Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, May 4 2005 (IPS) — A political corruption scandal gripping Canada’s ruling Liberal party appears to be boosting the prospects of the independence movement in the country’s largest province, French-speaking Quebec.

Whichever political party wins federal elections expected this year likely will head a federal government without representation from Quebec, which ”would be very dangerous for the unity of the state,” said John McGarry, a political studies professor who heads a research programme on Canadian nationalism and democracy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada’s second-largest but most populous province.

McGarry painted a scenario of a minority Conservative or Liberal government relying entirely on parliamentary seats won in the nine provinces and three territories that comprise English speaking Canada.

Meanwhile, the Bloc Quebecois, which advocates independence for Quebec, is on track to electing an overwhelming number of seats in the federal House of Commons in Ottawa.

A resulting alliance of the Conservatives and the Bloc might prove short-lived, however, because the Bloc largely is social-democratic in its orientation.

The two parties differ on foreign policy, with the Conservatives more aligned with the direction of the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush. The Bloc, however, supported the Liberal government’s decision to stay out of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the controversial U.S. plan for missile defense against so-called rogue states.

The Conservatives, like their U.S. Republican counterparts, oppose legalizing same-sex marriage, an issue now going through the House of Commons. Here the Bloc, reflecting the liberal attitudes of Quebeckers, again has taken the opposite position.

With some brief exceptions, all of Canada’s prime ministers since 1968, including incumbent Liberal Paul Martin, have been from Quebec.

But the high-profile presence of Quebeckers in every single federal government, Liberal and Conservative, since the late 1960s will end with the next election, McGarry said. ”We will not only have a federal cabinet bereft of Quebec representation, we will also have a strong sovereignty movement (from Quebec),” he said.

The Liberals, the main federal political force in Quebec, are likely to be reduced to ”a rump of seats” in the small number of largely English-speaking constituencies in the province, says Antonia Maioni, director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

One recent public poll showed that 54 percent of Quebeckers support full sovereignty coupled with a new political and economic partnership with the rest of Canada, an option they rejected by a close margin in a 1995 provincial referendum.

Quebeckers feel ”betrayed” following testimony in a judicial inquiry detailing how federal public funds in the millions of dollars slated for projects to promote national unity in their province instead were laundered into the Liberal Party’s coffers under Jean Chretien, the Liberal prime minister at the time, said Maioni.

Paul Martin, who was finance minister under Chretien and succeeded him more than a year ago in an internal party coup, has sought to distance himself from what has come to be known as the sponsorship scandal.

The judicial inquiry that Martin personally initiated may have helped to reinforce old stereotypes in English Canada about how politics are conducted in Quebec – even though this province was the first jurisdiction in Canada to ban financial contributions to political parties from either corporations or unions.

”Quebeckers are very sensitive to that because Quebec reformed its political system much further and much faster than any other province in Canad,” Maioni told IPS. ”And in fact, Quebec is very proud of its democratic values.”

The place of Quebec, which views itself as a French-speaking minority nation within Canada, remains constitutionally unresolved despite the efforts of federal politicians.

Since the late 1960s, for example, Canada has had both English and French as its official languages. Additionally, French was recognised as Quebec’s official language, a move that remains controversial.

Nevertheless, Maioni said, Quebec remains an issue that Canada has to face. ”The problem is, if you are going to reform a federation, it is not just what Quebec wants. It is also what Canadians are prepared to accept.”

Like his predecessors, Martin has sought to satisfy Quebec’s aspirations for increased autonomy within the federation while at the same time offering other provinces more scope in the management of their resources and of national social and health care programmes.

At the same time, the Liberals have wanted to maintain and expand new national social programs in areas such as housing, aid to cities, and childcare.

However, actions by Martin as finance minister to reduce social-service and health financing for the provinces in the early 1990s, to curtail the federal deficit, also has exacerbated tensions between the federal government and the provinces, said Francois Rocher, chair of the Institute for Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Now that the Liberals have been discredited in Quebec and may possibly lose to the right-wing Conservatives in the next national election, there is a concern in some quarters that a new government in Ottawa might gut the federal role in social supports and devolve to the provinces all power and responsibility for the programmes.

With their focus on tax cuts, minimal government, and a private role in the delivery of social and health services, the Conservatives might find common cause with the Bloc, which is focused strictly on defending Quebec’s interests, said York University political scientist James Laxer.

”An immediate federal election, with Canadians fixated on the sponsorship scandal, is almost certain to put the federal government and Canadians squarely in the hands of the two parties of radical decentralisation,” he wrote in an Apr. 26 commentary.