Photo: Martin C. Barry
On a stopover in Laval last week, Bloc
Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe

With federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff pledging his party will no longer shore up the minority Conservatives, leaving open the possibility of an election this fall should the government tumble before then, the Bloc Québécois are being cagey as to their intentions.
“We’re considering each issue on its own value,” Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe told TLN during a stopover last week in Laval, when he attended a hot dog and corn fundraiser held by the area’s three Bloc MPs at St. Maxime church in Chomedey.

Good for Quebec
“So when it’s good for Quebec we’re supporting it,” said Duceppe. “If not, we’re opposing it and then we’re facing the consequences if there’s an election or not. I think this is the most responsible and rational attitude, instead of thinking, is it good in the polls or not. Is it good, period, for Quebec, period.”
Across the country, Canadians have been hearing so many threats from the Liberals and the other opposition parties in the past year since the last election about refusing to support the Tories and toppling the government, that nobody could blame electors if they saw Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who heads up the largest opposition faction in the House, as the proverbial boy who cried wolf.

No back and forth: Duceppe
“In our case, we don’t have to be back and forth,” said Duceppe, defending his party from a suggestion that they, too, have been engaged in a tactical game that alternates between propping up the government or refusing to do so, depending on what the Liberals and the NDP are up to. “We are always having the same attitude, judging each proposal on its value,” he said. “The NDP and the Liberals are into that.”
Laval Bloc MP Nicole Demers was just as non-committal in gauging whether the pieces are coming together for an election in the fall. “I really don’t know,” she said, “because it’s happened so many times before that we cannot guess what is on his (Ignatieff’s) mind. He came out with that suddenly.

‘Don’t know’: Demers
“He was supposed to tell his caucus before he came out with any decision and he came out before he consulted his caucus. So I don’t know if it’s on the spur of the moment. It’s a fancy idea. I think he thought he would try it out to see what people would say. I really don’t know. We don’t do things the same way.”
Like Duceppe, Demers denied the Bloc has been engaging in a kind of parliamentary cat-and-mouse game with the vulnerable government, in which the Liberals, Bloc and NDP appear at times to be taking turns buoying up the Tories, depending on the opportunities that arise with the shifting allegiances of the three opposition parties in the House.

Good for Quebec
“We’ve never done that,” she said, while qualifying her response with a reminder that the Bloc is not averse to going along with the Tories if it serves the interests of Quebec. “Every time there’s been a budget that was tabled in the House, we were always the first to come out and say we will or will not support this government on this budget, on this measure, on this program. We have never supported the government if something was against Quebec.
“We have supported the government when they gave us the money to deal with the deficit that we had because of income tax points and all that and also the déséquilibre fiscal, a part of it. But apart from that, we have never supported the government unless it was good for Quebec. And like Mr. Duceppe said, every time they give us something that is good for Quebec, we would be fools to refuse it. You don’t refuse something for the people you are working to represent.”