Stephen Harper’s plan for a majority government was derailed in Quebec where voters gave the separatist Bloc Québécois two-thirds of the 75 seats available.
The Conservatives had hoped to double or triple the 10 seats they won in 2006 after spending money, declaring the Québécois a nation within Canada, giving Quebec more power and spending much campaign time courting Quebec voters.
The result was that the Conservatives held 10 seats as they did in 2006 and the Bloc, once considered on the road to political irrelevance, kept all but one of the 51 seats they won in 2006.
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BQ leader Gilles Duceppe took full credit for denying the Conservatives the majority that English Canada would have given them.
“Without the Bloc, Stephen Harper would have a majority government,” he said election night. “Democracy has spoken. The Bloc is relevant.”
The election also gave the BQ an unexpected Canadian parliamentary privilege.
In the 40th Parliament, the title of the Dean of the House of Commons given to the longest-serving member goes to BQ MP Louis Plamondon, a rural MP elected in 1984 as a Progressive Conservative who turned Bloc in 1990 and has been elected ever since on a platform of breaking up Canada.
Retired Winnipeg New Democrat Bill Blaikie held the position until the election.
As dean of the House of Commons, the 65-year-old professor and 24-year Commons veteran will preside over the Commons as it elects its new speaker.
The Bloc was formed in 1990 with a promise to fight only two elections until Quebec was an independent country. Six elections later, it continues to exist as a force in Parliament, most of its MPs have guaranteed their House of Commons pensions and one of their ranks is the dean of Parliament.
