The Bloc Québécois is a left-wing federal political party in Canada that is devoted to the promotion of sovereignty for Quebec. It also holds the goals of social democracy and the “defence of the interests of all Quebecers in Ottawa” (notably by promoting, in the federal parliament, the consensus of the National Assembly of Quebec).
The Bloc Québécois is supported by large sections of organized labour in Quebec and works closely with the Parti Québécois. Members and supporters of the Bloc Québécois are sometimes called Bloquistes [bl-oe-kist], a word formed by analogy with Péquiste (a Parti Québécois (PQ) supporter).
History
Earlier projects
The idea of a Quebec nationalist party with candidates running for seats in the House of Commons is not new. The term Bloc Québécois was seen as early as 1926 in L’Action Française magazine in which an article called for a party of Quebeckers defending Quebec’s interests in Ottawa.
From March to May 1941 L’Action Nationale magazine renewed its calls for such a party, especially to oppose plans for conscription. In October 1941, the Bloc Populaire was created with those very objectives.
In September 1971 there was a similar plea in L’Action Nationale, this time with a view to countering the federalism of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. One year after the October Crisis a desire to express frustration through democratic means was visible in the magazine: “The time has come to play hard; and it is necessary that it happens at the parliamentary stage to avoid other forms of violence.”
The Ralliement des créditistes was a rural Quebec-only federal party in the 1960s. Social credit ideology was based on the ideas of the British engineer, Major C.H. Douglas. The Créditistes took over the remnants of the federal Social Credit Party of Canada and had members elected to the House of Commons until 1979. While right-wing in approach, as opposed to the nominally more leftist Bloc, this party carried the torch of Quebec nationalism and separatism for decades.
The Union Populaire was a minor party that tried to build on the success of the Parti Québécois at the provincial level by nominating candidates in the 1979 and 1980 federal elections on a sovereigntist platform. The PQ, however, had rejected participation in federal elections and provided no support to the party, which achieved little success.
The Parti nationaliste du Québec was founded in the 1980s as an alternative to federalist parties (those opposed to independence for Quebec) and can be seen as a modest predecessor.
Finally, the Rhinoceros Party, founded in 1968 by Doctor Jacques Ferron, a renowned Quebec writer, won many votes from people who disapproved of federalist politicians. Jacques Ferron, the poet Gaston Miron and the singer Michel Rivard ran against the federalist Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in his seat of Mount Royal, but made little impact at a time when Trudeau was at the height of his popularity and influence.
The founder of the Bloc Québécois, Lucien BouchardGuy Bertrand, a former PQ candidate, had a plan to create a federal party in favour of Quebec independence, a Bloc Québécois, in the 1970s. René Lévesque, the founder and leader of the Parti Québécois, stated in his autobiography that he had opposed this plan, believing that it was not the right time to do so.
After decades of reflection and failed attempts to launch a sovereigntist party at the federal level, members of a sovereignist party were first elected on the federal level during the 1990s.
Origins
The Bloc Québécois was started in 1990 as an informal coalition of Progressive Conservative (PC) and Liberal members of the Parliament of Canada from Quebec, who left their original parties around the time of the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord. The party was initially intended to be temporary and was given the goal of the promotion of sovereignty at the federal level. The party aimed to disband following a successful referendum on sovereignty. The term “temporary ad hoc rainbow coalition” is now used by the Liberal Party of Canada to refer to the group of MPs who founded the Bloc Québécois, primarily in reference to Jean Lapierre, who was once part of that group but has since renounced separatism and rejoined the Liberals under Paul Martin.
The initial coalition that led to the Bloc was led by Lucien Bouchard, who had been federal Minister of the Environment until he left the PC caucus. He was joined by several Liberals, notably Gilles Rocheleau and Jean Lapierre, and fellow Tories, such as Nic Leblanc, Louis Plamondon, Benoît Tremblay, Gilbert Chartrand and François Gérin. The first Bloquiste candidate to be elected was Gilles Duceppe, then a union organizer, in a by-election for the riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie on August 13, 1990.
First election
In the 1993 federal election, the Bloc won 54 seats in Quebec. Because the opposition vote in the rest of Canada was split between the Reform Party, the PC Party and the New Democratic Party, the Bloc narrowly won the second largest number of seats in the Canadian House of Commons, and therefore became the official opposition. The election of such a relatively large number of Bloquistes was the first of The Three Periods, a plan intended to lay out the way to sovereignty created by future Premier of Quebec Jacques Parizeau. Parizeau became Premier of Quebec in the Quebec election of 1994.
Referendum for independence
In 1995 the PQ government called the second referendum on independence in Quebec history. The Bloc entered the campaign for the Yes side (in favour of Sovereignty). The Yes side’s campaign had a difficult beginning, so the leadership of the campaign was shifted from Parizeau to Bloc leader Bouchard. Bouchard was seen as more charismatic and more moderate, and therefore more likely to attract voters.
A “tripartite agreement” mapping out the plan for accession to independence was written and signed by the leaders of the Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois and the Action Démocratique du Québec on June 12, 1995. It revived Levesque’s notion that the referendum should be followed by the negotiating of an association agreement between an independent Quebec and Canada. This provision was inspired by Bouchard. Parizeau had previously wanted a vote simply on independence. The difference became moot when 50.6% of voters taking part in the referendum rejected the sovereignty plan.
New leaders for the Bloc
Following Bouchard’s departure from Ottawa, Michel Gauthier became leader of the Bloc.
Although the party formally stands on the social democratic end of the political spectrum, it has no particular unifying ideology, apart from promoting Quebec sovereignty. In the wake of the referendum defeat, Gauthier proved unable to hold the fractious caucus together and resigned as leader just one year later. Gilles Duceppe became leader of the Bloc in 1997 and remains leader today.
Declining fortunes
In the 1997 federal election, the Bloc Québécois dropped to 44 seats, losing official opposition status to the Reform Party. The 1997-2000 term was marked by the Bloc’s fight against the passage of the Bill C-20, the attempt by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Stéphane Dion, a Quebec minister in Chrétien’s cabinet, to enshrine in law the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision that no province could secede from Canada unilaterally.
In the 2000 election, the Bloc dropped further to 38 seats, despite winning more votes than at the previous election. This was still more than the number of seats the Liberals had won in Quebec. However, the Liberals went on to win several subsequent by-elections, marking the first time since the 1982 patriation of the Constitution that the Liberals had held the majority of Quebec’s seats in the Commons. From then to the subsequent election, the Bloc continued to denounce the federal government’s interventions in what the Bloc saw as exclusively provincial jurisdictions. Its actions led to the uncovering of what has since become the sponsorship scandal. Among other things, the Bloc supported the Kyoto Accord, gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization, and opposed Canadian participation in the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003.
Comeback
Numerous opinion polls in Quebec signalled the continued slide of the Bloc Québécois in most of 2003 following the 2003 Quebec election which was won by the federalist Parti libéral du Québec led by Jean Charest. However, things changed during the winter of 2003, partly because of the unpopularity of Charest’s government and the rise in support for independence in Quebec (49 per cent in March). In February 2004 the sponsorship scandal (uncovered by the Auditor General of Canada) hit the federal Liberal government.
Speculation has been ongoing about the possibility of the Bloc forming alliances with other opposition parties or with an eventual minority government. Gilles Duceppe, whose leadership was confirmed after the election, has stated that the Bloc will continue to co-operate with other opposition parties or with the government when interests are found to be in common, but insists that the Bloc will never participate in a federal government.
Relationship to Parti Québécois
The Parti Québécois has close ties to the Bloc and shares its principal objective of independence for Quebec. The two parties have backed each other during election campaigns, and prominent members of each party often attend and speak at the other’s public events. However, the Bloc is not simply the federal wing of the Parti Québécois.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.