Deux Maudits Anglais

Martin Patriquin and Philippe Gohier dissect the latest out of Quebec. Follow Philippe on Twitter: @pgohier

Categories: Deux Maudits Anglais

Coalition fever: The swine flu of 2008

by Philippe Gohier on Thursday, April 30, 2009 5:14pm - 5 Comments

Just try to imagine the hand-wringing this would’ve caused across Canada: A Bloc-supported coalition in power in Ottawa with the PQ, propped up by the ADQ, in power in Quebec City.

According to a report in La Presse, it could’ve happened:

In order to stymie Jean Charest, who was clearly preparing to call an election for December 8, the ADQ made a suprising proposal to draw in the PQ. Mario Dumont and Pauline Marois would have gone to see the lieutenant-governor, Pierre Duchesne, to tell him that the parties with a majority in the National Assembly were uniting to form a coalition government, with Pauline Marois as premier.

The ADQ was apparently so desperate to avoid having to run a campaign that it was going to let a party holding less seats—recall that the ADQ was the official opposition at the time—take over the premier’s job!

Now imagine what the provincial and federal budgets would have looked like had it happened. Something tells me the fiscal imbalance would’ve been solved in no time.

Tags: Action Democratique du Québec, ADQ, coalition, Mario Dumont, Parti Québécois, Pauline Marois, PQ, Quebec politics

More by Philippe Gohier

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

“«Mario Dumont a envoyé Marc-André Gravel avec la proposition de renverser le gouvernement. La réponse des péquistes a été qu’ils étaient certains de prendre le pouvoir… que Pauline Marois allait de toute façon être première ministre aux Fêtes».”

Weird miscalculation? Polite disavowal of the ADQ? Giddiness that the ADQ was about to self-destruct? Any which way, the PQ certainly made the right choice.
Will

Considering the federal Tory campaign in Quebec was run by the ADQ, this makes the Tory’s attacks on the coalition for working with the Bloc all the more hilarious, particularly as now as Harper will need a Bloc lifeline to stay afloat.
Andrew (not Potter or Coyne)

It would have been rather unusual to grant a coalition so far into the mandate. I don’t think the LG would have acceded to any such request.
http://accidentaldeliberations.blogspot.com The Jurist

A quick nitpick on the verb tense in the quoted portion: “went” should probably be replaced with “would have gone to” in order to reflect the conditional nature of the outcome.

And by way of a slightly more substantive response, I’m not sure there would been any more hand-wringing than there was already across the country since nobody outside Quebec had any interest in stoking the fires further. (Though it would have posed an interesting possibility of getting Harper and Charest onto the same page.)

http://blog.macleans.ca/category/blog-central/national/deux-maudits-anglais/ Philippe Gohier

You’re right about the verb tense. I mis-translated the sentence.