Scott Reid has some advice for the Prime Minister.
The fourth and final tactic is to make a high-profile beau geste: Mr. Harper should apologize to Quebec. He should go to Quebec City and tell voters in that province he was wrong. He was wrong to attack the arts when they are so critical to Quebec’s heritage, to imply culture is an indulgence rather than an integral component of identity, and above all to attack the coalition in the way he did, insofar as it left the impression that he equates Quebec pride and nationalism with a separatist impulse to destroy the country. And then he should explain, contritely, what Quebec means to him as a Prime Minster, why he moved to respond to the fiscal imbalance argument and above all why he formally recognized Quebeckers as a nation in the federal Parliament.