In the Quebec City region, the voters are immune to left-leaning politics
Graeme Hamilton, nationalpost.com, Last Updated: Apr 22, 2011 11:41 PM ET
The Bloc Québécois’ leftward swing — derided by some as “too Montreal” — has made the largely right-wing city fertile ground for the Conservatives.
Last summer, Steven Blaney, the Conservative MP for Lévis – Bellechasse, triumphed in one of the fiercest battles of his career. As the smoke cleared, he emerged from a vintage Cadillac hearse, champion of an all-hearse demolition derby at the annual Festival des Barres à Jack. “He won the race, and he won the esteem of the crowd,” said Serge Laverdière, a car mechanic and organizer of the event (the Tire Irons Festival in English) in Saint-Raphaël-de-Bellechasse.
But as Mr. Blaney runs for re-election in his riding across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, his Bloc Québécois opponent has criticized his derby performance as frivolous. “An MP’s role is not to drive a hearse but to listen to his constituents and riding, and defend their interests in Ottawa,” Danielle-Maude Gosselin said as she launched her campaign.
Mr. Blaney shot back this week, saying he would not apologize for participating in local festivals. “Yes, I will serve trout at the Festival de Saint-Philémon … and yes, I participated in the Barres à Jack festival in Saint-Raphaël, and I am very proud of it,” he told reporters.
Demolition derbies are not exactly a priority issue, but the war of words is revealing of the campaign being fought in and around Quebec City. Since providing the Conservatives with the bulk of their 2006 breakthrough in the province, voters in the provincial capital region have remained a breed apart, immune if not hostile to the Bloc’s left-leaning politics. And despite speculation that the Tories could be punished for their refusal to subsidize a new hockey arena in Quebec City, they appear in little danger here as the May 2 vote approaches.
When Parliament was dissolved, the Conservatives held eight suburban and rural ridings in the region, including a stranglehold on the section of the province stretching south to the U.S. border. A ninth riding in the region was held by Independent MP André Arthur, who is so close to the Tories that the for the second straight election they have chosen not to run a candidate against him. The Bloc held three seats, closer to the heart of the city.
If there was one Quebec City riding the Bloc seemed positioned to win back, it was Beauport – Limoilou. The riding on the city’s outskirts is the planned home of the arena that the Conservatives refused to support. The low-profile incumbent, Sylvie Boucher, was among the Tory MPs who gave the impression their government was behind the project by donning Quebec Nordiques jerseys for a photo op last fall.
And the Bloc has recruited a star candidate, Michel Létourneau, the former general manager of Quebec’s summer festival and of its symphony orchestra. But a poll published this week in Le Soleil showed Ms. Boucher, who won by just 2,000 votes in 2008, enjoying a slight lead over Mr. Létourneau in what is essentially a two-person race. Mr. Létourneau acknowledges he has two significant challenges to overcome.
The poll found his supporters are less likely to turn out on election day than Ms. Boucher’s, and the rise of the NDP in Quebec is eating into his support. The poll showed NDP support has nearly doubled since the last election. “A vote for the NDP is a vote for Ms. Boucher,” he said he tells voters, “and a vote for Ms. Boucher is a vote for someone who is an extra in a movie.”
Voters interviewed at an Ashton poutine restaurant in Beauport did not consider the hockey arena a major issue, and a few said they have given up on the Bloc. “Who’s to say the others don’t also defend Quebec’s ideals?” asked Pierre Beauchemin, a retired dentist who was a committed sovereigntist in the 1970s.
Mr. Létourneau can see that the initial anger over the refusal to fund a new arena has dissipated. “It’s less visceral,” he said. An indication of this came last week when Mario Roy, a Lévis resident who became a local hero for organizing a huge march last fall in support of the arena and the Nordiques’ return, endorsed Mr. Blaney at a campaign event. “This guy is doing great things for the region,” Mr. Roy said.
Ms. Boucher said people have accepted the Conservative stand that the party will not fund professional sports stadiums. “We didn’t just say no to Quebec City. We said no everywhere,” she said. “It was not aimed only at Quebec City.”
A wild card in the election is the city’s popular mayor, Régis Labeaume. He was already unhappy with the federal government’s refusal to sign onto his arena project, which now will be built primarily with provincial and municipal money. And at Monday’s council meeting, he delivered a tirade against the Conservatives for dismissing his shopping list of demands made to federal leaders.
Among the big-tickets items are a tramway for the city and a high-speed rail link to Ontario. The Bloc, Liberals and NDP had offered their support, but the Conservatives said the projects were too costly at a time of deficit cutting. Mr. Labeaume lashed out against the Conservatives, saying it was “idiotic” to reduce his visionary proposal to the level of bean counting.
Interviewed the next day, both Ms. Boucher and Mr. Blaney refused to take the Mayor’s bait. “I won’t play that game because for me, contempt is the weapon of the weak,” Ms. Boucher said. Weighing in the Conservatives’ favour is the fact that the people of Quebec City have grown accustomed to their Mayor’s outbursts and will likely take the latest with a grain of salt.
Any damage inflicted on the Conservatives by Mr. Labeaume is countered by the attacks on the Bloc from the city’s talk radio stations. CHOI-FM, known as Radio X, regularly refers to Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe as “Big Eyes” and spends much of the day mocking him.
Mr. Létourneau said the hosts “put on a good show” but they distort the campaign. “It is like they are free electrons who do not respect any journalistic rules,” he said. “The cost is not considered an electoral expense, but it’s as if you had a 12-hour infomercial [for the Conservatives].”
When the Bloc first suffered its losses in the region in 2006, it commissioned former MP Hélène Alarie to investigate the causes. She came back with a brutal internal report that was later leaked. The party under Mr. Duceppe had transformed into a centre-left force with all the decisions made in Montreal and Ottawa. “It is a context where the more conservative voices in the regions have very little chance of being listened to,” Ms. Alarie wrote. “That is the case with the Quebec City region.” She heard the same refrain from defeated candidates, organizers and supporters: “The Bloc, its leader, its national organization, its program, the colour and smell that they give off, are too Montreal.”
The message was that Quebec City is a different universe, one with a long history of small-c conservative values that the Bloc ignored at its peril. This election, the Conservatives have dusted off the Alarie report and created a website around it, arguing that the Bloc has changed nothing in five years. In 2006, Ms. Alarie could not fathom why the party brought Creole musicians from Montreal for its major rally in the provincial capital. A similar report on the 2011 election might question why, instead of disparaging the Tire Iron Festival, the Bloc candidate in Lévis – Bellechasse didn’t get behind the wheel herself.
Graeme Hamilton, nationalpost.com, Last Updated: Apr 22, 2011 11:41 PM ET
The Bloc Québécois’ leftward swing — derided by some as “too Montreal” — has made the largely right-wing city fertile ground for the Conservatives.
Last summer, Steven Blaney, the Conservative MP for Lévis – Bellechasse, triumphed in one of the fiercest battles of his career. As the smoke cleared, he emerged from a vintage Cadillac hearse, champion of an all-hearse demolition derby at the annual Festival des Barres à Jack. “He won the race, and he won the esteem of the crowd,” said Serge Laverdière, a car mechanic and organizer of the event (the Tire Irons Festival in English) in Saint-Raphaël-de-Bellechasse.
But as Mr. Blaney runs for re-election in his riding across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, his Bloc Québécois opponent has criticized his derby performance as frivolous. “An MP’s role is not to drive a hearse but to listen to his constituents and riding, and defend their interests in Ottawa,” Danielle-Maude Gosselin said as she launched her campaign.
Mr. Blaney shot back this week, saying he would not apologize for participating in local festivals. “Yes, I will serve trout at the Festival de Saint-Philémon … and yes, I participated in the Barres à Jack festival in Saint-Raphaël, and I am very proud of it,” he told reporters.
Demolition derbies are not exactly a priority issue, but the war of words is revealing of the campaign being fought in and around Quebec City. Since providing the Conservatives with the bulk of their 2006 breakthrough in the province, voters in the provincial capital region have remained a breed apart, immune if not hostile to the Bloc’s left-leaning politics. And despite speculation that the Tories could be punished for their refusal to subsidize a new hockey arena in Quebec City, they appear in little danger here as the May 2 vote approaches.
When Parliament was dissolved, the Conservatives held eight suburban and rural ridings in the region, including a stranglehold on the section of the province stretching south to the U.S. border. A ninth riding in the region was held by Independent MP André Arthur, who is so close to the Tories that the for the second straight election they have chosen not to run a candidate against him. The Bloc held three seats, closer to the heart of the city.
If there was one Quebec City riding the Bloc seemed positioned to win back, it was Beauport – Limoilou. The riding on the city’s outskirts is the planned home of the arena that the Conservatives refused to support. The low-profile incumbent, Sylvie Boucher, was among the Tory MPs who gave the impression their government was behind the project by donning Quebec Nordiques jerseys for a photo op last fall.
And the Bloc has recruited a star candidate, Michel Létourneau, the former general manager of Quebec’s summer festival and of its symphony orchestra. But a poll published this week in Le Soleil showed Ms. Boucher, who won by just 2,000 votes in 2008, enjoying a slight lead over Mr. Létourneau in what is essentially a two-person race. Mr. Létourneau acknowledges he has two significant challenges to overcome.
The poll found his supporters are less likely to turn out on election day than Ms. Boucher’s, and the rise of the NDP in Quebec is eating into his support. The poll showed NDP support has nearly doubled since the last election. “A vote for the NDP is a vote for Ms. Boucher,” he said he tells voters, “and a vote for Ms. Boucher is a vote for someone who is an extra in a movie.”
Voters interviewed at an Ashton poutine restaurant in Beauport did not consider the hockey arena a major issue, and a few said they have given up on the Bloc. “Who’s to say the others don’t also defend Quebec’s ideals?” asked Pierre Beauchemin, a retired dentist who was a committed sovereigntist in the 1970s.
Mr. Létourneau can see that the initial anger over the refusal to fund a new arena has dissipated. “It’s less visceral,” he said. An indication of this came last week when Mario Roy, a Lévis resident who became a local hero for organizing a huge march last fall in support of the arena and the Nordiques’ return, endorsed Mr. Blaney at a campaign event. “This guy is doing great things for the region,” Mr. Roy said.
Ms. Boucher said people have accepted the Conservative stand that the party will not fund professional sports stadiums. “We didn’t just say no to Quebec City. We said no everywhere,” she said. “It was not aimed only at Quebec City.”
A wild card in the election is the city’s popular mayor, Régis Labeaume. He was already unhappy with the federal government’s refusal to sign onto his arena project, which now will be built primarily with provincial and municipal money. And at Monday’s council meeting, he delivered a tirade against the Conservatives for dismissing his shopping list of demands made to federal leaders.
Among the big-tickets items are a tramway for the city and a high-speed rail link to Ontario. The Bloc, Liberals and NDP had offered their support, but the Conservatives said the projects were too costly at a time of deficit cutting. Mr. Labeaume lashed out against the Conservatives, saying it was “idiotic” to reduce his visionary proposal to the level of bean counting.
Interviewed the next day, both Ms. Boucher and Mr. Blaney refused to take the Mayor’s bait. “I won’t play that game because for me, contempt is the weapon of the weak,” Ms. Boucher said. Weighing in the Conservatives’ favour is the fact that the people of Quebec City have grown accustomed to their Mayor’s outbursts and will likely take the latest with a grain of salt.
Any damage inflicted on the Conservatives by Mr. Labeaume is countered by the attacks on the Bloc from the city’s talk radio stations. CHOI-FM, known as Radio X, regularly refers to Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe as “Big Eyes” and spends much of the day mocking him.
Mr. Létourneau said the hosts “put on a good show” but they distort the campaign. “It is like they are free electrons who do not respect any journalistic rules,” he said. “The cost is not considered an electoral expense, but it’s as if you had a 12-hour infomercial [for the Conservatives].”
When the Bloc first suffered its losses in the region in 2006, it commissioned former MP Hélène Alarie to investigate the causes. She came back with a brutal internal report that was later leaked. The party under Mr. Duceppe had transformed into a centre-left force with all the decisions made in Montreal and Ottawa. “It is a context where the more conservative voices in the regions have very little chance of being listened to,” Ms. Alarie wrote. “That is the case with the Quebec City region.” She heard the same refrain from defeated candidates, organizers and supporters: “The Bloc, its leader, its national organization, its program, the colour and smell that they give off, are too Montreal.”
The message was that Quebec City is a different universe, one with a long history of small-c conservative values that the Bloc ignored at its peril. This election, the Conservatives have dusted off the Alarie report and created a website around it, arguing that the Bloc has changed nothing in five years. In 2006, Ms. Alarie could not fathom why the party brought Creole musicians from Montreal for its major rally in the provincial capital. A similar report on the 2011 election might question why, instead of disparaging the Tire Iron Festival, the Bloc candidate in Lévis – Bellechasse didn’t get behind the wheel herself.