For Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, election night returns were the tale of two distinct political battlegrounds with differing results.
Outside of Quebec, the Conservatives captured 57 percent of the seats, becoming the dominant party in all provinces but Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
In Quebec, the mirror image emerged despite extensive efforts by Harper to woo Quebec French-speaking voters with increased federal financial transfers to the province, more power and a controversial declaration in Parliament that the Québécois are a nation within Canada.
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Conservatives won just 10 of 75 Quebec seats, equal to the 2006 total. Early campaign Conservative hopes were that they could double that 2006 tally.
In the end, the Conservatives fell 12 seats short of a majority.
Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe quickly claimed credit. His party won 50 Quebec seats in its sixth federal election campaign, although the Bloc was formed in the early 1990s with a vow to stick around for only two elections to work for Quebec sovereignty.
Most of its MPs have been elected at least twice, making them eligible for Canadian parliamentary pensions.
“Without the Bloc, Stephen Harper would have a majority government,” Duceppe said election night.
“Democracy has spoken. The Bloc is relevant.”
The following day, apparently arguing that Quebec is not part of Canada, the BQ leader went further.
“The election results are clear and there are two competing visions, the vision of Quebec and the vision of Stephen Harper,” he said. “If the Conservatives won a majority of seats in Canada, the exact opposite happened in Quebec.”
Harper’s dreams of a majority died in Quebec, where the Liberals won 13 seats in Montreal and the Bloc won most of the rural seats despite Conservative defence of supply management and increased funding for rural and agricultural programs.
Meanwhile, one of the political ironies to emerge from the election was that in the new 40th Parliament, the title of dean of the House of Commons, given to the longest-serving MP, goes to rural BQ MP Louis Plamondon, elected in 1984 as a Brian Mulroney Progressive Conservative. He defected to the nascent Bloc in 1990 and has been re-elected in the six elections since on a platform to break up Canada.
As dean of the Commons, the 65-year-old professor, businessperson and 24-year Commons veteran will preside over the Commons in mid-November as it elects its new Speaker.
Until he decided to retire before the Oct. 14 election, 29-year Commons veteran and Winnipeg New Democrat Bill Blaikie was the dean of the House.
