Did the last election campaign ever really end?
With a PQ minority, the Liberal rebuilding and the CAQ lacking clout on its own, we’ve had 18 months of inaction: Almost nothing of value was accomplished at the National Assembly. And here we are in another campaign.
Peggy Curran examines the social, psychological and monetary cost of going to the polls again
David Birnbaum, a prominent member of the anglophone community, will run for the Quebec Liberals in their west-end stronghold of D’Arcy McGee.
Currently director general of the Quebec English School Board Association, Birnbaum, 57, is a former director general of Alliance Quebec and past head of the Quebec chapter of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
On Friday, Liberal MNA Lawrence Bergman, 73, made it official he is stepping down after representing the riding for 20 years.
D’Arcy McGee, where Bergman won by 20,000 votes in the last election, is among more than a dozen ridings seeing a changing of the guard in the current campaign.
“It’s normal,” said Harold Chorney, a professor of political science at Concordia University.
“In every election, people do decide not to run again, especially people in their ‘70s,” he said.
Thirteen of the 125 MNAs elected in 2012 have announced they will not seek re-election. They include Parti Québécois cabinet minister Marie Malavoy in Taillon, Coalition Avenir Québec’s Jacques Duchesneau in St-Jérôme and independent Daniel Ratté in Blainville.
But the wind of change seems to be blowing most strongly in the Liberal camp, with eight MNAs stepping aside, including 25-year veteran Henri-François Gautrin, 70, in Verdun, who announced his retirement after raising the ire of party brass for publicly predicting the Liberals were headed for defeat.
Also among those not seeking reelection are Vaudreuil Liberal MNA and former justice minister Yvon Marcoux, 72, and Nelligan MNA Yolande James, 36, a past minister of immigration and cultural communities.
“If it were clear that the Liberals were going to win a majority, then some of these people might hang on in the hope of getting a cabinet post,” Chorney said.
Polls show the PQ slightly ahead or neck and neck with the Liberals, but since Liberal support is concentrated in Montreal and western Quebec, some observers predict the PQ could win a majority.
Chorney praised Birnbaum as an excellent choice to carry the Liberal banner in the riding, which encompasses Côte St-Luc and Hampstead and has elected a Jewish MNA in every election since it was created in 1965.
“He’s got intellect, judgment and experience — all three,” said Chorney, who also welcomed the fact that Birnbaum is a Jewish anglophone running in an election where minorities are under-represented.
Birnbaum said running for office is a logical step after a career in public and community affairs.
The political climate since the PQ came to power in September 2012 induced him to run, he said.
“I think it’s a very important time. The past 18 months have been about division, a very small-minded look at what Quebec is and can be and an approach that has many people very worried about what comes next,” Birnbaum said in an interview at The Gazette’s office.
He said he endorses Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard’s “approach, which is with both feet on the ground talking about what matters, about the economy and about exploiting the fact that all Quebecers want to contribute.”
Birnbaum paid tribute to Bergman’s record and said the incumbent MNA’s decision to retire “was entirely his choice.”
At a press conference in his Cavendish Blvd. office, Bergman, a former notary, said he is still in excellent health and enthused by his work, but decided to step down to spend more time with his partner, children and four grandchildren.
A key link to the Jewish community, Bergman is legendary for his fundraising efforts. A former chair of the Liberal caucus, he said he never took a vacation during his 20-year political career, which included a stint as revenue minister from 2003-07. “I’ll always be a Liberal,” Bergman said, adding he has full confidence Couillard will lead the party to a majority by focusing on the economy and health care.
Tearing up as he reminisced about his political career, Bergman boasted of his role in achievements during Jean Charest’s Liberal government, including the building of a new wing of the Jewish General Hospital — where 77 per cent of patients are non-Jews, many from outside the Montreal area — and construction of the Shriners’ hospital on the site of the McGill University Health Centre.