Bloc’s dream of return to glory dashed
Gilles Duceppe’s gamble that he could make up for his 2011 disaster by coming out of retirement to lead the nationalist Bloc Québécois to a triumphant comeback seemed unlikely to pay off Monday night.
Boos rang out at Bloc headquarters as Radio Canada declared a majority victory for the Liberals. Meanwhile, Duceppe, 68, was fighting hard for his seat in LaurierSainte- Marie against his Liberal and NDP rivals, and watching his dream of returning the 25- year- old nationalist party to its former glory crumble as early election results showed the Bloc elected or leading in only eight or nine ridings.
Duceppe began this campaign with nowhere to go but up. With only two MPs left in the Bloc caucus at dissolution of the House, and polls showing the NDP still relatively popular after its 2011 sweep of the province, Duceppe regained leadership of his ailing party just months before the campaign began.
Two issues would differentiate the Bloc from the NDP, Duceppe hoped. Even before Conservative Leader Stephen Harper pounced on the niqab as a wedge issue, Duceppe’s team had realized the debate over the face covering could be key to luring support away from the NDP’s Tom Mulcair. That, along with Mulcair’s refusal to oppose outright transportation of oilsands crude through Quebec, gave the Bloc hope they could make gains.
In fact, Duceppe went further than Harper on the niqab, saying his first priority if re- elected would be to push for legislation to ban the niqab for those seeking or providing public service. Those efforts seemed to give the Bloc a bump in popularity, but by the end of the campaign it did not seem enough.
For most of the past two decades, the Bloc has dominated federal elections in Quebec. The party won half to three- quarters of the province’s 75 seats in every election since 1993, except the last one. Quebeckers were seduced by the charisma of then- NDP leader Jack Layton, and the Bloc went from 47 seats to four.
The Bloc was formed in 1990 by Liberal and Progressive Conservative members of Parliament from Quebec after the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord. It was always supposed to be a temporary party, that would disband if and when Quebec voted to secede from Canada.