Page 1 of 5

FRENCH POWER: FOR BETTER OR WORSE, THE WORM HAS TURNED By Peter G. White President, Brome-Missisquoi Conservative Association In 1967 Pierre Trudeau published a collection of his essays, Le Fdralisme et la socit canadiennefranaise (issued in English in 1968 as Federalism and the French Canadians). Mr. Trudeau reminded us that federalism is not simply a question of assigning various powers to Ottawa and the provinces. Equally important in any federal system is the issue of who gets to run the powerful central government. Mr. Trudeau had argued for years that French Canadians, from Quebec and elsewhere, had a right, a duty and an opportunity to play a far greater role in all instances of the federal government, and to participate fully in the management of the federation they had co-founded in 1867. This led to his rift with his long-time friend Ren Lvesque, who had concluded that French Canadians, or at least Quebecers, were wasting their time trying to gain influence in anglophone-dominated Ottawa and should concentrate exclusively on Quebec City, seat of the only government in Canada that they control unequivocally. In 1965 Jean Marchand and Grard Pelletier took up Mr. Trudeau s challenge, and with the benevolent complicity of prime minister Lester Pearson these three wise men were elected to the House of Commons and became ministers in Mr. Pearson s minority government. This was the beginning of the era of French Power in Ottawa, which at one point a generation ago saw French Canadians as governor-general, prime minister, chief of staff in the PMO, several senior ministers, clerk of the privy council, chief justice, head of the CBC and many other institutions, virtually all at the same time. Somehow, the country survived. Under Stephen Harper, how the worm has turned. Today, of the major federal offices of state, only the CBC presidency is held by a French Canadian (Hubert Lacroix, appointed by Mr. Harper in 2008). Even though Mr. Harper put 80% of his Quebec caucus into his current cabinet, these four ministers are without discernible influence or profile. Today the voice of Quebec is virtually absent in Ottawa s halls of power, or if present it is a voice grown mighty small, and mighty easy to ignore. The effect on both policy and tone is remarkable. This has not gone unnoticed in Quebec. Since the election of May 2, 2011, many Quebec observers have concluded that Mr. Harper has consciously decided to ignore Quebec, now that he has convincingly demonstrated that he can win a majority without it.

Page 2 of 5 He should find this even easier in 2015, with the addition to the Commons of 27 new non-Quebec seats under his new Fair Representation Act. For the first time ever, Alberta (34 seats) and B.C. (42 seats) will together have almost the same weight as Quebec s 78 seats. The West is in, while Quebec is out. Many Quebecers (reluctantly) concede the logic of Mr. Harper s putative position. Why should he continue to beat his head against Quebec s electoral brick wall? Despite (in his eyes) his best efforts, Quebec consistently turned its back on him and his party in 2004 (zero seats out of 75), 2006 (10 seats), 2008 (10 seats) and 2011 (five seats). Granted, Mr. Harper s electoral record in Quebec is on a par with those of Tupper, Borden, Meighen, Bennett (except in 1930), Manion, Bracken, Drew, Diefenbaker (except in 1958), Stanfield, Clark, Campbell, Charest, and Clark again which is why so few of them ever won a general election. This is not the place to assess the electoral wisdom of Mr. Harper s policies in Quebec, or the obvious ineffectiveness of his Quebec campaign teams and strategy in those four elections. But many had expected that Mr. Harper, arguably our most politically cunning and calculating prime minister (save perhaps Mackenzie King), would break this mold and do better in Quebec. To his great credit, Mr. Harper has reached out to Quebec in many ways. The potent symbolism of his recognition that the Qubcois form a nation within a united Canada (2006), his settlement of the socalled fiscal imbalance issue (2007), and the fact that he begins every speech in French, both at home and abroad, are much appreciated by Quebecers. But that was then. Except for his continued use of his excellent French, Mr. Harper now seems to have turned his attention elsewhere, seldom visiting Quebec or discussing Quebec issues. Since Laurier s first election as Liberal leader in 1891, the Conservatives have always been viewed in Quebec as the party of les Anglais. The only Conservative to consistently sweep Quebec since Macdonald is Brian Mulroney, a native Quebecer (58 seats in 1984, and 63 in 1988). But no Conservative leader, at least since Diefenbaker, has been seen by Quebecers to be as gratuitously oblivious of them as is Mr. Harper and his current majority government. Previous leaders all appeared at least to be trying their best to be sympathetic and understanding. I live in Quebec s Eastern Townships. Like most Quebec Conservatives, I cringe every time a federal policy or minister is portrayed in the local media as being flagrantly anti-Quebec. Generally, these incidents do not involve economic issues, nor matters of great national import. Rather they are symbolic sins of commission or omission, of the sort that inflame political passions and emotions, and reconfirm existing prejudices and preconceptions. They are taken as signs that Ottawa simply doesn t care what Quebecers may think or worse, doesn t even know, or care to know. Of the thousand small cuts, I will cite only one of the most egregious. When New Brunswick s Michael Ferguson, a unilingual anglophone, was nominated as auditor general an officer of the parliament of Canada, not of the government minister Vic Toews was caught on camera fleeing the media pack. Over his shoulder he tossed out the party line: We make appointments based solely on merit.

Page 3 of 5 Oh, really? What if Mr. Ferguson spoke only Swahili? Or what if (God forbid) he spoke only French, Canada s other official language? Would he now be our auditor general based on merit ? What does all this matter? Mr. Harper will likely win another majority, again without Quebec, in 2015. So why should we be concerned at his government s alienation from and of Quebec? For two reasons. First, Mr. Harper is handily proving Ren Lvesque s point. As several observers have noted, along with this de-Quebecization of Ottawa (indeed of Canada), we are also seeing the gradual de-Canadianization of Quebec. We are weakening the ties that bind. We are drifting ever farther apart. We are witnessing the slow de facto separation of Quebec from the rest of our country emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. Any competent Qubcois demagogue and there are several could easily fan the tinder into flames by decrying the many petty slights inflicted on Quebec s honour and pride at the hands of Ottawa since Mr. Harper has been prime minister. In November, the separatist newspaper Le Devoir said: Mr. Harper is untroubled by bilingualism nor by offending Quebec. On the contrary, he is doing all he can to alienate Quebec. But we can bet he would be the last to quibble over ways of preventing Quebec s independence in the event of a favourable vote. And this he does in the name of the unity of the Canadian nation while doing his utmost to divide it with all his might. In December, respected journalist Vincent Marissal said, in the federalist newspaper La Presse: Mr. Harper, your Canada is ugly. I have trouble believing that voters will long recognize themselves in a government that plays sheriff and bogeyman, that tramples on institutions, that scorns the courts and francophones, that tears up Kyoto, that plasters the Queen everywhere, that holds military march pasts in front of parliament, that insists on buying inadequate and costly planes and that abuses negative ad campaigns. Quebec s federalist government of premier Jean Charest will one day be replaced. Canadians must remember that despite the current tribulations of the Parti Qubcois, Quebec separatism is not dead, and it never will be. It is simply awaiting the opportunity to rise again. All that is required for the Parti Qubcois to become a contender in the next provincial election, or perhaps the one after, is a simple change in leadership. Second, the sheer political obtuseness of this policy should be obvious. Unless Mr. Harper actively wants to prevent appropriate Quebec representation in his caucus and his government, he should be doing everything he can to win more Quebec seats in the next election. It is the duty of the governing party to ensure adequate representation in the federal government from all regions of Canada. Mr. Harper knows this, and pays frequent lip service to this basic principle. Yet he does nothing about it, and by his neglect, benign or otherwise, he makes the situation worse. It would be a simple matter for Mr. Harper to refashion his extremely negative image in Quebec. But his continuing failure to do so makes Conservative electoral success in Quebec impossible.

Page 4 of 5 It is deeply painful and frustrating for Quebec Conservatives, of whom there are a great many (notionally perhaps 20% of the electorate, and far more in certain ridings), to watch our loyal efforts come to naught election after election, simply because the Conservative Party refuses to take even the slightest steps to improve Mr. Harper s image. Modern elections are won or lost by the party leaders. In 2011, Mr. Harper needlessly allowed Mr. Layton to take 59 Quebec seats, while he won only five. Unless Mr. Harper personally takes corrective action, the result in 2015 will be similar. Mr. Harper s political dream has always been to drive a stake through the heart of the Liberal Party of Canada. But his political neglect of Quebec is now giving the federal Liberals a sudden unexpected and wholly undeserved -- opportunity to sneak back into favour in the province. The Liberals need Quebec the way the Conservatives need the West. With the recent defection to the Liberals of New Democratic MP Lise St-Denis, we are already seeing how the Liberals can slowly rebuild their brand on Mr. Harper s back. (Why did Ms. St-Denis not join the governing Conservatives?) Given a young, inexperienced NDP Quebec caucus, and the Bloc Qubcois under its new leader torquing back into hardline nationalist territory and with AdScam drifting further away from voters minds there is an opportunity for the Liberals to retake a fair bit of ground in the province, particularly if the party goes through with the democratic renewal measures under consideration at its convention. Re-securing Quebec would re-energize the Liberals Ontario base, and all of a sudden Mr. Harper s studied (or otherwise) avoidance of Quebec will become a problem for him. In politics as in life, you deserve what you tolerate. And most Quebec Conservatives are fed up. The more cynical among us have already concluded, with Paul Valry, that Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. ___________________________________________________________________________________ In the view of some observers Mr. Harper has tried very hard to appeal to Quebec , even going too far in his recognition of the Qubcois as a nation. And now he has run smack into the syndromes of unlimited expectations and blackmail that Canada has endured from Quebec for decades. Such nonsense as the fuss in the 2008 election about minor cuts to federal support for the arts in Quebec is seen as an example of using the blackmail of separatism to try to bend the government of Canada. On this view, the gradual decoupling of Quebec and Canada, although unfortunate, can perhaps be stopped only by a return to a federal government dominated by Quebecers, and that is not in the cards. The people of Quebec have been and will continue to be the ultimate losers from these tactics. Canada is not interested in playing this game any more that was the lesson of the 1992 Charlottetown referendum and concerned Quebecers like myself should be trying to persuade other Quebecers to understand this. The problem with this interpretation is that it is rational, not emotional. As Laurier famouslypointed out to Henri Bourassa, Quebec does not have opinions, only sentiments. In the game of retail politics the customer is always right, even if his or her reasons make no logical sense. Great Canadian politicians, like Macdonald and King, always understood that it was not sufficient to have the right policies. You

Page 5 of 5 must also be successful in explaining and defending these policies to the people, and this requires the hard work of winning political support in every region of Canada by all legitimate means. Vincent Marissal, La Presse, 21 dcembre, 2011 : M. Harper, il est moche, votre Canada. J'ai du mal croire que les lecteurs se reconnatront encore longtemps dans un gouvernement qui joue les Shrif, fais-moi peur, qui pitine les institutions, qui mprise les tribunaux et les francophones, qui dchiquette Kyoto, qui placarde le portrait de la reine partout, qui organise des dfils militaires devant le parlement, qui insiste pour acheter des avions inadquats et coteux et qui abuse des campagnes ngatives. Opinion, Le Devoir, 10 novembre 2011 : Ce qui est clair, Harper n'a cure du bilinguisme ni de se mettre dos le Qubec. Au contraire, il fait tout pour se l'aliner. Et pourtant, il y a fort parier qu'il serait le dernier lsiner, le temps venu, sur les moyens prendre pour empcher la mise en uvre de l'indpendance du Qubec advenant un vote favorable. Et ce, au nom de l'unit de la nation canadienne alors qu'il s'acharne la diviser tour de bras.