What political planet do English-speaking Canadians live on?

The majority of francophone Quebecers have voted for the Bloc Québécois for the past 20 years. A strong majority of Quebec francophones voted “yes” to sovereignty in 1995. Most of the Quebec left has been sovereignist for a good four decades. So if you’re a francophone Quebecer and you’re on the left, chances are you are or have been a supporter of at least one sovereignist party.

None of this is news or surprising. Is there something not clear? Nycole Turmel is a left-wing, francophone Quebecer. She has been socially and politically active for 30 years. Of course she has had ties to the sovereignist movement.

The NDP’s historic success in the May election was based on bringing a lot of people like Turmel aboard the federalist boat. Canadians outside Quebec were overjoyed that Jack Layton’s “orange wave” pretty much wiped out the Bloc: this was seen as a victory for Canada and a defeat for Quebec’s sovereignist movement. But commentators almost immediately started attacking Layton for “pandering” to Quebec and expounded on the NDP’s Quebec “problem.” These ought to be contradictory reactions.

It should be easy to understand that for a political party to be successful in any political community, it has to speak convincingly to its aspirations, its understandings and its values. Layton spoke convincingly to Quebecers and — with a lot of help from favourable circumstances — was amply rewarded. But, evidently, in Canada’s contemporary political culture, if a federal party is successful in Quebec, there must be “pandering” going on.

In other words, there exists, deeply anchored in English-speaking Canadian political consciousness, a belief that there is no proper Canadian way to address Quebecers’ aspirations. And Quebecers who have been attracted to the sovereignist movement at some point, to some degree, for however long or short a period, are not to be trusted. But something like 60 per cent of francophone voters is a lot of people to exclude from the Canadian political conversation.

No political party in a generation has sought to articulate a political language that Quebecers and other Canadians could embrace equally — a political language built on the recognition of Quebecers’ and other Canadians’ deeply rooted aspirations, identities and sense of belonging. Between the Bloc on one side and everybody else on the other, Quebecers and other Canadians have merrily ignored each other.

Much has been written over the years about the effect of the Bloc’s electoral dominance on Quebecers’ sense of belonging to Canada: that it has insulated them, weakened their sense of responsibility for the governance of the country, etc. But we are now seeing that the Bloc has also enabled non-Quebecers to ignore Quebec, to treat it as a non-entity when it comes to governing Canada. So, since the early 1990s, Canada has been governed essentially without francophone Quebec, and people outside Quebec like it just fine.

Now the NDP has come along to upset that happy blindness. Canadians outside Quebec are being shown that if Quebecers are going to rejoin the game of governing this country, the game itself is going to change. This was a risky gamble from the start for the NDP: speaking convincingly to Quebecers might alienate other Canadians. Indeed, the New Democrats had faced this choice many times before and had always shrunk from the challenge.

Jack Layton decided to go for it. He and his team are trying to articulate a new language of solidarity on the centre-left, between Quebecers and other Canadians. The first difficulty was to bring enough Quebecers on board. The second one, likely to prove the greater, is now to make other Canadians accept a change in their own sense of the country, of themselves, and of Quebec.

The current agitation around the Turmel affair had been simmering ever since the “orange wave” swept Quebec. It is fundamentally about the question of how and whether Canadians will be able to accommodate themselves to a Quebec that is willing to participate in the governance of Canada. The attacks on Turmel, and on Layton’s supposed lack of judgment in putting her forward as interim leader, serve to reaffirm two decades of Canadians’ blindness to their relationship with Quebec. They are about keeping Quebecers and other Canadians as far apart from each other as possible, without actually breaking up the country.

Layton’s mistake — if any — has been to call attention to Turmel and to what she represents too soon. The plan was to engage Canadians and Quebecers in a renewed political conversation over the next several years. Obviously, and sadly, circumstances forced Layton’s hand. Considering that Canadians outside Quebec have not had time to adjust to new realities brought on by the “vague orange,” he might have chosen someone else, most likely not from Quebec, and delayed a reckoning.

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But who knows if and when this would have been possible? As it is, rather than looking at this as a mistake, I would rather see Layton’s choice as another courageous gamble. In effect, he is telling his fellow Canadians: “open your eyes.” Please.

Claude Denis is a professor in the School of Political Studies and Institute of Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa.

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