmental elements of the plan, which would include a $2.1 billion investment from the province in northern infrastructure and which would also aim to build roads to link communities — in many cases, for the first time.

He also stressed the conservation elements of the plan — the government has claimed it will set aside 50% of the region for natural protection and unavailable for industrial development.

Late last week, however, Charest’s PLQ was ranked the worst of the three parties for the environment in a survey among environmental groups — a fourth party, the leftist and sovereigntist Québec solidaire,  scored the highest with 83% under the survey, while the Liberals scored just 33%.  The report followed another news story in Le Devoir late last week that claimed the Plan nord would wipe out wild caribou herds in the region.

Meanwhile, it is not clear that Charest has ever had the native population, which owns much of the land and mineral rights, quite on board.  Also last week, Ghislain Picard, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, criticized the Charest government in a criticized the manner in which the Charest government has approached northern development: Continue reading Plan Nord and the Québec election →

Canada, Quebec

Could this man defeat Québec premier Jean Charest in his own district?

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Serge Cardin (pictured above) leads the premier of Québec in his own election district by 12 points in the latest Segma poll — by a daunting margin of 45% to 33%. 

It’s not a fluke — Jean Charest’s seat is one of the most vital election districts to watch among the 125 seats up for grabs in next Tuesday’s election for control of Québec’s Assemblée nationale, and it’s far from certain that Charest himself will even be reelected.  Cardin’s 12-point lead is actually narrower than a poll earlier in the month that showed him with a 15-point lead.

Just yesterday, protesters in Sherbrooke proved so disruptive that Charest cancelled a campaign appearance in his own district.  Moreover, Charest has spent a significant amount of time in Sherbrooke since announcing snap elections in early August, indicating that the premier is increasingly worried about his own constituency.

Although Charest has been the premier of Québec for nearly a decade, and he’s won elections in eight federal and provincial elections since 1984 in Sherbrooke, he faces an increasingly tough fight — the latest province-wide CROP poll shows his party, the Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) in third place with just 26% to 33% for Pauline Marois’s sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ) and 28% for François Legault’s newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ).

Charest, who is seeking a fourth consecutive mandate from Québec voters, finds his government under attack from both the PQ and the CAQ on the economy, on his response to student protesters over the tuition increase and, above all, charges of corruption, including a high-profile commission investigating whether his government traded construction contracts in exchange for political financing. Continue reading Could this man defeat Québec premier Jean Charest in his own district? →

Canada, Quebec

What effect will the Québec election have on Canadian federal politics?

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With all eyes on Québec’s election next Tuesday, federal Canadian politics has somewhat been on the backburner for the past month.

But what are the consequences of the election in Canada’s second most-populous province for federal Canadian politics?

By and large, federal politics is highly segregated from provincial politics.  While there’s some overlap, provincial parties do not necessarily line up with national parties (for example, in Alberta, both the Progressive Conservative Party and the Wildrose Party are considered ‘conservative’ by federal standards and both parties attracted support from the federal Conservative Party in Alberta’s provincial election in April 2012).  That’s especially true in francophone Québec — the province has greater autonomy than most provinces, historically leans more leftist than the rest of Canada, and features its own separate federalist / sovereigntist political axis that is unique to Québec.

Nonetheless, a possible win by either of the three major parties — a fourth-consecutive term for premier Jean Charest and his Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ), Pauline Marois and the sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ) or former PQ minister François Legault’s newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ). — could affect federal Canadian politics in subtle ways.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party

There’s little downside for the federal Conservatives in any case, especially considering that Harper hasn’t devoted time or effort to backing anyone in the Québec race.

Charest, of course, once served as the leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party in the 1990s before moving to provincial politics — the Progressive Conservatives ultimately merged with Harper’s Western-based Canadian Alliance in 2003 to become the Conservative Party.  Although Charest has been a staunch federalist in nearly a decade of leading Québec’s government, he hasn’t always had the best relationship with Harper (pictured above, left, with Charest).  That’s partly due to the tension between a provincial premier and a federal prime minister, but Harper, in particular, is still thought to feel somewhat burned after intervening on behalf of Charest in the final days of the 2007 Québec election.

Harper provided $2 million in additional federal transfers to Québec that may well have helped premier Jean Charest narrowly win that election — Charest proceeded to use the funds to pass $700 million in tax cuts instead of for extra services, causing Harper problems with his allies in other provinces.   Continue reading What effect will the Québec election have on Canadian federal politics? →

Canada, Quebec

The key to Québec’s election are the CAQ-leaning francophones, not anglophones

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If voters support the parties in next Tuesday’s Québec election as shown in the latest Leger Marketing poll, it will be with a burst of support among francophone voters for the newly-formed Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).

That poll showed, essentially, a three-way race, with the sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ) leading at 33%, with 28% for the CAQ and 27% for premier Jean Charest and his Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ).  Showing the volatility of the race, another poll last week showed Charest’s Liberals with a 35% lead to just 29% for the PQ and 24% for the CAQ.

Although so much has been made of anglophone voters — and their openness to the CAQ — anglophone Quebeckers, which make up roughly 10% of the Québec electorate, are still mostly captive to premier Jean Charest and his Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ).  Despite support from the prominent anglophone politician Robert Libman, the CAQ attracts just 15% of the anglophone vote to 67% for the Liberals (the PQ wins just 9%).

Francophone voters, however, split as follows: 38% to the PQ, 31% to the CAQ, 18% to Charest’s Liberals, 9% to the stridently leftist and sovereigntist Québec solidaire and 3% to the sovereigntist Option nationale, which received the high-profile support of former PQ premier Jacques Parizeau over the weekend.

It should be fairly clear that the 12% of francophone voters supporting Québec solidaire and Option nationale would otherwise be supporting the PQ in this election.  Remember that the first-past-the-post system means that the election next Tuesday will really be 125 separate elections in each election district, so in a close race, that 12% could make the difference.

But to me, the real key to the election is where François Legault and the CAQ are pulling their 30% share of francophone voters, and there are two options:

If the CAQ’s francophone support is coming predominantly from voters who have already decided that they won’t vote for Charest, the CAQ is competing for the same pool of voters as the PQ, which could ultimately lead to Charest pulling off a victory and a minority government.

If the CAQ’s francophone support is coming from voters who, for whatever reason, are attracted to its centrist / vaguely free-market platform, the CAQ is competing with the Liberals, which could allow the PQ to win a minority government.

Given that the election is in large part a referendum on Charest, on Liberal corruption and on the economy that Charest now owns after nine years in office, and given that the CAQ has been purposefully vague about its platform, I think the former is much more likely the case, and it’s why, despite what some polls show, the chances of a fourth consecutive mandate for the Liberals is still a very real possibility. Continue reading The key to Québec’s election are the CAQ-leaning francophones, not anglophones →

Canada, Quebec

Will Québec solidaire break through in next Tuesday’s election?

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When Québec’s major party leaders gathered a few days ago for the only multi-party debate in advance of the election for Québec’s Assemblée nationale on Sept. 4, voters saw three familiar faces: Jean Charest, leader of the Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) and the province’s premier since 2003; Pauline Marois, leader of the sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ), and François Legault, a former PQ minister and leader of the newly-formed and more center-right Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).

They also saw a less familiar face: Québec solidaire spokeswoman Françoise David who, along with spokesman Amir Khadir, are the two “spokespersons” for Québec solidaire, a stridently leftist, environmentalist, feminist and sovereigntist party founded in 2006 when several smaller parties merged.

David wasn’t a wholly outsized presence in that debate, but to the extent it was David’s first introduction to many Québec voters, her above-the-fray tone seemed to make a favorable impression.

David and Québec solidaire are, by far, the most leftwing and anti-neoliberal of the four parties (and party leaders) featured in last week’s debates:

  • On student fees, not only does David oppose tuition increases for students, but was the only party leader to wear a red square — the symbol of student protesters — on stage (even though Marois wore it in solidarity with students last spring and has come out strongly in opposition to tuition hikes).
  • On the environment, David has criticized Charest’s Plan Nord, designed to boost mining and other economic efforts in northern Québec, and her party is downright hostile to Québec’s asbestos industry (Québec is essentially the only main producer of asbestos in North America and Europe).
  • On sovereignty, Québec solidaire is firmly in favor of an independent Québec, in contrast to theMONDAY’S PIECE> nuanced “wait and see” approach that Marois has taken.

Continue reading Will Québec solidaire break through in next Tuesday’s election? →

Canada, Quebec

Sovereigntist party runs away from sovereignty issue in Québec election

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The last time Québec held a referendum on independence in 1995, Jacques Parizeau (pictured above in 1995) was the leader of the sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ).

With just over a week to go until Québec votes on Sept. 4 for a new Assemblée nationale, Parizeau, in a sharp rebuke to PQ leader Pauline Marois, endorsed the smaller, more stridently sovereigntist Option nationale, a party formed in 2011 by former PQ legislator  Jean-Martin Aussant.  His move comes with polls showing the PLQ and the PQ see-sawing in the 30% to 35% range for the lead in the election

Marois took the news gracefully, but the Globe and Mail reports that the Parizeau’s snub could jeopardize Marois’s effort to win power.  Normally, it doesn’t speak well of a party leader when a former party leader endorses a rival.

In this instance, I’m not sure that it harms Marois.  To the contrary, it emphasizes the not-so-subtle secret of Marois’s PQ leadership: she’s more interested in forming a government than pushing sovereignty.  That’s the very compliant Aussant aired when he formed Option nationale.

If she wins the election, which is as much a referendum on Charest and his government than anything else, it will be because she has emphasized any number of issues — corruption, strengthening education and health care, promoting Québec industry — to the relative exclusion of sovereignty. Continue reading Sovereigntist party runs away from sovereignty issue in Québec election →

Canada, Quebec

Live-blogging the Québec debates: Marois v. Legault

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I’ll be live-blogging tonight’s debate — the third and final debate of a series of one-on-one debates — between Pauline Marois, leader of the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ) and François Legault, leader of the newly formed, sort-of maybe center-right Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ).       

Sunday night featured a four-way debate, Monday night featured a raucous one-on-one between Marois and premier Jean Charest, the leader of the centrist, federalist Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ), and Tuesday night featured a debate between Legault and Charest.

Québec’s voters go to polls on September 4 to choose 125 members of Québec’s Assemblée nationale.

Read Suffragio’s prior coverage of the Québécois election here.

So that’s a wrap. Marois is queen of the status quo, Legault is the queen of the caribou. Oy. On to Sept. 4.

What’s striking is that they spent so little time bringing down Charest tonight. I wonder if that was a strategic mistake for both Legault and Marois, especially with today’s Forum poll showing the PLQ with a renewed 35% lead over the PQ (29%) and the CAQ (24%). In any event. Full live blog after the jump.

* * * *  Continue reading Live-blogging the Québec debates: Marois v. Legault →

Canada, Quebec

Live-blogging the Québec debates: Charest v. Legault

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I’ll be live-blogging tonight’s hourlong debate — the second in a series of three one-on-one debates — between Québec premier Jean Charest, the leader of the centrist, federalist Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) and François Legault, leader of the newly formed, sort-of maybe center-right Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ).

Sunday night featured a four-way debate and last night featured a raucous one-on-one between Charest and Pauline Marois, the leader of the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ).  Tomorrow’s final debate will feature Marois and Legault, and Wednesday will bring showcase Marois and Legault.

Given Charest’s feisty, aggressive tone against Marois last night, I expect to see the same against Legault, who himself is a former PQ minister.  Legault left the PQ to form the CAQ late last year, and I would expect Charest to make the argument that Legault is a closet sovereigntist and that the CAQ has been too vague about its plans for government.  I expect you’ll also see Charest attack Legault for cuts made to Québec’s health care system — Legault once served as minister for health and social services under PQ premier Bernard Landry from 2001 to 2003.

Québec’s voters go to polls on September 4 to choose 125 members of Québec’s Assemblée nationale.

Read Suffragio’s prior coverage of the Québécois election here.

Well, it was another exciting debate and the last debate for Charest.

Charest managed to come across as a little less aggressive tonight, but perhaps a little more effective — he could point (and he did!) to Legault’s past experience in government and contrast it with the (unreliable?) positions Legault has taken as the leader of the CAQ.

Legault seemed more effective, perhaps, than he did on Sunday night, but seemed less sure throughout the night.  He’s not as good a debater as Charest.

I wonder if Legault’s strong defense of French and Bill 101 at the end of the debate will leave a bad taste in anglophone voters’ mouths — he’ll need those if the CAQ is to win the election.

All in all, I think Charest did a strong job defending his government and an even stronger job attacking the CAQ’s platform (or the slipperiness of the platform vis-a-vis Legault’s record).

Full live-blog after the jump.

* * * *  Continue reading Live-blogging the Québec debates: Charest v. Legault →