Topsy-turvy Quebec election campaign hinges on gaffes, flood of federal money
Sun Mar 25, 8:25 PM
By Les Perreaux
MONTREAL (CP) - History, a flood of federal money and the promise of tax cuts could combine to save Jean Charest when Quebecers cast their ballots on Monday.
A couple of those supposed advantages could also sink him instead.
In the topsy-turvy 2007 Quebec election campaign, Charest watched a comfortable lead slip away while Mario Dumont's right-wing, populist Action democratique du Quebec rose from the ashes.
Charest could be the first Quebec premier in 40 years to be denied a second consecutive majority mandate.
Just how low Charest's Liberals will sink and how high Dumont's party will soar are mysteries to be solved Monday.
Parti Quebecois Leader Andre Boisclair exceeded expectations with a steady campaign but gained little popular support. But even if the PQ barely budges from poor 2003 results, Boisclair could win with unpredictable vote splits.
In the dying days of the election run, Prime Minister Stephen Harper tossed a Hail Mary pass to Charest in billions of dollars in transfers to Quebec.
Charest immediately handed off a $700-million promise of income tax cuts, an offering that reminded voters of billions in tax reductions he failed to deliver in his last mandate.
Whether Quebecers call interference on a crass play of political opportunism may determine whether the Liberals eke out victory in the tightest three-way race in recent Canadian politics.
"People may seem angry but a lot of people may be quietly tempted to say, 'I'm going to shut up and take the money,' " said Christian Bourque, a pollster with Leger Marketing.
"I've never seen an announcement of tax cuts so late in a campaign. I've never seen a federal budget in the midst of a provincial campaign. So I've got no clue what the impact has been."
Quebec elections have a long tradition of narrowing into a two-way race, with the winner usually apparent by voting day.
Not this time.
"The image I have in mind is a three-lane highway and since the 19th century in Quebec, we've never had a campaign where the three parties stay on the highway until the end," said Guy Laforest, a political scientist at Universite de Laval in Quebec City.
"I don't think anybody's going to crash. All three parties will stay on the road, and we'll have three parties recognized in the national assembly.
"Good luck to anyone who tries to predict in what order."
There have been no crashes, but each party has hit potholes in a campaign that revolved around gaffes and gotcha moments more than grand visions.
Dumont sprang first from the gate, making an announcement-a-day - just like Harper in his winning campaign of 2005-2006.
Suddenly a party sidelined since a crushing result in 2003 - winning just four out of 125 seats - was back in the game.
Dumont sowed the seeds of his rise last year when Quebec became embroiled in acrimonious debate over accommodation of religious minorities.
While his opponents dithered, Dumont said Quebec should stop bending over backwards for new arrivals.
The ADQ leader was called a demagogue - he was even compared to French extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen - but he found a vein of discontent, especially outside Montreal.
As the campaign began, the ADQ seemed immune to a litany of idiot eruptions among Dumont's unknown candidates.
Dumont fired two of them and might have ditched a few others if the deadline to remove them from ballots had not passed.
Their transgressions ranged from minimizing violence against women to decrying the "ethnics" flooding the province. One turned to the age-old saw of anti-Semitism, blaming Jews for war and profiteering. Another accused Boisclair of taking political advantage of his homosexuality.
Through it all, the ADQ's first-half march was unrelenting.
"There are people voting against the Charest government, against Charest, against old politics, the old system," said Bourque.
"It's the regions voting against Montreal and with all of this 'against' vote, the only person who represents them all is Dumont."
But Dumont's dominance seemed to plateau.
Assailed for vague spending plans, the ADQ leader was embarrassed on a popular Quebec talk show with nearly two million viewers when he refused to fill blackboard blanks with the cost of his promises.
While most pundits found the ambush unfair, the stunt illustrated holes in Dumont's platform.
Dumont, 36, created the most memorable moment of the televised leadership debate.
The ADQ leader flashed documents he said proved the Liberals covered up the cause of a deadly overpass collapse.
A closer reading of the documents undermined Dumont's claim and left him accused of lying. But the image that Charest was the rattled leader of a flagging campaign was set.
Charest seemed to waken with the debate shakeup.
The Liberal leader gave a good-humoured performance on Tout le monde en parle - the same talk show that embarrassed Dumont.
But overall Charest ran like a sleepy front-runner with a 20-point lead instead of a man fighting for his political life.
The Liberal leader bragged about gains from Ottawa, including billion-dollar deals, an enhanced international role and national recognition for the province.
He got credit for none of it.
Newspapers were instead filled with headlines about overflowing emergency rooms.
Boisclair began the campaign with a challenge from hard-core separatists in PQ ranks. Even former leader Bernard Landry questioned his judgment.
Boisclair faced two unusual questions at the start. Would his past cocaine use as a cabinet minister haunt him? And would his homosexuality be an issue?
The drug use never surfaced, but a regional radio host questioned the electability of the PQ, calling it a "club de tapettes" - the French equivalent of a club of fags.
In response to the slur, Boisclair became choked up talking about sexuality. He seemed to find a vein of sympathy he failed to hit with fine suits, wooden speeches and his haughty manner.
He showed his thin skin later when he was called to task for lumping Asian students together by describing the slant of their eyes in a French speech.
Most francophones say "les yeux brides" is a benign expression. Boisclair was bewildered by suggestions he apologize and angrily defended his right to use the words, despite hurt feelings among some Asian-Canadians.
A forceful performance in the leaders debate left Boisclair energized but the momentum failed to translate into popular support.
"Mr. Boisclair ran a much better campaign than people expected from him," said John Parisella, a communications specialist at Concordia University and a former Liberal adviser.
"But there really is a realigning of forces going on right now. The national unity debate that was determinative in every election from 1970 to 1998 is transforming itself.
"There's no way to predict how it's going to come out."
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