Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Bringing back Bloc option in Quebec makes majority for Harper

If my friends of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste are correct in their rumours, tomorrow morning will be the last as leader of the Bloc Québécois for Mario Beaulieu as Gilles Duceppe who has advised and assisted Beaulieu will allow him to remain in the party as its president, confirmed apparently by Jean Lapierre of Télé Viseurs Associés adding that an internal membership poll showed Duceppe pulled three times the support Beaulieu ever potentially could for the BQ. In the wake of the state funeral of former Parti Québécois leader and Québec Premier Jacques Parizeau, the sovereignty association movement which only recently elected Pierre Karl Péladeau as the new PQ leader has had little to laugh about as its fortunes turned with the election of the New Democrats federally under Jack Layton across Le Belle Province in 2011 and the premiership of Philippe Couillard and his Parti Libéral du Québec in 2014. With only the longest serving current member of the House of Commons from Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour Louis Plamondon being on board for the 2015 campaign, Duceppe will have to dig down deep into his old bag of trick to find some rookie diamonds in the rough, as one incumbent a tough reelection to the House does it make.

By bringing back a separatist Bloc Québécois option for electors in Québec, who already had a hard decision to take between federalist New Democratic and Liberal alternatives in the ballot box this coming fall, makes majority territory that much more real for Harper than ever before.

Canada, void of any Reform elements federally in Ottawa, still has the former Chief Policy Officer for the Reform Party of Canada as its Prime Minister, being one who singlehandedly ended the separation threat with Québec Contingency Act Bill C-341 of 1996, or the original Clarity Act Bill C-20 of 2000, before Stéphane Dion was even on the political scene. Harper, and Harper alone, will be the only federal leader who can answer to another separatist attack by the Bloc, as Ottawa born and Québec bred Opposition leaders Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau, who are neck and neck in the polls, also split the vote on who can best represent the federalist position in the province. By splitting up the vote in Québec, as well as other key regions across Canada, Mulcair and Trudeau may actually split it just enough to let Harper up the middle, to gain for the Conservatives ridings never ever thought possibly in play, and now with Duceppe added, further complicate an already complex Québec theater of war from its left and right axis to its separatist and federalist one too.