Duceppe

A weekly politics podcast with columnists Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells

Our columnists talk between stops on the campaign trail

A summary of the opposition’s reaction to the budget

So I didn’t make it to Duceppe’s address to IPSO (Intellectuels pour la souveraineté) yesterday. Life’s just too short and the lineup at Schwartz’s was too long. But this morning the Bloc sent out a release listing the main plot points of the speech. Like all good political speeches, it begins at the end:

We get press releases from the Bloc:
Conférence de Gilles Duceppe devant les Intellectuels pour la souveraineté

Ottawa, vendredi 27 novembre 2009 – Le chef du Bloc Québécois, Gilles Duceppe, donnera une conférence intitulée « Le Québec a-t-il un avenir dans le Canada? », dans le cadre d’un dîner-conférence organisé par les Intellectuels pour la souveraineté (IPSO), qui aura lieu le dimanche 29 novembre 2009. Les représentantes et les représentants des médias sont invités à assister à cet événement.

 

You may be surprised with what some notable Western Canadians have been saying this week about the crisis in Ottawa

In honour of the current goings on in Ottawa, in which the Liberals and the NDP are planning to form a coalition government with the tacit approval of the Bloc Québécois, DMA humbly presents, without comment, a few choice headlines from the run up to the 2006 federal election–AKA, the last time Canada underwent a ‘national unity crisis.’

 

“Traitors.” “Whores.” “Sellouts.” No, these aren’t the words of those charming scamps from out west, here and here, and they aren’t directed at those the poncy Liberal-NDP elitists who dare usurp the Conservative’s power. Rather, these are the sentiments of several ardent nationalists, who are infuriated at the Bloc Québécois for supporting our seemingly inevitable (but wait!) coalition government. It seems the irony of having the BQ as a de facto member of the government is as much of a problem for sovereignists as it is for another living west of Ontario and east of Vancouver.

“The Bloquistes are whores and traitors,” opined ‘Christian Lagevin’ on Le Québécois’ forum, in a thread entitled ‘The Treason of the Bloc Québécois’. “There’s nothing else to say. It’s so obvious. [The Bloc] has indirectly allied itself with two of the most anti-Quebec nationalist parties in Canada, neither of which unnderstands Quebec’s interests.”

“The neo-federalists are very happy with this pan-Canadian coalition with an ex-sovereignist party,” writes ‘Genesis’. “It’s not the Bloc’s job to help Canada to work, but to destroy it,” notes ‘Bourgault’. “I don’t see how the Bloc’s support of Dion and Layton advances the cause [of Quebec independence],” adds ‘Pierre Schneider’.

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED. See below.

Here at Deux maudits anglais headquarters, we’ve been wondering about the rather loose use of the term ‘nationalist’ in Quebec during this election. Sensible lads that we are, we discussed. Have a read.