Harper and Quebec

Turns out Canada’s Machiavellian genius of a prime minister can be pretty crass after all. (Colour me surprised.) Before the election, Stephen Harper viewed the global financial crisis as little more than a “good buying opportunity.” But now that we’re in a full-blown “technical” recession, Harper’s got more than his mother’s stock portfolio on his mind. Never one to pass up an opportunity to kick the legs out from underneath his political opponents, Harper figures he can use the time he won’t be spending coming up with a stimulus package to defend a move to bankrupt the opposition as a cost-cutting measure. (Think of the trips Conservatives officials will be able to make with an extra $30-million kicking around!)_

Remember when Charest and Harper were all buddy-buddy just before the 2007 Quebec election? How, just a few days before the vote, Ottawa cracked open its chequebook and sent $2.3-billion to the perpetually cash-strapped province, all under the guise of settling the fiscal imbalance? It was as transparent a ploy as anything the Conservatives had done in their first year in office. The message: vote Charest and Quebec’s squeaky wheels are going to see a whole lot of grease.

Going into the election, André Arthur’s seat in Portneuf-Jacques-Cartier seemed as safe as anyone’s. The former shock jock turned independent MP walloped the riding’s Bloc incumbent in 2006, winning by a 7,000-vote majority. Somehow, that lead shrunk to some 600 votes on October 14. Arthur was none too happy about it when I spoke to him last week, nor was he impressed with the Conservatives’ showing in Quebec:

Well, it’s all over but the calls for resignation. I suppose it’s time to break it down:

The Bloc Québécois’s been running an ad warning the Conservatives that “Quebec was going to stand in the way” of a Harper majority. Now, we find out if he’s right.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HZKgZ4p4jA

I think it’s safe to presume the Tories’ sweeping cuts to arts funding in Canada haven’t gone over quite as well as the Harper government had hoped. Sure, the National Post gave the cuts its predictable thumbs-up, but the government’s explanations have such gaping holes in them, it’s been hard to take any of them seriously.

With the ADQ in a tailspin once again, you have to wonder if Mario Dumont isn’t mulling over Lucien Bouchard’s advice from a few years back. According to La Presse‘s Denis Lessard, in 2006, Bouchard told Dumont trying to rescue the ADQ was an exercise in futility and recommended he start looking elsewhere:

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