Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe is not taking anything for granted in election
Published Friday September 5th, 2008
MONTREAL - Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe is not taking anything for granted in the forthcoming federal election, which is expected to be called Sunday.
Still, Duceppe said the Bloc is the only party positioned to take on the Conservatives in the province. "The only party capable of defeating them, and it shows in all the polls, is the Bloc Quebecois," he said Friday in Montreal.
"I never take things for granted. We will work very hard."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is to meet with Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean on Sunday and is expected to ask her to dissolve Parliament, sending the country to the polls for an Oct. 14 vote.
Pundits have said the Bloc has its work cut out for it.
Its support has consistently been dropping in Quebec and while some polls indicate it still holds a slim lead, others suggest it is neck-and-neck with the Conservatives, particularly in ridings off the island of Montreal which have been Bloc territory.
Some observers have said that as many as 30 ridings could be tough fights between the Bloc and the Tories.
As well, support for sovereignty has also been in decline to the point that even the Parti Quebecois has said there is work to be done before another referendum is held.
Duceppe met with election organizers Friday and will ride the party's campaign bus to visit several ridings on the weekend.
He said the Bloc is the only party that regularly defends the interests of Quebecers.
Duceppe said the Harper government is on the brink of winning a majority in the next election and stressed the importance of beating the Tories in Quebec.
He does not believe Quebecers have grown weary of his sovereigntist party.
Duceppe predicted the most important issues of the anticipated campaign will be the economy and the environment.
He took aim at the Tory government's "stubborn ideological agenda" and its cuts to cultural funding.
Duceppe said he is not intimidated by word that former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord plans to help Conservative candidates running in Quebec.
The Roberval, Que.,-born Lord, who is fluently bilingual, is popular in Quebec and was reported to be ready to make the rounds to shore up Conservative support.
He challenged Lord to announce his own candidacy if he truly has intends to hit the campaign trail.
"A good way to campaign is to run," Duceppe said. "It's a good idea that he do most of his campaigning in the Maritimes."
The Bloc, meanwhile, has so far selected 68 candidates to run in Quebec's 75 federal ridings.
In the January 2006 general election, the party won 51 seats.
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Duceppe likely heading into last federal campaign
MONTREAL - Gilles Duceppe will spend the next five-plus weeks campaigning at the head of a party he has already tried to leave behind him.
The Bloc Quebecois leader sprinted out to declare his candidacy last June for the top job with his provincial cousins at the Parti Quebecois only to abandon the race two days later.
But Duceppe, the longest serving of all federal party chiefs, has been counted out so often only to lift himself off the mat and claim the lion's share of Quebec's 75 federal seats that he remains a formidable campaign force.
Bloc support has been eroding over the years. Polls have suggested in the leadup to the federal campaign that as many as 30 seats off the island of Montreal - the Bloc's backyard - will see serious battles between the Conservatives and the Bloc.
And sovereignty isn't the siren song it once was. The Parti Quebecois isn't abandoning independence, but neither will they embrace it with the vigour they once did.
Duceppe's dalliance with the PQ has gone beyond his blip as a leadership candidate in 2007. The PQ came calling in 2005 after Bernard Landry quit in a pique when he only got 76 per cent support at a party convention instead of the 80 per cent he had been seeking.
It got so heated in the more recent round that at one point ex-leader Andre Boisclair angrily snapped that Duceppe should quit undermining his leadership, a charge that made Duceppe reportedly go ballistic. There had been similar stories around the time he took over the Bloc in 1997 from the lacklustre Michel Gauthier.
When Boisclair did go, Duceppe did allow that he didn't rule out switching to provincial politics and even noted that leading the PQ was an attractive idea, even though the party was broke, demoralized and deeply split.
But he said he was much too busy preparing the Bloc, which he has led since 1997, for the next federal election.
"It's a hypothetical situation," Duceppe said. "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a tractor."
About two weeks later, it was the rumours that had traction and Duceppe announced his bid for Boisclair's job.
But what appeared at the outset to be high political drama turned into slapstick as Duceppe quit the race within 24 hours of getting into it.
He threw his support behind Pauline Marois, a former PQ cabinet minister who'd failed to grab the crown twice before. It came as a major poll was released, indicating Duceppe was distant second to his chief rival.
The bid left observers wondering how much homework had been done by Duceppe, who has a reputation as a master of his files. While he said he consulted his family as well as Bloc and PQ members, reports surfaced that he actually had little support in the PQ caucus.
Some were miffed by comments from a Bloc member who said Duceppe, who once had the nickname "The Little General" for his authoritarian style, would be just the guy to "kick some butts" in the unruly provincial sovereigntist party. Pequiste posteriors would not be such an easy target, his detractors sniffed.
The Bloc quickly welcomed Duceppe back, giving him a 95 per cent vote of support and closing the door on any further public discussion of the matter.
"When there is unity, we are more prepared to go to battle," Duceppe said after the vote.
Duceppe, who is now a 61-year-old grandfather, is comfortable in his role as Bloc leader and much of the mockery of him during his early years has disappeared.
The news photo of him in a hairnet taken as he did interviews after touring a cheese factory in his first campaign as leader is not trotted out as often. The icy blue-eyed stare that seemed to seek to hypnotize questioners doesn't seem as prevalent.
He still doesn't exude the charisma that had Quebecers giving an almost Moses-like status to the first Bloc leader, Lucien Bouchard, but he has managed to maintain the Bloc hold on Quebec.
That grasp has seen some signs of loosening in recent years. The Bloc was being described as a political version of the walking dead before it was reanimated by the federal sponsorship scandal in the 2004.
Its numbers slid in the 2006 with the establishment of a Conservative beachhead in Quebec and signs of life for the once moribund Tories in opinion polls in the normally Bloc solid regions off the island of Montreal.
In 1990, Duceppe became the first elected MP for the Bloc. In the 18 years since, faces in the caucus have changed but not his.
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