Crumbling Bloc?

By Peter Graefe

Watching the Bloc Quebecois over the past decade is a little like watching
a bullfight. You know that the bull is going to die, but not on what
particular charge. And, as with a bullfight, I do not relish applauding the
result. A rapid overview of the Bloc's formation and achievements provides
some context for assessing its current predicament, and the effects of its
potentially imminent demise.

The Bloc was formed at the death of the Meech Lake Accord constitutional
amendment in June 1990 by former Conservative and Liberal MPs. For these
MPs, the failure of the Meech Lake Accord signalled that Quebec's vision of
what Canada is, namely a partnership of peoples where each guards a
significant degree of decision-making autonomy, could not find space in
Canada's constitutional order. It therefore started as a loose assemblage
of centre-right nationalist politicians who were at least nominally
federalist. It was the disappointment over the closure of Canada's
constitution to Quebec nationalism that led to the strategic decision that
Quebec sovereignty was now the only way to escape the constitutional
blockage. With the former Conservative cabinet minister Lucien Bouchard as
leader, who Quebec public sector workers might also remember for his role
in the confrontations over the vicious 1982 public sector wage cuts, the
Bloc initially appeared to represent a more nationalist version of the old
Creditistes.

The class character of the Bloc nevertheless changed with the election of
Gilles Duceppe in a 1990 by-election, with a substantial influx of social
democratic MPs in the 1993 federal election, and with the clear support on
the ground by the labour movement and the broader left. In tandem with the
Parti Quebecois' strategy of building an inclusive nationalist coalition in
the run-up to the 1994 provincial election (and subsequent 1995
referendum), the Bloc defined itself as a progressive alternative to the
neoliberalism of the Chretien Liberal government. It also came to have a
much more resolutely sovereignist cast: it was no longer simply the party
of federalist nationalists dismayed with the failure of Meech, but also the
party of separatist nationalists who never harboured any illusions about
(or much interest in) a Canadian project.

In a period where the NDP had lost official party status, the Bloc became
the voice of (semi-)social democracy. The question of nationalism meant it
did not always play that role effectively, as it did not maintain a rich
dialogue with the left in the rest of the country, nor did its ideas get
much play in the English press. But it did provide a door into
Parliamentary committees for labour and social movement representatives, as
well as an organized counter-program emphasizing trade union rights and a
positive role for public services. Its main blind spot was the relationship
with the United States, where the strategy of getting closer to the States
as a means of facilitating a break with Canada led to unfortunate embrace
and celebration of the current trade agreements, as well as an ongoing
flirtation with monetary union. As an opposition party, the Bloc never had
to reconcile how its social democracy and its critique of Canadian foreign
policy fit with its embrace of the American Empire, but there were clearly
tensions in that juggling act. And given the recent record of social
democracy, it is not hard to guess how those tensions would be resolved.

With the failure of the 1995 referendum on sovereignty, the Bloc lost its
original purpose, which was to protect Quebec's interests in Ottawa leading
up to the referendum. It nevertheless successfully contested the subsequent
elections -- and while signs of its loss of appeal to voters continued to
manifest, the ability of the federal government to disappoint Quebecers,
such as through the sponsorship scandal, regularly bailed the Bloc out.
Indeed, even if this election proves largely disastrous for the Bloc, all
it might take is a scandal for it to at least partially bounce back. Yet
across this period, the Bloc changed to become more programmatically social
democratic and to emphasize the inclusionary nature of the Quebec
sovereignty project. From election to election, its more conservative and
less urban MPs slowly made their way out of the picture. But as they left,
the Bloc seemed unaware that its ideas were not resonating outside
Montreal, and were unable to come up with social democratic strategies
adapted to the unique challenges (demographic decline, deindustrialization,
job shedding) of Quebec-outside-of-Montreal.

But if the formation of the Bloc involved grafting a mass base of social
democrats and separatists onto a Parliamentary party of disappointed
federalists of the centre-right, its decomposition followed the reverse
order. A key moment here was the shift on the right outside of Quebec. As
long as the Reform party and Alliance vilified Quebec nationalism and
punished parties (like the Progressive Conservatives or the NDP) who
attempted to reach out to federalist nationalists, the electorate remained
polarized between the BQ's sovereignty and the Liberals' status quo
federalism. But once the united Conservatives decided to court Quebec
nationalists, without fear of another party playing up a reactionary
Canadian nationalism in the rest of the country, the Bloc could no longer
play on that polarization. And it was ultimately its founding core of
centre-right federalist nationalist voters who were at play. As Meech Lake
and Charlottetown receded into memory, this group was willing to once again
engage with a Canadian project, at least as long as sovereignty was not on
the immediate agenda.

In this task, the Conservatives benefited from the growing
Montreal/rest-of-Quebec cultural divide. Right-wing talk-radio hosts could
position the conservatives as more attuned with the concerns of people
compared to a Montreal cultural and political elite which could only look
at the rest of the province in condescension, when it looked at it at all.
To the Bloc's credit, it has ignored calls to pander to right-wing populism
to reclaim this electorate. To its great discredit, it has been unable to
articulate an alternative vision of regional development and cultural
representation that might break the lock of conservative political appeals.

What is left of the Bloc is a mass base of separatists, who are by and
large social democratic in orientation. It is not difficult for the largest
union central, the FTQ, to endorse the Bloc despite some notable slips such
as opposing a $10/hour minimum wage for federal employees or supporting the
softwood lumber deal. And barring a disaster, the Bloc will elect a strong
but somewhat smaller parliamentary contingent, concentrated in but not
limited to the eastern part of the Island of Montreal and surrounding
francophone suburbs. The big question for the social democratic left at
that point is what action to take to prevent the further shrinkage of the
electoral successes made under the Bloc banner.

** Perspectives **

Let there be no misunderstanding: Quebec nationalism is not disappearing.
If I liken the Bloc to the bull at the bullfight, it is because the Bloc is
the bearer of the nationalism formed in the crucible of the 1990-1995
nationalist upsurge -- a social democratic nationalism aiming at an
inclusive definition of the Quebec nation. After the loss of the
referendum, it continued to bear this project, but the base beneath it was
frittering away. As the Parti Quebecois government adapted to the ambient
neoliberalism and developed its own form of competitive austerity (the
vaunted "Quebec model"), and was then relegated to third party status by
the right-wing Liberal and Action Democratique parties, there was not much
space left for this kind of social democracy. Obliged to follow the PQ, and
with no hope of holding power to implement its program, the BQ's social
democracy became a thin symbol of Quebec's uniqueness ("a more
compassionate society than Canada") rather than an anvil for shaping an
alternative project for the Quebec nation. And as the next referendum faded
into an ever farther future, the balance of power within the Quebec
nationalist movement shifted towards more conservative expressions that
defined the nation in more exclusive terms, which contracts rather than
expands the BQ's electoral base.

We seem to be at another moment in time where the right-wing is far more
successful than those on the left in working across the national divide.
While the Conservatives re-unite the Mulroney coalition of "francophones
and francophobes", social democrats in Quebec and the rest of the country
are unable to get it together to make the most of the historically
unparalleled level of social democratic (or at least semi-social
democratic) success in federal elections in Quebec. Pierre Beaudet, writing
on the rabble.ca election blog, easily recites the historical litany of how
the left outside of Quebec has consistently chosen Canadian nationalism
over solidarity with the Quebec left. Meanwhile, the Quebec right joins
arms with Stephen Harper, whose Reform party just a decade ago ran ads
about there being too many Quebec Prime Ministers, and whose Canadian
Alliance was entirely gung-ho on the Clarity Act. The point here is not to
contest Beaudet's largely accurate claim, but instead to suggest that the
prioritization of nation over class solidarity is strategically
debilitating on both sides of the national divide.

One encouraging aspect of Harper's courting of Quebec conservative
nationalists, beyond the obvious benefit of having some limited
conversation and compromise after more than a decade of Chretien's
hard-line, is that there are no federal leaders left to play the Canadian
nationalist card to punish politicians who work with nationalists. In this
atmosphere, there is some hope that after the electoral dust settles, the
left in Quebec and in the rest of the country can take some bold and
imaginative steps in developing ways to work together. The Bloc seems
destined to waste away. The next nationalist upsurge is hard to predict. It
would be healthy for all concerned that the Bloc's contribution to
preserving and strengthening a social democratic presence in Parliament,
not be lost in the interim.

For a socialist left which aims higher than the permanently lowered
expectations of contemporary social democracy, the challenge is similar.
Slogans about Quebec's right to self-determination have been a handy way of
being friendly while continuing to do politics on separate tracks of
resolving national differences rhetorically but not at a level of trust and
comradeship that would enable joint action. As the Canadian project seems
likely to tick along for a few years yet, the socialist left needs to more
effectively work together to do effective politics within that framework.
One place to start would be to make self-determination more than a slogan
and more than something applying only to Quebecers: part of the common
struggle under capitalism is to develop people's democratic capacities to
plan and organize and decide on the future of their communities. Might
self-determination provide a framework for working together to challenge
how capitalism blunts those capacities without losing sight of the national
question?

Peter Graefe teaches political science at McMaster University.