Comments are open for those interested in the Quebec election. (Final projections at threehundredeight.com)
UPDATE: Returns are coming in, and networks are already projecting a Liberal government.
PQ HQ is in disbelief. Only sound is coming from the speakers. Many long faces. #qc2014
— Thomas Daigle (@thomasdaigle) April 8, 2014
Well, maybe next time.
How come there is no Communist party in Quebec? It would be a natural.
It’s,interesting to note that for the first time in my life (68 yrs) no one seems to give a rat’s ass how this turns out. Myself included.
Monte Solberg writing at the Sun News Network:
“I wonder if, amongst the accusations of personal wrongdoing, any of the leaders in the Quebec election campaign bothered to note that Quebec will soon lose its status as Canada’s second-largest economy?”
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2014/04/20140407-072043.html
I’m saddened by the Liberal resurgence in Quebec…
I’ll ask it again: When does the Rest of Canada get to vote on Quebec being allowed to stay?
John Galt III “How come there is no Communist party in Quebec?”
I count 4 of them.
I always wondered why the Bloc didn’t run candidates in ridings outside Quebec.
Unfortunately the sponge will remain in Canada forever.
Well the Liberal party and organized crime walk hand in hand in that festering Province so, I predict a Liberal “victory”. It will be fun to listen to the “pundits” ignore the obvious. Same old same old.
Quebec reminds me of the Monty Python dead parrot sketch with Quebec playing the role of the death parrot quite convincingly. Quebec is, if not dead, certainly dead weight. I say good riddance if they want to go or not. We can drag in all the euphemisms that the skit did, but Quebec is dead to the rest of Canada and it is time to see how well the dead bird can fly on it’s own.
Hopefully not before you and many others realise that Quebec is irrevocably part of Canada, it can’t go anywhere, and that vote/referendum should be about on what terms the Quebecois should be allowed to stay and if they don’t accept them, whether to issue them one suitcase or two at taxpayer’s expense.
Will be a liberal minority gov. Protesters will continue to rant, rave and rage-on, whining about how their not getting their their “entitlements” and no one will pay them anymore attention that a passing back glance.
Quebec separatists are like the Palestine. Worn out their fake pity party already save for the “entitled” groups like the useless UN and their devotees.
And tomorrow the victors will have the financial books opened so they can see the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the end its the oncoming train of fiscal reality.
Pauline is already looking at a tax haven in the Cayman Islands.
The only way the PQ can save their house now is to ditch the separatist plank and move on….. but then maybe that was PKP plan all along.
CAQ may come on stronger as the night goes on. They will have more support in more rural areas.
I wished the PQ would have won a huge majority cause then the’d gone for the referendum and we could reconstitute with a coalition of the willing.
CBC is declaring a Liberal majority, Libs leading 71-36.
As my son just asked what the difference between the two main Parties was, I explained to the best of my modest ability;”the Liberals represent graft, corruption, and thievery,while the PQ represents graft,corruption, thievery AND separation.”
Now, with most of Canada governed by Liberals at the Provincial level, including the Liberals-in-disguise in Alberta, can we expect a Liberal government at the federal level in 2015?
Sub-titled:”are Canadians truly THAT stupid”?
Disappointing really, chances that the 5th column province will finally FOAD delayed again.
Obviously the Parizeau fear of the ‘ethnics’ is coming to fruition. It is somewhat humorous to those with an open mind to reality to see that the secularists who abort and birth control their future away will fall before the demographic reality they ignore. The only consolation for living in Ontario is that it isn’t Quebec. Yet. Small comfort.
Voted this evening & there was a choice for the Communist Party as well as an option for the Green Party.
Obviously more sexist voters hating women premiers, or something.
The anglos in Quebec give a rat’s ass.
Well, the Liberal governments in Quebec and BC are better than the alternative and in fact have a hefty number of conservatives in both. With a wild rose win in alta next election and a conservative win in ontario, you might end up with the best you can hope for in the biggest 4 provinces where 85% of Canadians live.
This is likely the end of the separatist movement in Quebec. The demographics are against them now and they know it. There’s little interest in separation among the 20-and 30-somethings. And even less among the various ethnic communities. If Quebec can’t go to a successful “yes” referendum now, it never will during the lifetime of anyone here.
Two large political revolutions have occured during our recent political history. This is one of them, namely that separatism in Quebec is essentially a dead letter. And the second is that Quebec is no longer essential to form a majority federal government. And the first is in part a consequence of the second.
So for all of you hoping for a Quebec “yes” vote, forget it, it ain’t gonna happen.
It’s over, turn out the lights. Rene Levesque has left the room.
Hard to get excited over the libranos winning again in quebek. Jean Charest ran a very corrupt government, got punted and here they are, back in power. Corruption is accepted as a way of life in quebek.
The next federal election will be a blood bath in quebek. Jr. will have to go all in to take out the ndp. He will probably get it done.
Harper might benefit from some vote splitting and win a few seats. It’s been nice to watch the CPC govern without having half the cabinet from quebek.
“And the first is in part a consequence of the second.”
Actually, you have it backwards. The second is a consequence of the first.
Quebec’s population growth has lagged the rest of Canada. That is mostly because of sub-par economic growth, the treatment of minorities, and the threat of separatism, all three of which are somewhat related. So that is partly why it’s now easier to win a majority government in Canada without Quebec. You can thank separatism for that.
😉
Also, a very elegant/condign outcome, IMO, for a, er, certain person who stood back and chose not to interfere, and who has, so far, honoured that agreement, of which he was the founder, with both Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau, Jr. Not that the latter gentlemen could resist the temptation to start shooting their mouths off — one voting today and the other talking about “jobs, the economy and the middle class” this evening. Bwah ha ha ha! Does it get any more pathetic, or surreal?
And not really so good for Premier Spouse/Lawsuit (as opposed to Premier Dad or Premier Mom), in that it really is all about jobs, the economy and public finances, and not really about, you know, how different, unique, cutting-edge or victimized/outraged you like to pretend you are.
Or very good for Forum Research (who mysteriously showed up twice in Eric Grenier’s summary).
Overall, a great few weeks for Canadian democracy — I, for one, will be going now to listen to “The Taliban Song”, by Toby Keith.
No massive protests over the fact that you aren’t allowed to vouch for another voter in quebec or Ontario?
And I can’t wait for the CBC’s article on how she got the punt because of sexism.
Or does that just happen in redneck Alberta?
Parizeau blamed the ethnics, will Marois blame the sexists?
Good news for Harper, if everyone in quebec hated the feds like they are supposed to they might have hung on to the separatists government. Instead it was a good old fashioned woodshed beating.
Au revoir, Marois!!!
(It kind if rhymes!)
I would rather the CAQ or the PQ win than the Liberals. At least they stand for something.
Well, another vote for business as usual with a side of extra graft. How very expectable.
But really, who was there for your average Quebecois to vote for? Marois with her insane separatism, the even more insane Greenies, or Conservatives who will start in cutting all your benefits and freebies, and who are The Nazi Anti-Christ you’ve been warned about since you were a kid.
Too bad the Liberals are just as insane as the PQ and the Greenies. Too bad they are actually the fascists your old granny warned you about.
Back to the same old whinge, about how nobody makes a case for limited government anymore, and how its all spend, spend, spend.
I figure it’ll all hit the wall soon enough. If the corruption wasn’t enough of a clue, maybe a nice famine will be.
Quebec Solidaire is socialist.
The Bloc Quebecois is federal, not provincial.
There is virtually no Progressive Conservative party in Quebec. They are just starting up.
Liberals are the best of a bunch of bad choices.
Quite right, David. It’s a very good result, particularly for Mr. Harper. Peter McKay demonstrated the textbook method of giving the media the brushoff when it tried to scrum him on this last week.
Of course the othter two had to open their yaps; they don’t have any future growth anywhere except among the soft sovereigntists of Quebec (and a few very silly places in BC like Salt Spring Island).
And yes, it’s the end of this Premier Pantsuit, following the lead from Alberta last month. Now, if we can just get rid of the (w)itch currenly occupying Queens Park, the trifecta will be complete.
And yes, it’s a very good result because too many of the resident separatists here fail to understand the huge costs to the rest of Canada in the event of even a limited Quebec separation. They suffer from the Marois Disease, but then separatists of all stripes always suffer from both limited vision and a general inability to get along with anyone even a little bit different.
Just now trying to listen to the translator for the Liberal leader’s victory speech.
Where did they find this translator for the Global Network? His voice is barely audible and sounds like he has a mouth full of marbles while chewing on a package of crackers. Unbelievable that a professional(sic) communications company couldn’t find somebody who was more concise and clear. Did I say UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!
I must confess to being disappointed. Not because there is another corrupt Liberal Provincial Government, but, that there will not be a referendum on separation. With a majority P.Q. the question would have been settled for once and for all.
However it appears the ordinary Quebecker recognized R.O.C. really doesn’t give a damn if they stay or go so it is better to lay low. Sooner or later there will be another brokerage political party in Ottawa and this party will go back to buying Quebec votes at the Canadian federal level.
Possibly we in Upper and Western Canada will be able to keep the brokerage political parties at bay for a while, but the Regional bleating will start again next year and the Atlantic/Quebec dependency regions will be selling their votes to the highest bidder once again. Cheers;
It was all those 20-year-old “Vote for the crooks – it’s important” bumper stickers pulled out of storage in Louisiana that turned the tide.
tee-hee…
I recall another such result back in 92 where the sitting govt got its butt kicked and the incoming one promised a new day complete with the elimination of a much hated tax. Two years later same govt after having the fiscal riot act read to them by the IMF was forced to govern against its own ideology.
I expect a repeat in Quebec.
The lpq is and always will be dependant on promises to bring home the bacon, just as any political party in the Urban ridings accross the country and there are a mass of bureaucrats eager to fill a govt ministers ear with just this kind of nonsense.
I give this provincial govt two years to get its fiscal house in order by allowing actual resourse development, then the revelations of scandal and malfeasance will start to surface and the farce of separatist threat will begin again… Hopefully at that time the Prime Minister won’t be from Quebec and easily swayed by the thought of losing their seat because of that nonsense.
Gotta ike the way our PM publicly ignored the Quebec election, nary a comment. Now, if the rest of the country can give them less attention, maybe they’ll get to work, grow their economy from their natural resources and stop perpetually sucking the Equalization teat.
“Gotta ike [sic] the way our PM publicly ignored the Quebec election, nary a comment.”
Well, at first I was unhappy with the federal silence, particularly from Mr Mulcair who is from the province and whose party relies on it. But in retrospect, I have to admit that all three federal parliamentary leaders effectively ignoring the election was probably a very wise move.
I understand too that the PM had closed door meetings with both Mulcair and Trudeau regarding the election. Looks like all three quietly signed on to a common strategy.
Seriously? What has really changed with this election? Absolutely nothing!
Andrew Coyne gets this one right:
http://o.canada.com/news/national/quebec-voters-figure-canadas-not-so-bad-after-all-coyne/
A few of the money bits:
“No, it’s even worse than that. Because this time Quebecers rejected secession without being offered any special inducement to do so. The 1980 referendum defeat always carried an asterisk in separatist record books because of Pierre Trudeau’s vague promise of constitutional change: a promise he delivered in 1982, though the separatists never saw it that way.
The near-death experience of the 1995 referendum was followed by a range of propitiatory offerings on the federalist side: not only the devolution of various federal powers, but the delivery of bundles of cash, notably under the pretense of solving the “fiscal imbalance.” The received wisdom in federalist circles for many years held that Quebecers could never be asked just to accept Canada as it is: the dreaded “status quo.” There had to be offers.
But this time around there were no offers. Worse, there was the insulting presence in power in Ottawa of the Harper Conservatives, the most unpopular federal government in the province since Borden: another “winning condition,” many feared. Worse yet, under the mild-mannered Philippe Couillard, the Liberals ran the most unconditionally federalist campaign in 50 years. Couillard’s lone foray on the constitutional file ended with a vow not to discuss it unless the other premiers wanted to bring it up. Why, he even had nice things to say about bilingualism, which all of the usual suspects agreed was a gaffe that might well doom his campaign. Didn’t really work out that way, did it?”
…
“Then why were they so unhappy all those years? Perhaps in time a third thunderclap will hit: it was precisely because they had been told they had those other options — as the seemingly eternal readiness of the rest of Canada to respond seemed to prove. Offers, it seems, were not the solution. They were the problem.”
This seems to me to rather foist the Quebec-based federal party leaders on their own petard (– ‘cept that Justin couldn’t vote ’cause he lives in Ottawa, but last-evening he said he was “proud that my [sic] fellow Quebeckers have chosen unity and acceptance…”!?; which is even more ironic because he said the other year that he’d rather have an independent Quebec than have to live in one with Stephen Harper’s values; the boy-man is a real pistol, isn’t he?).
Undoubtedly, this lesson will be completely lost on Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau, Jr., who will undoubtedly be falling all over themselves to pander (making of “offers”) for votes in Quebec in the 2015 election. They won’t be able to help themselves, and this will not play well across the country, as Coyne notes: heck, it’s almost like it’s a winning condition for Stephen J. Harper — turn-about is fair play, in my book. So much of the self-professed rationale of the Liberal Party of Canada has just disappeared.
Good link, David. Yes, Coyne is absolutely right. Then there’s this:
“An Ekos poll midway through the campaign showed support for Quebec’s separation was higher in the rest of Canada than it was in Quebec.”
Facts on the ground beat delusions in the campaign HQ every time. The PQ knew this was the Third Rail, but they had to touch it anyway. It’s their raison d’etre. Like the BQ, the PQ has no reason to exist except to separate Quebec from Canada. Rene Levesque made that very clear in his manifesto in the early ’70s.
To a certain extent I disagree with Coyne about the Bloc wipeout two years ago compared with last night’s separatist catastrophe. In Quebec, the BQ was always second fiddle. For any ambitious separatist, the place to be was Quebec City in the National Assembly, not Ottawa. Last night, however, it was the main contender that went down hard, not the sidekick who had already been kicked to the kerb.
“Third rail” is such a great expression, isn’t it?
Pandering to Quebec is the “third rail” of Canadian politics west of the Ottawa River, and represents the intrinsic vindication of the Reform Party, just in case anyone is confused about where the CPC lives. I get a big kick out of the Jeffrey Simpson and Warren Kinsella types who are trying to portray the non-intervention strategy as having somehow emerged organically among the federal party leaders. Absolute BS: it didn’t emerge organically; Stephen Harper arranged it.
Trudeau, with his “Quebeckers are better than everybody else” attitude, has a real problem now — he’s caught between the CPC and the NDP: the CPC won’t pander to Quebec and the NDP will go all in (that’s what they do in every circumstance anyway, and they have no choice now).
Also:
– remember (1987, I believe) how Brian Mulroney galvanized the Reform movement in Western Canada by awarding the maintenance contract on the CF-18As to Quebec-based Canadair (a then-recent acquisition, through federal government divestiture, by Quebec-based Bombardier). Bristol Aerospace of Winnipeg was judged to have the technically superior bid at a lower cost.
That sure made headlines then, but I haven’t seen any commentary about Stephen Harper’s decision, over Ukraine, to suspend a $9.0 billion Russian order for Bombardier regional jets — and he did it in the middle of the Quebec election campaign, just in case anyone is confused about where Mr. Harper’s priorities are at (I know, I know: 4.7% of the senators he has appointed have turned out to be bums, and everbody knows Dmitri Soudas getting fired is the biggest issue of all time; anybody even know who the LPC ED is?).
– If PKP runs for the PQ leadership (actually, now that’s he’s a sitting MNA), Mr. Mulroney should do the right thing and leave Quebecor, regardless of the consequences to his law firm.
“Are Canadians really that stupid?” In Nfld the answer is “yes.” On the whole I like
many Newfs, and respect a few, but my candid opinion on their political intelligence
would distress Ms. McMillan’s prissy spam filter.
ROC? Many Quebecers seem to be struggling to rid themselves of the succubus* of corrupt
politics. One of my immediate colleagues is a Quebecois and his only sentiment for his
home province seems to be a fanatical enthusiasm for the Montreal Canadiens.
Ontario? Stunned as they come. An Ontarioarioarian will vote for anything Liberal, and despite
somehow managing to upset the Wynne (it’s like being attacked by a rabbit) the Hudak can be
counted on to deliver the province to the Libs.
Westward? Things seem a bit healthier. Maybe Sask has been cured of socialism, or having
exported it to the rest of us is now bored with it, but I’m not holding my breath.
Alberta? The ouster of the Red Rat is encouraging. BC? Who knows?
*a note to Ms. McMillan’s prissy spam filter: “succubus” is not a dirty word but describes an evil
ghost.
That Sun News owner fellow sure turned out to be the fat ladies NBF, no?
Bet she is unfriending him this morning.
What a blow to an anti business bunch of parasites.
Shot down by a helping businessman.
Har har har.
I would have preferred more CAQ seats but this is still pretty great. The Liberals seem interested in resource development without bizarre taxpayer-financed schemes. If Couillard really wants to be something he should kill Bill 101.
Coyne makes the comment that Quebec now has now implicitly signed onto the 1982 constitution. Actually they did this more explicitly in 1982 when they amended much of their legislation to include the Charter’s notwithstanding clause. This practice went on for a few years. Bill 101 did use the notwithstanding clause with respect to English on outdoor signs.
Whether signing or not they have been bound for 32 years by the 1982 constitution, it is only of symbolic concern if they ever sign it.
The cancelation of the Bombardier deal was mentioned in the press and backpaged so deep you needed to find it with an excavator. Hasn’t been a whisper of significant commentary on it.
As for the Libs and Dips, as long as they have nothing competitive in Western Canada they’ve essentially abandoned what will soon be Canada’s second largest economy entirely to the exclusive preserve of the CPC. At this time, they have no future except for squabbling over pieces of Quebec in looking for growth. Nobody wins elections by sweeping the Maritimes, so that’s out.
What Jeffey and Warrie are really lamenting is the disintegration of the Laurentian Consensus. It’s over; demographics and economics killed it, and there’s no bringing back that Humpty Dumpty. Their political views are now as obsolete as flint-tipped spears, and their whining shows just how thoroughly they are becoming aware of it. As Wells accurately pointed out, regardless of formal signatures, the repeated rejection of separation, the latest one being the most emphatic, Quebec has accepted the Constitution of 1982. They just can’t bring themselves to mouth the words. It would sound too much like Surrender.
Mulroney, do the right thing? Hardly, the man’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. As for the PQ, there’s going to be an interesting split among them. Pragmatists are going to blame PKP for the electoral disaster, but his championship of separation is going to draw the diehards to his cause. May the PQ civil war be long and with many, many casualties. You may be very sure that Jacques Parizeau will weigh in heavily, clumsily and with malice.
Have you tried copying your text before submitting your entry so that when you get the boot you can paste your text and try again. I’ve done it numerous times and it works the second time.
Never signed on to that myth that Quebec didn’t sign on to the constitution. The majority of M.P.’s from Quebec were from the Liberal Party and what were they, chopped liver?
I seem to remember Gilles Ducepped of the Bloc going to a Parti Quebecois convention and talking about separation and a referendum. The Bloc never recovered. I guess Pauline and PKP forgot that.