As I’ve said in the past, Quebec politics is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me.  I mean, sure they’re our neighbouring province, but what happens in Quebec mostly stays in Quebec–and has very little bearing on me in TO.  That said, I always found things to be much more entertaining across the eastern border…at least until Rob Ford started smoking crack, y’know, in one of his drunken stupors. :P

Let me ask: when was the last time you saw a political assassination attempt on this side of the pond?  And no, I’m not talking about some crazy Tea Partier firing a long-range rifle at the White House window while Obama was away in Hawaii.  Now, the network on which I watched the last Quebec election (I think it was TVA) didn’t actually cut away to the commotion outside…but even still, seeing Pauline Marois rushed off the podium mid-victory speech was a bit of a thrill.  (And lest I be accused of being an angryphone, calisse de fédéraliste or something along those lines, I would’ve felt the same way had it been Charest.)

But since surviving that brush with Bain, Pauline Marois has risen from the ashes.  At one point, even her own party was singing “Cette année on flush Pauline” (in this Radio-Canada parody video, mind you), but now she’s in line to be the next prime minister of Quebec.  That’s no typo, just a too-direct translation.  But man, back when the news sites all started putting up paywalls, the Parti Québécois had maybe a five-seat advantage in the National Assembly, and support for sovereignty was tracking in the low 30′s.  Now the latest polls are predicting a PQ majority.  So, what did I miss?

Well, I suspect it started in Lac-Mégantic.  Sometimes it takes a tragedy to define a leader, and by most accounts, Marois came out ahead for her handling of the railway disaster.  Plus, you had the incompetence of the American-owned transport company on a federally-controlled railroad, all of which couldn’t hurt la cause souverainiste and its us-against-them mentality.  As for helping the cause, I admit that I stopped following the Charbonneau Commission when they were about to move on to the provincial Liberals–cuz hey, did you hear we have a mayor who smoked crack?–but I’m sure it didn’t do the official opposition any favours.

And that cuts to the crux of the issue.  While most political spectrums are divided between left and right, Quebec’s axis sits in the middle of parties who want to stay a part of Canada, and those who wish to separate.  Political alternance in la belle province dictates that when voters get sick of the federalist Liberals, they switch their vote to the separatist PQ.  There are occasionally third parties that pop up from one election cycle to the next, but never seem to have any staying power.  I mean, does the CAQ receive much media coverage nowadays?  Is Option Nationale even still a thing?  I haven’t seen any mention of them in the major media headlines; mind you, I think I’ve only got a couple of articles left before the paywalls go up again.

Speaking of the mainstream media, though, this election got a new wrinkle when Pierre Karl Péladeau, Quebec’s answer to Ted Rogers–even folks in Toronto hate him!–threw his hat into the PQ ring.  His vast media empire, which includes the Toronto Sun and its sister tabloids, isn’t known for taking a strong position on the sovereignty scale so much as swinging to the right on the traditional political spectrum.  In fact, Capitaine Solidaire (alter ego: Amir Khadir), the excitable mouthpiece of Québec Solidaire–the separatist party that’s too left-wing to support the PQ–recently compared Péladeau to Ayatollah Khomeini.  Not surprisingly, Le Journal de Montréal is demanding an apology, or at least publishing a story about the PQ demanding one.  Alrighty then…

Easily the most notable media magnate to recently take control of a country was Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, and if you didn’t have a problem with that, you probably think bunga bunga parties with underage girls are all in a day’s work, as well.  Berlusconi literally had TV networks in his back pocket, but it remains to be seen how Péladeau will wield his national influence over this provincial election.  I mean, I normally can’t stand the guy, but I’d tune in to watch Ezra Levant turn into a spokesman for Quebec sovereignty…if I could only find that channel on my TV nowadays.  I think it’s somewhere above Spike TV, heh heh.

Alas, after 800 words, I’m just barely touching on this election bringing Quebec independence back to the forefront.  But I’ll withhold further comment on that until I see some results.  Cuz hey, if the pollsters were always accurate, we’d have a Wildrose government in Alberta and an NDP majority in B.C.  Yeeeah, didn’t happen there, either.  In other words…

Vive le Québec encerclé!