Canada: Coalition and Equalization

The French World Beat is taking a break this week, as news are pretty slow on the other side of the Atlantic, aside from the Gaza crisis, that is. But some interesting issues have come from up north. Less than two full months after two elections (federal and provincial in Quebec), let's discuss the forces involved in Canadian and Quebecer politics for 2009.

Ten seats short of a majority in the House of Commons, Mr. Harper's government was almost overthrown by what Don Martin from the National Post describes as a "hodge-podge coalition led by the Liberals" just before the Christmas holidays. Drawing his last card of 2008, the Prime Minister suspended Parliament for a month in order to buy time and hoped for divisions within the Liberal Party over Mr. Dion's leadership to soar and disrupt plans for a coalition. Now, Mr. Harper's plan at least partially worked, as prospects for a coalition government overthrowing the Tories in the House are slimmer now than they were a month ago. How is that?

First, the Liberals have themselves a new leader in the person of Michael Ignatieff. It was widely known that while Mr. Dion, still the leader of the party, signed the coalition deal with the NDP and the Bloc, Mr. Ignatieff was the least enthusiastic of liberal heavyweights regarding this situation. Second, the liberal MPs, especially Ontarians, can read polling numbers: The idea of a Liberal-NDP coalition supported by the Bloc might get some traction in Quebec and liberal Toronto, but the majority of Canadians remain opposed to the idea. And who could blame them? In the ROC (Rest Of Canada, outside Quebec), electors favored the Tories over the Liberals or the NDP by a significant margin. Especially for Westerners, the idea of handing over the government to a Liberal-NDP coalition is tantamount to a coup d'etat. Third, Mr. Harper modified the initial budget propositions that started the fire. He backed down on cutting public financing for political parties and he is now promoting a stimulus package to jump start the economy in 2009.

Regarding this latest issue, it is interesting to note that Mr. Harper's right-wing ideological zeal, prominent at the end of 2008, has paved way to a more pragmatist approach. Indeed, Mr. Harper, instead of cutting a budget deal with the opposition, launched a series of discussion with the country's 10 provincial PMs. His guess was, and still is, that if he can satisfy the demands of most provinces with his budget, Ignatieff will have no choice but to back down and and vote with the government.

How did the provinces answer to Mr. Harper's economic stimulus package and plans to reorganize equalization* payments? Most did so positively, as PMs from British Columbia and Ontario labeled the discussions as productive and very constructive.

But, yet again, when you read the Quebec media, you get a whole different story.

"Charest hits a wall," titles Le Devoir. After the first few rounds of discussion, it became quite clear that Mr. Harper's equalization program changes did not cut it for PM Jean Charest's government, leading him to qualify the Tories' brand of federalism as "not so open" to traditional Quebec nationalist demands. Coming from a PM whose defense of federalism and Canadian unity in front of sovereigntists came in the form of enchantment by Mr. Harper's apparent "open federalism" just two years ago, this would be funny if it were not so sad.

Quebec will probably lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year in equalization payments with the new formula, which amounts for at least two preliminary conclusions:

First, after suffering a crippling defeat at the hands of the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois in Quebec in the latest federal elections, the Tories have mostly given up on Quebec. They bet that the 10 ridings they lack to form a majority government could be won in Ontario, B.C. and the Maritimes, but not in Quebec. The "open federalism" concept (an updated version of the "renewed federalism" from the '90s), praised by Tories and Quebec federalists just a few years ago, seems long gone.

Second, Quebec federalists, and especially Mr. Charest and his Liberal Party, have lost one of their main argument against sovereigntists. This amounts to the desert of ideas that is now crossing the federalist option in Quebec. While sovereignty as a political option is not showing upward or downward signs, federalism definitely lost the initiative in the last few months.

With a newly reinvigorated Parti Québécois and its 51 MPs in Quebec, sovereigntism and nationalism could be headed for a comeback in the coming months and years.

*Note : Equalization is a constitutional obligation of the federal government to redistribute revenue from wealthier provinces to poorer ones.