The three-candidate circus

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

Short of culminating in a Three Stooges-esque slap fight at the final candidates’ debate, I don’t know if the ADQ leadership race could get any more ridiculous. And the way things are going, I’d be reluctant to rule anything out.

Today brings word that Gilles Taillon, the party’s no. 2 and the frontrunner in the race, is seriously considering dropping out, leaving only Larry and Curly to duke it out for the party’s top job. (For the record, Taillon says he would be quitting for health reasons and not because the race is embarrassing. Either reason would have been acceptable.)

If Taillon does quit, he’ll be leaving behind…

• A party’s that’s torn over whether or not it matters that Éric Caire, Taillon’s main rival for leader’s job, lied about having a university degree. Caire’s CV listed a bachelor’s degree in communications from Laval University among his academic accomplishments but, as it turns out, he never graduated. When Caire begged for a bit of clemency from Taillon, Taillon responded by calling for Caire to release his transcript, presumably so everyone could laugh at Caire’s grades. (I’m probably projecting here—that’s what would happen if my transcript came out.)
• A party whose third candidate for the leadership, Christian Lévesque, admits he collected signatures for a potential rival, Jean-François Plante, in exchange for Plante’s promise not to behave like boor when people might be paying attention (i.e., at the candidates’ debate). Plante, you’ll recall, was the party’s nominee in Deux-Montagnes in the last election, but he got the boot over his none-too-kosher arguments against the commemoration of the Polytechnique massacre.
• A party that ended up rejecting Plante’s bid for the leader’s job because he couldn’t get a measly 1,000 people to sign his nomination papers. Plante has since hinted he might retaliate by suing the party.
• A party that just might become vulnerable to the same anti-referendum backlash that’s marginalized the PQ since… well, since the last referendum. Lévesque recently said that, as premier, he wouldn’t rule out a referendum if negotiations with Ottawa over provincial jurisdictions were to break down.

And to think, just two short years ago, these guys were the official opposition in Quebec and their leader was the province’s “premier-in-waiting.”

The mystery of Jean Charest

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 5:38 PM - 12 Comments

There’s a word for businesses whose fortunes don’t conform to dominant patterns, outfits like collection agencies or discount food chains that do their briskest business in recessions: counter-cyclical. I’m beginning to think Jean Charest is a counter-cyclical politician.

Consider the latest poll results that put the premier well ahead of his competitors. Even if we assume incumbents enjoy a natural advantage over challengers during the summer months, Charest’s feat is impressive. Over the past few months, his government has been saddled with bad news coming from virtually all sides: the Caisse de dépot’s bottom line is a mess; Hydro-Québec is taking flak for a handful of impolitic donations; the provincial budget is riddled with holes; on more than one occasion, the Liberals have found themselves tiptoeing around potential ethical scandals; and to top it all off, Charest has shed two key cabinet ministers over the past 18 months. And yet, his government has rarely been as popular as it is now. Even the normally loquacious PQ is downright stumped.

Now consider the circumstances under which Charest has struggled most. In 2003, he was elected with a healthy majority and a mandate to “re-engineer the state.” At the time, the province’s finances were in (relatively) good shape, the economy was still chugging along, and the spectre of a referendum had dimmed to near-invisibility. Charest’s only immediate challenge was to keep the peace with the angry suburbanites who were still miffed at the municipal mergers. But even that didn’t seem too daunting—what were they going to do, vote for the PQ? But then came the protests, the strikes, the plummeting poll numbers. Soon, the dominant question about Charest wasn’t whether he was doing a good job or a bad one, but whether he was doing the worst job in history.

The early days of Charest’s post-2007 minority government provide another case in point. In a bid to prop up Charest, Ottawa had handed him hundreds of millions of dollars just days before Quebecers went to the polls. Charest promptly turned around and promised to use $700 million of that money to fund tax cuts. Even though the figure was barely a fraction of the billions in cuts he had promised (and never delivered) in 2003, the gambit nearly cost him his government. The 2009 budget, by contrast, included a sales tax hike for 2011—and Charest is as popular as he’s ever been.

All of which got me thinking: Are there any other counter-cyclical politicians out there—that is, politicians for whom times are good when conventional wisdom suggests they shouldn’t be and vice-versa?

What the Tories need to do in Quebec

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 5:38 PM - 32 Comments

Amid the gloom of polls placing them behind even the NDP in Quebec, the Conservatives hosted a fundraiser in Montreal in May at the posh Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Some 2,000 people attended the Tory pow-wow, the largest Conservative event in the province in five years. And in case the evening’s theme—”We’re taking root in Quebec”—wasn’t clear enough, Stephen Harper took to the podium to insist rumours of the party’s death in the province had been greatly exaggerated. “They’ll never again be able to say that I wrote off Quebec,” he said. “Our party and our organization are getting stronger in all parts of Quebec, including Montreal.”

Meanwhile, organizers were scurrying across the room, pleading with attendees to keep quiet during the PM’s speech. Despite shelling out $150 for the privilege, diners didn’t appear particularly interested in listening to what Harper had to say. In fact, Harper didn’t even get the evening’s warmest reception. That privilege went to Maxime Bernier.

According to pollster Nik Nanos, Harper has become the “lightning rod of discontent” for Quebec voters. And in order to compensate for the rapidly souring relationship, he suggests Harper should allow prominent local candidates to take his place as the centrepiece in any future election campaign. Bob Plamondon, a longtime Conservative and the author of Blue Thunder: The Truth about Conservatives from Macdonald to Harper, goes even further. He says Harper needs to strike a power-sharing agreement with someone able to countenance the prime minister’s sharply partisan instincts when it comes to Quebec. It’s the only way, Plamondon says, for Harper to avoid making missteps like those on culture and young offenders that are widely credited with sinking his chances of a majority in the last election campaign.

“I don’t think it was so much that those specific policies were abhorred by Quebecers,” Plamondon says, “because in the scheme of government activities, they are relatively minor issues. But they spoke to larger issues—does Stephen Harper understand Quebec and can he be trusted? I think Quebecers drew the conclusion that he’s disconnected from them. They couldn’t identify among Harper’s team a particularly strong lieutenant who had near-veto power over what went on in Ottawa with respect to those matters that are of particular concern to Quebecers.”

So far at least, the Conservatives have opted for another tack entirely. Instead of appealing to Quebecers’ parochial instincts by slapping a familiar face on the Tory brand, they’ve sharpened their attacks against the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals in an attempt to tear down their opposition. This past spring, they launched an ad campaign that attempted to portray Michael Ignatieff as an ultra-federalist snob whose French is spoken with an accent “de France.” And late last month, the Conservatives mailed out flyers to voters in Bloc-controlled ridings that Bloc MPs said accused them of siding with child traffickers. While it may seem counter-intuitive for the Tories to return to the ideological territory that may have played a role in derailing their campaign in 2008, a spokesperson for Conservative MP Christian Paradis, Harper’s Quebec lieutenant, says the party plans to stick with the tough-on-crime pitch to Quebecers.

It’s still early, but neither a breakthrough on crime, nor a complete collapse of support for the opposition parties, nor a move by Harper to share the stage with a prominent Quebec figure (like, say, former ADQ leader Mario Dumont), appears likely. The Tories may therefore have to woo Quebec the old-fashioned way: more power. “Harper still has one arrow left to shoot,” says Tom Flanagan, a political science professor at the University of Calgary and a former campaign manager for the Conservatives. “He’s not yet fulfilled his 2006 campaign platform promise, repeated since then, to limit the federal spending power. That would be popular in Quebec, as well as with conservatives in other provinces who don’t want to see the federal government undertaking new social programs.”

With the spectre of a fall election looming, the pressure will likely mount on Harper to do something—anything—to appease his critics in the province. After all, nearly two months have passed since the fundraiser in Montreal and there are few signs Quebecers are holding Harper any closer to their hearts. The latest Léger Marketing poll puts the Tories in roughly the same shape they were back in May—at just 11 per cent, the Tories are 21 points behind the Liberals and the Bloc and trailing the NDP by four points, which puts the party in line to see most of the gains it made in Quebec in 2006 wiped out. “In a way, it’s a bit like retro hour,” says Nanos. The Conservatives’ fight for relevance, he says, is eerily similar to the one faced when the Progressive Conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance in 2004. But while their return from Quebec’s political wilderness in the ’06 election may provide some inspiration, the only thing that matters now is whether they can do it again.

Quote of the day

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, July 3, 2009 at 12:50 PM - 3 Comments

Arnold Kling isn’t referring specifically to Quebec, but he might as well be:

The problem with physical secession is that it is very difficult to achieve critical mass. There is probably not much overlap between the people you want to live with and the people who want to choose your particular form of government. The vast majority of us put up with government we dislike in order to live in proximity to people with whom we want to work and play.

I can’t think of a better way to encapsulate the fundamental problem at the heart of the PQ’s mandate to be both the chief promoter of an independent Quebec as well as its natural governing party.

Forget bribing Quebecers with their own money, scare them instead

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, June 29, 2009 at 6:00 PM - 39 Comments

I guess the Conservatives figure they can’t do much worse in Quebec so they might as well go whole-hog on the gutter politics. There’s really no other explanation for their decision to mail a bunch of brain-dead pamphlets to constituents in Bloc-heavy ridings accusing Duceppe’s troops of being “opposed to the protection of children,” a reference to the Bloc’s opposition to a private member’s bill that would set a mandatory minimum sentence of 18 years for those convicted of trafficking in minors:

On the first page, we see a young girl and slogans. The back page features an empty swing seat in a park. In the distance, a man is walking away, holding a child by the hand. All of it is set against a murky background that leaves the rest to the imagination.

There’s already a chasm between the Tories and Quebecers when it comes to all this “tough on crime” nonsense. Trying to goad the Bloc into a spitting match over who wants to send people to jail for the longest amount of time isn’t likely to bridge it. Quite simply, the Bloc has no reason to take the bait. Continue…

Who doesn't like a good constitutional crisis once in a while?

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 11:50 AM - 1 Comment

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.836782&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Here’s that video of Jacques Parizeau telling the “Intellectuals for sovereignty”—yes, that’s a real organization—that sovereignists may have to “manufacture a crisis” in order to win a referendum.

Some key quotes:

“Sectoral referenda can be very useful to… One of my former assistants used to say, ‘to achieve sovereignty, you need a crisis.’ And it’s really frustrating because there are crises that come up once in a while, but the time isn’t always right for us. In fact, we should seek to provoke the crisis. And it’s obvious that a referendum on a specific topic can create a crisis.”

“Right now, we have a unity problem among sovereigntists [...] There is a social democratic view of the Parti Québécois that has a tendency to chase away everything that’s not on the left.”

“After the terrible condemnation this survey represents for people like us, we must absolutely rediscover our inclination for clear objectives, for simple but generous ideas—an inclination to answer back to people. When they ask, as Yvon Deschamps does, ‘La souveraineté, cosse ça donne?‘ (‘What’s so good about sovereingty?’), we have to be able to answer them in simple terms. We have to rediscover that inclination—we had it for so long but have lost it somewhat since losing power—to feel like a fish in water inside Québécois society.”

About those attack ads

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 6:33 PM - 42 Comments

I happen to like attack ads. The anti-Dion gambit, for example, was as effective as it was cruel, and it certainly beat the hell out of that sweater-vest campaign. So I won’t be joining the chorus of people who think these (or any other) ads will be the downfall of Canadian democracy. I think electing poo-tossing monkeys to do a circus routine every day in the House of Commons has pushed that along much further than any attack ad ever could.

That doesn’t mean I like these ads—the French ones, especially. If anything, they seem to show just how out of touch the Conservatives are with Quebec and Francophones in general.

Michael Ignatieff was out of the country for a long while, doing academic-y stuff: Continue…

Coalition fever: The swine flu of 2008

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 5:14 PM - 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.

So, Stephen, which one's the half?

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 12:19 PM - 19 Comments

Isn’t it fun that both the current opposition and government leaders were doing interviews on referendum night in 1995?

In the video below, Stephen Harper answers a question about whether the rest of Canada is willing to recognize Quebec, “not as a distinct society, but as a people”:

“I have some difficulties with that. I have some difficulties with the idea of a people within a people. I prefer to build a new federation. I have difficulty imagining the constitutional structure of a country-and-a-half.”

Ignore your problems, and they just might go away

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 6:47 PM - 58 Comments

“If there are any economists in the room, you’re no good,” Monique Jérôme-Forget told an in camera press conference on provincial budget day. “You change your minds every month.”

With that, Quebec’s finance minister apparently believed she could justify the dodgy numbers her own budget contains:

The projected deficit for the upcoming year will be about $3.9 billion. How do you get to that figure? First, take the $2.5 billion bite the government says the recession will take out of government revenues. That leaves you with $1.4 billion left to account for. Now add the $826 million in stimulus measures the government says it has included in this unique, “recessionary” budget. And, just to be generous, top it off with the $75 million the government says Ottawa cheated Quebec out of by changing the equalization formula midway. After all that, you’re still left with a $500 million hole.

Continue…

How 'bout them fixed election dates, eh?

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 at 7:16 PM - 11 Comments

Stephen Harper and Jean Charest have to be glad they got their respective re-elections settled before the worst of the recession kicked in. If recent polls are any indication, both men appear to have dodged a bullet by going into elections late last year instead of waiting for the opposition parties to force them into one.

With the economy tanking Quebeckers, are in no mood for politics (and the politicians who play them). Support for Harper and the Conservatives is way, way down in the province according to two recent polls. This Strategic Counsel survey put the Tories’ popularity at a dismal 10 per cent and this Ipsos Reid poll puts it at a marginally better, but far from respectable, 16 per cent.

Continue…

What the budget means for Quebec

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, January 30, 2009 at 6:09 PM - 48 Comments

Budget day brought mostly bad news for the province: The cap on equalization stayed in, the boost in EI benefits was meagre, and the feds said they would forge ahead with a national securities regulator. Granted, there was some cash doled out to the forestry sector and Quebec will benefit from some of programs to shore up manufacturing. But the real winner at the end of budget day is Ontario. Whereas Quebec was once the object of Ottawa’s affection, Dalton “small man of Confederation” McGuinty (a.k.a. Premier Dad) is finally getting a bit of love from the Tories.

Continue…

Who wants to lead the ADQ? No one.

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 1 Comment

In 2007 the ADQ had a spectacular breakthrough, capturing 41 seats and becoming the official opposition party in Quebec. But now it seems that success provided the party with little more than a higher pedestal from which to fall. After collecting a meagre seven seats in December’s election, the ADQ has now been stripped of official party status and has seen its charismatic founder and leader walk away from politics. A compelling leadership race could have been just the thing to get the party back on its feet. The only problem is that no one seems to want Mario Dumont’s job.

To date, none of the rumoured candidates have stepped forward to confirm they will seek the party leadership. In fact, the only leadership-related news from the ADQ has come from those announcing they won’t be running. Coupled with the party’s marginal role in Quebec’s National Assembly, the dearth of quality leadership candidates doesn’t bode well for the ADQ’s future. “It’s the first hint that it’s not going to be easy to keep this ship afloat,” says Pierre Martin, a political science professor at the Université de Montreal. “Normally, in a party that has even the slimmest chance to play an important role, if not eventually take power, there should be at least minimal interest.”

Continue…

Montcalm v. Wolfe: I thought everyone knew how it ended

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, January 16, 2009 at 4:17 PM - 9 Comments

I’ve always found re-enacting historical battles to be among the goofiest hobbies a person can have. Granted, most hobbies are inherently pointless—I have no idea why I spend as much time as I do trying to get a puck into a net—but there’s something particularly odd about spending a leisurely Sunday afternoon dressed up in a period costume and pretending your best buddy just stuck a bayonette into your guts. That’s probably why I just can’t wrap my head around people who worry these things might actually matter on some existential/identity level: Continue…

And a happy new year to you

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, January 9, 2009 at 1:49 PM - 0 Comments

Ed’s note: We’ve been on hiatus for much of December, as DMA bought itself a house and entered into the quasi-holy state of matrimony–though not with each other, because that would just make things awkward at work. The good news: it was a slow news month. The bad news: we’re bored.

—

MARTIN: You know, Phil, I’ve been scouring the interwebs with my eyes and mouth and yet can’t find anything Quebec-worthy to post. Terror in Saguenay? Too depressing. Bye Bye ‘scandal’? Bah. David Hilton’s latest escapades in court? That hardly qualifies as news. I went away in early December and everything was boring when I came back. Has Quebec become just another province? Do I need an election every 10 minutes to get excited these days? What’s a boy to do?

Continue…

Adios, Super Mario (and other scattered thoughts about the election)

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 6:49 PM - 17 Comments

A few (more) final thoughts on the election:

1) I have a nagging feeling Charest’s inability to convert his huge lead in the polls into a huge majority is being vastly overstated. A majority is a majority is a majority, no? He’ll have to rule over his caucus with an iron fist to prevent internal dissent from undermining that slim majority. But that’s still not as bad as having to deal with an unruly opposition that goes behind your back and elects a Speaker from its own ranks. That said, a minority government would have been devastating to the Liberals, especially considering they would have found themselves squaring off against a rejuvenated PQ rather than an incompetent and ineffective ADQ.

2) I’m having a hard time reconciling the notion Stephen Harper’s low-rent separatist-baiting was responsible for the PQ doing better than expected with the fact voter turnout was an abysmal 57 per cent, “the lowest election turnout since 1927.” Turnout was actually much worse than that oft-repeated nugget implies. In 1927, and for every election before that, turnout was calculated based on eligible voters in all ridings, even those in which a seat went uncontested. Voter turnout jumped by more than 20 points when the acounting method was changed in 1931, meaning participation in this past election may in fact have been at its lowest point in Quebec history. It’s hard to imagine that all the nonsense in Ottawa wouldn’t have an impact. But if it did, why did so many people stay home? Furthermore, how low would turnout have been had Harper not gone off the rails? The simplest explanation is that the pollsters just got it wrong. Continue…

Liveblogging the Quebec election returns

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, December 8, 2008 at 4:58 PM - 30 Comments

7:58 p.m.
Paul Journet, over at Cyberpresse, plugged in the last poll numbers in HKDP’s election predictor and all three polls (CROP, Léger and Angus-Reid) show the ADQ taking an absolutely massive hit. In fact, none of them have Dumont getting back to the Naitonal Assembly with more than 2 seats. I doubt they’ll do that poorly–though I’ve predicted single digits–but Dumont better be praying he gets at least 20 per cent, otherwise the ADQ loses official party status and all the funding that comes with it.

8:10 p.m.
If the last election is any guide, one of the more interesting races might be in Jean Charest’s own riding of Sherbrooke. I doubt it will be as close as it was in 2007, but it sure would provide a bit of drama if it was. Continue…

A fearless election prediction

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, December 8, 2008 at 3:31 PM - 7 Comments

I finished dead last in the office election prediction pool in 2007, so take this with a grain of salt. Here goes nuthin’:

Liberals: 76

PQ: 43

ADQ: 6

If I’m right, or anywhere close, I think we’ve seen the end of Mario Dumont and the ADQ. Sure, they might putter around for a bit, but Dumont’s opening line as a bruised and battered boxer on Dieu Merci! should eventually serve as an epitaph for his political career: “I think I should have stuck with the lightweights.”

I should add that I’ll be blogging from my couch while I watch the results tonight. Drop by around 7:30 p.m.

By the numbers: How the PQ can win the election

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, December 5, 2008 at 7:36 PM - 8 Comments

With all the anti-sovereignist backlash floating around these days, wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants if the Parti Québécois won next Tuesday’s Monday’s election?

Before all this prorogation nonsense got going, it seemed like a foregone conclusion Jean Charest would win a majority. And despite the anti-sovereignist frenzy that’s been whipped up in Ottawa lately, it still looks that way today. As my fellow maudit anglais pointed out last night, the latest poll has Pauline Marois running 13 points behind Jean Charest with just a weekend to go before the election.

So, what has to happen on Monday for the PQ to prevent a Charest majority or win government for themselves? First, the ADQ’s support has to completely collapse, which it’s safe to assume will happen. Second, a hefty majority of those disaffected ADQ votes have to go to the PQ, which is where things get dicey.

Still, it is possible. Continue…

'The PQ is a party of ideas'

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, December 1, 2008 at 7:02 PM - 3 Comments

“The PQ is a party of ideas. We discuss and we discuss passionately. I hope there will continue to be debates over ideas within the Parti Québécois.”—Jacques Parizeau, November 16, 2008

This seemingly innocuous sound bite was the extent of Parizeau’s election gift to Quebec federalists earlier this month. Uttered during a remarkably subdued appearance on Tout le monde en parle, a popular Sunday evening talk show, Parizeau was explaining to host Guy A. Lepage (and nearly 1.5 million Quebecers watching at home) why the PQ always seems to be at war with itself. Continue…

Why Charest should be annoyed with Ottawa for threatening the Bloc

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 7:36 PM - 7 Comments

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!)_

As Andrew notes, the party that stands to lose the most if the Conservatives follow through on their plan to scrap public funding for political parties is the Bloc. In the very short term, however, the plan might also turn out to be a pretty significant spoke in Jean Charest’s wheels. Continue…

Why hasn't Charest raised the spectre of a referendum more often?

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 4:14 PM - 1 Comment

Marty and I couldn’t agree on what to make of the post-debate Liberal press release below….

On 11/26/08 2:07 PM, “Martin Patriquin” wrote:

Communiqué de presse
Pour diffusion immédiate

Débat des chefs

Les mains liées par son option souverainiste
PAULINE MAROIS FAIT UN AVEU RÉVÉLATEUR Continue…

Liberals way, way ahead

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, November 25, 2008 at 1:13 PM - 1 Comment

The latest La Presse-CROP poll shows the Liberals widening the chasm between them and the other parties:

Liberals: 45% (+3)

Parti Québécois: 32% (+1)

Action démocratique du Québec: 12% (-3)

It’s probably unfair to dwell on Mario Dumont’s ability to stink up the joint, but the last time the ADQ scored this poorly was in 1998, when it won just a single seat—Dumont’s in Rivière-du-Loup. Continue…

Asleep at the wheel

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, November 24, 2008 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

André Pratte hits the nail on the head in today’s La Presse:

Despite being launched under the pretext of an economic crisis, the electoral campaign in Quebec is taking place as if Quebec was going to be the only corner of the planet spared the turbulence that’s wreaking havoc worldwide.

Jean Charest couldn’t stand the thought of having “three pairs of hands on the steering wheel” in the midst of a recession, so he launches an election to let voters decide who’d do the best job. Fair enough. But then, how come nobody’s talking about the economy? And would it be too much to ask that the parties use real numbers when they do? Continue…