Quebecers eager for change gave a significant number of votes to a third small party - Mario Dumont's Democratic Action Party. It won only four seats in the National Assembly of Quebec, but was supported by 18% of the province's residents. The point is that in the eyes of many voters, the Liberals are too closely tied to the federal center in Ottawa, and moreover, Jean Charest was once the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
The young and energetic Dumont has hope of making his party a significant political force in the future. In the last Quebec sovereignty referendum in 1995, Dumont, by the way, supported the separatists. But later, sensing a change in attitudes in the province, he decided to abandon discussion of constitutional issues.
In fact, all three parties are nationalistic; even the Liberals have no intention of changing the laws restricting the English language that were introduced by the separatists in their day. In Quebec, for instance, children of immigrants, even under the Liberals, will be denied the right to attend schools where instruction is carried out in Canada's second official language - English. Anglo-Canadians have accepted this; in the elections they did not support the Equality Party, which advocates linguistic equality. Its disappointed leader, Keith Henderson, announced that he was resigning.
Over the last quarter century, Quebec has seen a struggle between the separatists, who rallied around the Parti Québécois, and the federalists, who supported the Liberal Party. Twice the separatists held referendums on Quebec sovereignty, and both times they lost them. In 1995, the federalists won by a razor-thin margin of 1% of the vote, which inspired the separatists. After that, the province's residents once again handed the mandate to govern to sovereignty supporters, but they themselves largely lost interest in separating from Canada.
This forced the party leadership to change tactics: the Parti Québécois entered the current elections under the slogan of good government, and decided to postpone leaving Canada for now. Its leader, Quebec Premier Bernard Landry, said he would call a referendum only if he had a chance of success. He will not get that chance for at least five years.
Yevgeny SOKOLOV,
Montreal, Canada