Separatism Ascendant?

Not so fast, says Calgarygrit:

When Lucien Bouchard jumped to provincial politics, he found out it's a whole new ball game. Bouchard is one of the greatest politicians of the past century and a man who nearly destroyed Canada single handedly. Yet he got 76.7% on his first leadership review after becoming PQ leader, the same percentage Bernard Landry picked up last weekend. I also seem to recall another golden boy of federal politics with curly hair who went provincial and has had a rather rocky ride, to put it mildly. In fact, he's the main reason the PQ is poised to regain power.

It's tempting to be reassured by this - and I'm certainly not qualified to say that he's wrong (especially because I've seen far more august voices say exactly the same thing.) There's a number of tensions within Quebec politics, and separatism is only one of the majors. The interesting thing is that one way or another, we're bound to have an election federally before we have another in Quebec. So let's sketch out a scenario:

• Gomery releases his report in December, which condemns the Liberals for shoddy accounting, but doesn't name names or directly blame the current leadership.
• Paul Martin calls an election, as promised. With nothing to really grab the public's attention from Gomery (and a repeat performance of dismal conservative leadership), the Liberals are returned to power with a larger minority, or even a majority. The country begins to put Gomery behind it.
• Meanwhile, an election isn't likely in Quebec until sometime after the spring... of 2007. So two years would have passed in which Duceppe (or whoever ends up leading the PQ) has to either a) Keep Quebec angry about Gomery, or b) find another way to keep the homeland fires burning.

Two years is a long time in politics. Hell, the last two months have been eventful. So I guess the biggest question is does Duceppe have the skill to keep Quebec angry?

Of course, the people who are likely to be angriest about this outcome would be the Conservatives, who will no doubt scream about "western alienation" more and more. The really "funny" outcome would be for us to dodge the Quebec separatism bullet, only to have Alberta start musing about separation...

(By the way, I know I have at least a few American readers, so a question to them: Do you just skip the posts about Canadian politics, do you understand them, or would some kind of primer be appreciated? If you're out there, leave responses in comments.)