With 57 percent of his 103-member caucus from Quebec after the May 2 election, New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton quickly began to pay homage to his new base.
As Stephen Harper has done for years, to little effect, Layton now begins his public statements in French. NDP news releases now also carry the French version first.
With 59 Quebec MPs, most of them elected in nationalist ridings that for 18 years elected separatist Bloc Québecois MPs, and 44 MPs from the rest of Canada, Layton will be walking a tightrope, trying to solidify the party’s shocking new Quebec base while not alienating its historic Canadian base outside Quebec that has sustained the party and its predecessor Cooperative Commonwealth Federation for more than 75 years.
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With the opening of a Parliament this week that features the NDP for the first time as the official opposition, the tightrope draws more taut.
The Canada-Quebec balance is a minefield for the NDP leader, as it has been for many federal leaders.
But Layton, more than any other national leader, has catered to Quebec nationalist dreams of quasi-independence with all the benefits of Canada.
In many ways, Layton seems to be plowing that ground again while insisting he simply is trying to accommodate Quebec to create the “winning conditions” that will make Quebeckers want to remain Canadians.
For Canadian nationalists, the early signs should be troubling.
After fudging the issue and being hounded by Quebec reporters in Ottawa, Layton last week made clear his position on the winning conditions for Quebec separation.
If 50 percent plus one Quebeckers voting in a future referendum opt to secede, then they have the right to secede. It means that with an eligible voting population of fewer than six million and a turnout of 60 percent, approximately 3.5 million Quebec residents could vote to break up a country of 33 million, and Layton would accept it.
By the way, he also says the Quebec National Assembly gets to write the referendum question, a question written for maximum effect and ambiguity by a future Parti Québecois government.
The NDP position is contrary to a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that Parliament should be able to assess whether the question is fair and the majority clear before it has to negotiate secession.
Meanwhile, Layton’s Quebec lieutenant and deputy leader, Thomas Mulcair, continues to misrepresent a House of Commons vote that declared the Québecois people a nation. It was a Harper motion to head off a BQ motion that would have declared Quebec a nation.
Mulcair, presumably deliberately, misses the not-too-subtle difference between the two. Last weekend at an NDP conference in Montreal, he repeated the myth: “The NDP will have a stronger voice to move forward on the issues which can finally give substance to the unanimous recognition of the Quebec nation by the House of Commons.”
Actually, it didn’t.
In any event, secessionist Quebeckers will see the NDP as their new vehicle and Layton will have to balance his pandering to them with pandering to the Rest-of-Canada core of party support.
And he is setting Quebec up for another failure of federalists to help them achieve their goal of virtual independence within Canada.
It is a dangerous game.
