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Jaicee said: Concerning the internal dynamics of Quebec, I was referring to Quebec's internal politics. As you can see from the outcome of the most recent election thereto, sovereigntist parties currently hold 94 out of the 125 seats in Quebec's internal parliament and enjoy the cumulative support of more than 70% of the population. The only Canadian party that holds seats in Quebec's internal parliament is the Liberal Party, which is also the only federalist party with any seats. There is no domestic Conservative Party in Quebec; no party that wants to define itself more by right wing ideology than by sovereigntism. The question in federal elections isn't whether Quebecers want national sovereignty (they clearly do, and that fact is persistent), it's how much of a priority they consider that to be as an issue at a given moment in time. Any Canadian party that wants to contest in Quebec will do better though to recognize and support its nationhood. To understand the details, one should notice that there are Quebec sovereigntist parallels to all of Canada's parties (e.g. the governing Coalition Avenir Quebec = the Conservatives, Quebec Solidaire = the New Democrats, and the Parti Quebecois is a sovereigntist analogy to the Liberal Party), but the social liberal vote in Quebec is split between its sovereigntist faction (the Parti Quebecois) and its larger federalist faction (the Liberal Party), which is why the right-leaning Coalition currently prevails. Were the social liberals united on the issue of sovereignty, they would clearly dominate because there are more of them per capita in Quebec than in Canada. By contrast, the Coalition's support level simply parallels that of the Conservatives in Canada and Quebec Solidaire's support level likewise parallels that of the New Democrats in Canadian elections. That's the political composition: high support for liberal multiculturalism, but even broader and more unanimous support for national sovereignty, with some, but a finite amount of, overlap. You're nonetheless right in the sense that nationalist parties in any country tend to have a somewhat socially conservative bent in that one is somewhat required to embrace the concept of national values. Concepts like national values can naturally run a bit contrary to the liberal ideal of multiculturalism, or at least position multiculturalism within stricter limits. To that end, it makes sense that the most dedicated nationalists would be social conservatives who live in rural areas and that liberal values would prevail more in urban centers. Softer nationalism that embraces multicultural values more though is common in all different kinds of places. It's not a coincidence that it's specifically Quebec's social liberals who lean toward federalism while the social conservatives and progressives alike are both one-sidedly pro-sovereignty. One could say, in this sense, that the Quebec nationalist (or most any nationalist) coalition demographically resembles Franklin Roosevelt's old, now-defunct New Deal coalition here in the U.S. in that it mainly revolves around politically uniting workers and farmers. The Bloc Quebecois seeks to represent all of those people. Anyway, there is definitely evidence that the People's Party has acquired a real base of support in this election that they just didn't have in 2019 and I suspect that as much is owed to... 1) The coronavirus being an issue in this election, unlike in 2019. There is no pro-Covid party other than the PPC in Canada, so the minority of the population that opposes vaccines and such needs somewhere to go and they can't look to Conservative leader Erin O'Toole to back their position. Being an American, I'm fully aware that that's likely a significant chunk of the population, albeit definitely a minority. That and... 2) Exclusion from the debates. Maxime Bernier was terrible at defending his positions in 2019 and having to on a national debate stage definitely hurt him (he lost his re-election bid) and his party as a whole in a way that caused most of its supporters to abandon it for the Conservative Party when it came time to actually vote. I'm actually kind of with you on the merits of including the People's Party leader in these debates for that reason. Exclusion from the debates has allowed the PPC to claim social cancellation and persecution instead of having to defend their unpopular "populist" positions, which they're terrible at doing. The BQ isn't really a good comparison here considering that they only contest in Quebec for obvious reasons and currently hold 32 seats in the federal parliament, which is out of Quebec's 78 total for perspective, while the People's Party of Canada is obviously supported pretty exclusively in a different country (Canada) wherein their support is spread out far more thinly across the much larger space they actually contest. However, in terms of popular support, you're right in that it's tough to explain the inclusion of Annamie Paul of the Green Party in these debates while PPC, which currently polls about twice as well, enjoys no representation. (Paul is proving to be no Elizabeth May and her pick as the new Green leader expresses a recent shift into unpopular wokeness territory that runs parallel to the New Democratic Party's analogous, and analogously unpopular, shift toward concerning itself only with the opinions the youth. To this end, the Greens so far are so far only polling about half as well as in the 2019 election.) As to my characterization of Bernier's debate style, I linked to the 2019 debate I was referencing in my previous post, so you can judge for yourself. It's impossible not to notice how much time allotted to other leaders he manages to absorb through constant interruptions and trying to talk over other people. I believe normal people found his disproportionate aggressiveness off-putting. I know I sure did. He was just a Trump-like person who behaved like his American idol. |
I mostly agree except for : "the governing Coalition Avenir Quebec = the Conservatives"
There's is no equivalent of the Conservatives party in Quebec politics (well actually there is but they only got 1.46% in the last election and are not recognize as an actual party by the National Assembly of Quebec) . The Conservatives are more akin the US Republican in regards to climate change, gun and gun control law, LGBTQ issues and abortion rights. There's is no parties in Quebec politics that does not fully believe climate change, that is hostile to LGBTQ rights, that is pro gun, or is against abortion. on the Left to right spectrum the Quebec Liberal party is even more on the Right than the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Quebec). Although, even Quebec Liberal party would actually be considered a Left (probably event far left) party in the US.
As for the Green party presence in the leaders debate vs PPC absence. Well Green party got a share of 6.5% of the vote last election vs PPC 1.6%. Green party currently holds 3 seats vs none for PPC. https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/federal/2019/results/
Also, it's not like a Leaders debate in Canada can include every leader as there is actually 22 currently registered party https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&dir=par&document=index&lang=e
Last edited by EpicRandy - on 13 September 2021
