PQ Elected in Quebec

The independence-seeking Parti Quebecois has been elected and was on the doorstep of a majority government on Tuesday, bringing an end to a nine-year era of tranquility on the unity front.
Well, there we have it, the suspense hung over us for long enough though it was a relatively short election campaign.  Ill timed, as it happens, by former Quebec Premier Jean Charest.  The three terms he served in office at the provincial level are now history.  A history that had its upsides and more than enough downsides.  The provincial Liberals have been well tainted, at least as much so as their federal big brothers, still shovelling themselves out of the infamy of grand corruption.

It does rankle that the separatist - and proud of it - provincial party was able to convince enough francophones - for it is mostly francophones that voted them back in - to produce another PQ leadership.  A leadership which, in due time, is set to mount yet another referendum.  One which the federal NDP party, now the Official Opposition, is pledged to look kindly upon in contrast to the wishes of the rest of Canada and the other federal political parties.

It rankles even more that the Public Service Alliance of Canada went out of its way to endorse the Parti Quebecois.  Judging it on its perceived merits, that it was the party most likely to represent the interests of the union's 22,000 members living in Quebec.  They live and they vote in Quebec and they owe their livelihoods to the federal government which they purportedly serve, along with the people of Canada, not Quebec.

Parochial, language- and nationalist-obsessed, the Parti Quebecois hasn't quite yet seemed to understand that any federal political party can come to power, and even with a clear majority vote, without having to rely any longer on the goodwill of Quebec voters.  Most of whom have a passing interest in the federation, and care little about the welfare of the country, apart from that the fiscal health of the rest of the country spells the fiscal health of Quebec, through transfer payments.

The union itself is unconcerned whether or not their Quebec-based members are federalist.  PSAC's regional executive vice-president, Larry Rousseau, hazarded an educated guess, that in the last 1995 referendum roughly a third of PSAC members voted Yes.  "I think the numbers could maybe be higher, depending on the campaign, the issues, etc."

"It would be one of the most momentous decisions in our history that the PSAC would take a position [on sovereignty] - or not take a position, depending on what the board or what the Alliance executive committee would recommend.  But there would certainly be a process that we would have go through before we actually came to some kind of a determination."

Sounds like he/they are on the cusp of secession.  But of course this union is fairly corrupted from its original purpose; witness its position on boycott and divestment of Israel, an even greater contortion of ethics and morals, harshly and injudiciously reaching unfair conclusions to victimize and alienate.  The union is well infiltrated by secessionists and racists, as the flavour of the times.

And the federal NDP, which has no Quebec provincial affiliate, but which has courted the Bloc Quebecois members which have given it its status as a major party, and cavorts with the Parti Quebecois supporting it as well as a "progressive" force for social change within the province, to the detriment of the rest of Canada.

"The PQ already during the campaign tipped its hand in terms of strategy.  They're going to consciously start making demands of Ottawa for more powers, more jurisdiction, more autonomy.  The long term strategy is if Ottawa gives it, great.  They have more autonomy.  If not, it lays the groundwork for their case to leave.  Mulcair will have to do that balancing act between the issues he agrees with and the demands he agrees with and at the same time not help lay the groundwork for independence."                                                                            Carleton University political scientist Bruce Hicks