MONTREAL—How serious is Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer about winning more seats in Quebec in next year’s s federal election? Serious enough to give Brian Mulroney pride of place – albeit by video — at a party gathering and to roll out the red carpet for a former Bloc Québécois leader.

Both were marquee events at a weekend meeting of the Quebec wing of the Conservative party. Neither would have been imaginable in the recent Stephen Harper era. Nor for that matter would a gathering of the province’s clan.

Those were annual occurrences under Mulroney but they fell off the party’s agenda at the same time as the word progressive was erased from its name back when the Tories and the Canadian Alliance reconciled 15 years ago.

Mind you, Harper left his successor a larger team of Quebec MPs than he ever had to tap for his cabinets. The province’s current caucus is more than twice as large as the one elected in 2011. It also features a less shallow talent pool. It is not by accident that the Quebec Conservatives who play leading roles in question period these days usually happen to be first-time MPs.

Like Jean Chrétien, Harper governed over a period when Quebec voters were predisposed to put most of their federal eggs in an opposition basket. Over his tenure, the Bloc and then the NDP held most of the province’s seats. That helped the Conservatives form a majority government with minimal Quebec support in 2011.

But the province came back into the governing equation in the last election — with the Liberals winning both a majority of Quebec seats and a majority government. Looking to next year’s campaign, Scheer also cannot necessarily count on as favourable a nation-wide split in the non-Conservative vote as Harper did at the time of his three victories.

In the last election the party ran fourth in Quebec with 16 per cent of the vote. To put a positive spin on the numbers, of the four larger provinces, Quebec offers the Conservatives the most room to grow.

But Scheer cannot bank on nostalgia for the Harper era to improve his party’s standings in the province. Even within Conservative ranks, few miss the former prime minister. By comparison, Mulroney remains a favourite of the Quebec membership.

He is the last Conservative leader to have won a majority of the province’s seats, a feat he accomplished by embracing Quebec’s nationalist voters. The leading role he has been playing in support of Justin Trudeau’s NAFTA efforts has gone a long way to help him put the scandal that made him persona non grata among the Harper-led Conservatives behind him.

Revenge is a dish best eaten cold and with both the current Liberal prime minister and the Conservative leader of the official opposition looking to him for advice, the first on Canada/U.S. relations and the second on a winning Quebec strategy, Mulroney is getting a full serving these days.

No memorable family reunion is quite complete without the return of a prodigal son. This weekend, former Bloc Québécois leader Michel Gauthier slipped into that role.

The ink was still fresh on Gauthier’s Conservative membership card when Trudeau called a byelection for June 18 in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord. The riding is next door to the one the former Bloc champion represented over his 14 years as a sovereigntist MP. Gauthier is not interested in jumping back in the arena but he is eager to campaign for his latest political soulmates. Next month’s byelection vote will be the first test of whether Scheer’s overtures are paying off.

For the Conservative leader, there is more at play here than trying to score a few byelection points at the expense of his beleaguered opposition rivals. Winning by default the second place to the Liberals in Quebec is the easy part.

In the big picture, the province is undergoing what may be its most significant political realignment since the foundation of the Parti Québécois in the late sixties.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

At both levels, the political vehicles of the sovereignty movement have fallen out of step with the electorate. That was the rationale Gauthier laid out for switching camps.

Scheer is not the only federal leader to try to seize the moment to turn back the clock to a happier era for his party in Quebec. With the NDP faltering under its rookie leader, all could be in place for the province to become the Liberal fortress it used to be under Trudeau’s father. And if that were to happen, the Conservatives could be looking at another decade in opposition.

Chantal Hébert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert

Read more about: