Given the recent provincial by-election results in the province of Quebec, bloggers and politicians everywhere have been talking about the results and their implications.
As with any event, it helps to actually review what happened and then, based on this, generate an analysis. If we do it the other way around, we risk being like a Conservative cabinet minister who, during a Question Period session shortly after the by-elections, tried to ridicule Gilles Duccepe by saying that the by-elections were a huge victory federalists and a huge defeat for the PQ. (I don’t remember which Tory cabinet minister it was who said it, but I remember being shocked when I heard it).
In fact, contrary to the Tories’ contention, both the by-election results and the recent provincial polling results show a rather different story.
First, the by-election results.
Simply put, the Tories’ closest provincial ally, the ADQ, witnessed a staggering collapse. This is rather significant since the far-right ADQ is lead by Mario Dumont, a man who attracted the attention of the international press in 2007 and who was (appropriately, in my opinion) called “Canada’s Le Pen” by the U.K.-based newspaper The Independent (source).
In the three by-election ridings, the ADQ’s support collapsed to just over 1/3 of their formerly mighty self. Now, even though none of these ridings were strong ADQ ridings, nothing I think could have prepared political observers for just how spectacular of a collapse the ADQ made. For instance, in my riding (Hull), the ADQ dropped from being the 3rd place party to being dead last among the 5 main provincial parties with both the Greens and Québec solidaire (which is an amalgamation of left-wing provincial parties including the Quebec Communist Party) finishing above them. In fact, only the tiny Parti indépendantiste did worse then the ADQ in my riding.
Turning to the province-wide provincial polling results since the last provincial election, we see an equally bleak picture for ‘Canada’s Le Pen’ and the far-right ADQ.
Following the last provincial election, the ADQ had actually improved over their provincial results and were polling as the #1 provincial party with seemingly prohibitive odds of forming the next provincial government, either minority or majority.
As you can see, Quebec’s repudiation of far right politics since that time, clearly extends beyond merely the three ridings which had by-elections earlier this month.
Now that it seems as though the Québecois are well on their way to throwing out their version of Le Pen and become once again a beacon to progressives throughout Canada, maybe Canadians can learn from this and get to work on throwing out their version of George W. Bush.
If this is the Tories’ idea of protecting children, I’d hate to see their idea of not protecting them
Published 28 May, 2008 Afghanistan , Amnesty International , anti-war , Canadian Politics , conservative , Conservative Party , current events , Harper , International Politics , news , News, Commentary & Op/Ed , politics , war 6 CommentsAn excerpt from an article by Thomas Walkom in today’s Toronto Star:
As a Marxist, I’m obviously not prone to quoting from the Bible, however one quote does spring to mind: It’s the Biblical definition of the hypocrite outlined in Matthew 7:4:
“cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then
thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”