Bloc Québécois

The Bloc Québécois is a federal political party in Canada that is devoted to the promotion of sovereignty for Quebec. It also holds the goal of the "defence of the interests of all Quebecers in Ottawa" (notably by promoting, in the federal parliament, the consensus of the National Assembly of Quebec). It has very close relations with the Parti Québécois, though it is incorrect to say that one is a branch of the other.

The Bloc Québécois is supported by large sections of organized labour in Quebec and works closely with the Parti Québécois. Members and supporters of the Bloc Québécois are sometimes called "Bloquistes" or (Bloc Soevreigntist) or, pejoratively, "Bloc-heads". The party itself is sometimes known as the "BQ".

Although the party formally claimed to stand on the social democratic end of the political spectrum, it has no particular unifying ideology, apart from promoting Quebec sovereignty.

Due to the nature of the party, candidates of the BQ run only in Quebec. The BQ is thus the only federal political party represented in the Canadian House of Commons to be active in only one province. Also, of the four political parties in the House of Commons, the BQ is the only party that is mathematically unable to form a majority government (the BQ could theoretically form a minority government, if more than four political parties are represented in the House of Commons), since Quebec only has 75 of the 308 House seats nationwide. English speaking Canadians commonly refer to the BQ as "the Bloc". The Bloc holds the balance of power after the 2006 election, therefore it will be able to co-operate with Stephen Harper's Conservative Party on the issues of resolving the fiscal gap between Ottawa and the provinces, especially Quebec, and on matters of Meech Lake Accord-style decentralization and power shift from Ottawa to the provinces.

History

Earlier projects

The idea of a Quebec nationalist party with candidates running for seats in the House of Commons is not new. The term Bloc Québécois was seen as early as 1926 in L'Action Française magazine in which an article called for a party of Quebecers defending Quebec's interests in Ottawa.

From March to May 1941 L'Action Nationale magazine renewed its calls for such a party, especially to oppose plans for conscription. In October 1941, the Bloc populaire canadien was created with those very objectives.

In September 1971, there was a similar plea in L'Action Nationale, this time with a view to countering the federalism of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. One year after the October Crisis, a desire to express frustration through democratic means was visible in the magazine: "The time has come to play hard; and it is necessary that it happens at the parliamentary stage to avoid other forms of violence." ^*

The Ralliement des créditistes was a rural Quebec-only federal party in the 1960s. Social credit ideology was based on the ideas of the British engineer, Major C.H. Douglas. The Créditistes took over the remnants of the federal Social Credit Party of Canada and had members elected to the House of Commons until 1979. While right-wing in approach, as opposed to the nominally more leftist Bloc, this party carried the torch of Quebec nationalism and separatism for decades.

The Union Populaire was a minor party that tried to build on the success of the Parti Québécois at the provincial level by nominating candidates in the 1979 and 1980 federal elections on a sovereigntist platform. The PQ, however, had rejected participation in federal elections and provided no support to the party, which achieved little success.

The Parti nationaliste du Québec was founded in the 1980s as an alternative to federalist parties (those opposed to independence for Quebec) and can be seen as a modest predecessor.

Finally, the Rhinoceros Party, founded in 1968 by Doctor Jacques Ferron, a renowned Quebec writer, won many votes from people who disapproved of federalist politicians. Jacques Ferron, the poet Gaston Miron and the singer Michel Rivard ran against the federalist Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in his seat of Mount Royal, but made little impact at a time when Trudeau was at the height of his popularity and influence.

Guy Bertrand, a former PQ candidate, had a plan to create a federal party in favour of Quebec independence, a Bloc Québécois, in the 1970s. René Lévesque, the founder and leader of the Parti Québécois, stated in his autobiography that he had opposed this plan, believing that it was not the right time to do so.

After decades of reflection and failed attempts to launch a sovereigntist party at the federal level, members of a sovereigntist party were first elected on the federal level during the 1990s.

Origins

The Bloc Québécois was started in 1990 as an informal coalition of Progressive Conservative and Liberal Members of Parliament from Quebec, who left their original parties around the time of the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord. The party was initially intended to be temporary and was given the goal of the promotion of sovereignty at the federal level. The party aimed to disband following a successful referendum on sovereignty. The term "temporary ad hoc rainbow coalition" is now used by the Liberal Party of Canada to refer to the group of MPs who founded the Bloc Québécois, primarily in reference to Jean Lapierre, who was once part of that group but has since renounced separatism and rejoined the Liberals under the leadership of Paul Martin.

The initial coalition that led to the Bloc was led by Lucien Bouchard, who had been federal Minister of the Environment until he was fired by then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (as pointed out in The Secret Mulroney Tapes). He was joined by several of his fellow Tories, such as Nic Leblanc, Louis Plamondon, Benoît Tremblay, Gilbert Chartrand and François Gérin, along with several Liberals, notably Gilles Rocheleau and Lapierre. The first Bloquiste candidate to be elected was Gilles Duceppe, then a union organizer, in a by-election for the Montreal riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie on August 13, 1990. He ran as an independent, since the Bloc had not been registered as a federal party yet.

First election

In the 1993 federal election, the Bloc won 54 seats in Quebec. Because the opposition vote in the rest of Canada was split between the Reform Party, the PC Party and the New Democratic Party, the Bloc narrowly won the second largest number of seats in the House of Commons, and therefore became the official opposition. The election of such a relatively large number of Bloquistes was the first of The Three Periods, a plan intended to lay out the way to sovereignty created by PQ leader Jacques Parizeau. Parizeau became Premier of Quebec in the Quebec election of 1994.

1995 Quebec referendum

In 1995, the PQ government called the second referendum on independence in Quebec history. The Bloc entered the campaign for the Oui (Yes) side (in favour of soveriegnty). The Oui side's campaign had a difficult beginning, so the leadership of the campaign was shifted from Parizeau to Bloc leader Bouchard. Bouchard was seen as more charismatic and more moderate, and therefore more likely to attract voters.

A "tripartite agreement" mapping out the plan for accession to independence was written and signed by the leaders of the Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois and the Action Démocratique du Québec on June 12, 1995. It revived Levesque's notion that the referendum should be followed by the negotiating of an association agreement between an independent Quebec and the rest of Canada. This provision was inspired by Bouchard. Parizeau had previously wanted a vote simply on independence. The difference became moot when 50.6% of voters taking part in the referendum rejected the sovereignty plan. An overwhelming "Non" vote in Montreal tipped the balance.

The day after the referendum, Parizeau stepped down as PQ leader and premier of Quebec. Bouchard left federal politics and succeeded Parizeau in both posts on January 29, 1996.

New leaders for the Bloc

Following Bouchard's departure from Ottawa, Michel Gauthier became leader of the Bloc. In the wake of the referendum defeat, Gauthier proved unable to hold the fractious caucus together and resigned as leader just one year later. Duceppe, who had served as interim leader after Bouchard stepped down, became leader of the Bloc in 1997 and remains leader today, making him the longest-tenured leader of a major Canadian federal party (as of 2006).

Declining fortunes

In the 1997 federal election, the Bloc Québécois dropped to 44 seats, losing official opposition status to the Reform Party. The 1997-2000 term was marked by the Bloc's fight against the passage of the Clarity Act, the attempt by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien (himself a Quebecer who represented a strongly nationalist riding) and Stéphane Dion, a Quebec minister in Chrétien's cabinet, to codify the Supreme Court of Canada's 1998 decision that Quebec could not secede unilaterally

In the 2000 election, the Bloc dropped further to 38 seats, despite polling a larger percentage of the vote than at the previous election. One factor was the forced merger of several major Quebec cities, such as Montreal, Quebec City and Hull/Gatineau. The merger was very unpopular in those areas, resulting in Liberal wins in several of the merged areas. This was still more than the number of seats the Liberals had won in Quebec. However, the Liberals went on to win several subsequent by-elections during the life of the resulting Parliament, until the Liberals had held the majority of Quebec's seats in the Commons for the first time since 1984. From then to the subsequent election, the Bloc continued to denounce the federal government's interventions in what the Bloc saw as exclusively provincial jurisdictions. The Bloc credits its actions for the uncovering of what has since become the sponsorship scandal. Among other things, the Bloc supported the Kyoto Accord, gay marriage and Legal issues, and opposed Canadian participation in the intervention in Iraq in 2003.

Comeback

The Bloc continued to slide in most of the 2003 opinion polls following the 2003 Quebec election which was won by the federalist Parti libéral du Québec led by Jean Charest. However, things changed during the winter of 2003, partly because of the unpopularity of Charest's government and the rise in support for independence in Quebec (49 per cent in March). However, in February 2004, the Auditor General of Canada uncovered the sponsorship scandal.

For the 2004 election the Bloc adopted the slogan Un parti propre au Québec, a play on words that can be translated either as "A party belonging to Quebec" (or simply, "a party proper to Quebec") or as "A clean party in Quebec". The Bloc won 54 seats in the House of Commons, tying its previous record from the 1993 campaign. For the 2006 election, the Bloc used the slogan Heureusement, ici, c'est le Bloc ("Thankfully, here, it's the Bloc" ^*). The Bloc were expected to easily win more than 60 seats at the start of the campaign, and they did in fact take six seats from the Liberals. However, the unexpected resurgence of the Conservatives in parts of Quebec, particularly in and around Quebec City, led to the Bloc losing eight seats to the Tories. Coupled with an additional loss to an independent candidate, the Bloc recorded a net loss of three seats compared to the last campaign.

Speculation has been ongoing about the possibility of the Bloc forming alliances with other opposition parties or with an eventual minority government. Duceppe, whose leadership was confirmed after the election, has stated that the Bloc will continue to co-operate with other opposition parties or with the government when interests are found to be in common, but insists that the Bloc will never participate in a federal government.

On May 2, 2006, a poll revealed that for the first time, the Conservatives were ahead of the Bloc in the Quebec's vote intention (34% against 31%). Duceppe announced the Bloc would support Stephen Harper's budget the very same day.

Relationship to Parti Québécois

The Parti Québécois has close ties to the Bloc and shares its principal objective of independence for Quebec. The two parties have backed each other during election campaigns, and prominent members of each party often attend and speak at the other's public events. In addition, the majority of each party's membership holds membership in both parties. However, on an organizational level the parties are separate entitites - the Bloc is not simply the federal wing of the Parti Québécois, nor the Parti simply the provincial wing of the Bloc.

Party leaders

Lucien Bouchard (July 25, 1990 - January 15, 1996)
Gilles Duceppe (January 16, 1996 - February 16, 1996 interim)
Michel Gauthier (February 17, 1996 - March 14, 1997)
Gilles Duceppe (March 15, 1997 - present)

Election results

Election	# of candidates nominated	# of seats won	# of total votes	% of popular vote (Canada)	% of popular vote (Quebec)
1993	75	54	1,835,784	13.52%	49%
1997	75	44	1,385,821	10.67%	38%
2000	75	38	1,377,820	10.72%	40%
2004	75	54	1,672,874	12.40%	49%
2006	75	51	1,552,043	10.48%	42.1%

External links

Bloc Québécois website (in French)
Report on the actions of the Bloc (in French)
2004 election platform (in French)
Summary of the 2004 election platform in English and in French
Text of the 1995 tripartite agreement in English and in French
Action Nationale article about the history of the project of a Quebec "Bloc" in Ottawa
SRC dossier on the constitutional saga (in French)

1991 establishments | Federal political parties in Canada | Secessionist organizations

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