MONTREAL—With a week to go to the federal election, the only question still to be answered about the Bloc Québécois is whether it will finish first or second to the Liberals in Quebec next Monday.

Neither Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, nor Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives had factored in the possibility of a Bloc resurrection in their game plans.

And yet anecdotal evidence suggests the build-up that is leading to the Bloc’s spectacular recovery was months in the making.

Premier François Legault’s repeat demand that the federal parties respect the will of the national assembly on state-enforced secularism is just one of the elements of that build-up.

Conservative forces outside the province also had a big hand in it.

For the resurgence of the Bloc has more to do with a battening of the Quebec hatches in response to ill tidings from outside the province than with the awakening of a dormant sovereignty movement

It is not to take credit away from Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet’s efficient campaign to note that he also happens to be in the right place at the right time.

He is the main beneficiary of the many hackles raised in Quebec by Scheer and his provincial allies in the year leading up to the election.

Most Quebecers may usually be more consumed by the goings-on in the national assembly than by Canadian politics, but they do not live in a political vacuum.

Historically, they have always paid a lot of attention to the treatment of minority francophone communities by their provincial governments. And they are particularly attuned to anything that smacks — at least to their ears — of Quebec-bashing.

By now, most Quebec voters know that the Conservative governments of New Brunswick and Ontario are the least francophone-friendly to have ruled those two provinces in decades.

They are well aware that their province — even as the only live pipeline conflict currently underway pits Alberta against the government of British Columbia — figured very prominently in Jason Kenney’s rhetoric in last spring’s provincial election.

They know Scheer’s counterparts in the Prairies expect a Conservative government to override Quebec’s objections to the construction of a pipeline through the province to the East Coast.

Finally, add to the mix the conviction — widespread in francophone quarters in Quebec — that the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons would not have been as relentless in its pursuit of the SNC-Lavalin affair if the company had been based in Ontario.

Given all of the above, the real surprise is that Scheer’s Conservatives did not expect Quebecers to turn away from their party.

The latest Léger poll pegged the Conservatives at 17 per cent among francophone voters, seven points behind the Liberals and 20 points behind the Bloc.

Conservative party strategists may have assumed Quebecers’ repudiation of the Parti Québécois in last year’s provincial election meant there was no longer an available federal receptacle for the backlash various Conservative figureheads were so assiduously courting.

If anything, the reverse is turning out to be true.

With the PQ leaderless and relegated in fourth place in the national assembly, it has never been easier for a Quebec voter to support the Bloc without worrying about unintended consequences on the sovereignty front.

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In the last stretch of the campaign, the Conservatives are belatedly trying to convince Quebecers that by voting for the Bloc they will be putting the sovereignty project back on track.

In the current provincial climate, the Conservative party might as well be trying to sell Quebecers snow shovels in the middle of August.

Like most Green and NDP supporters, many of the progressive Quebec voters who are poised to flock to the Bloc next week dread the return to power of a Conservative government.

According to a weekend Abacus poll, the proportion of Bloc supporters who would prefer to see Trudeau re-elected runs as high as two-thirds.

But at the same time, many of them do not trust the Liberal leader to have their backs.

They stack the suggestion that Trudeau would not impose a pipeline on Quebec against the extraordinary efforts his government expended on forcing the Trans Mountain expansion on an unwilling British Columbia government.

They note his failure to put SNC-Lavalin and the thousands of Quebec workers it employs out of judicial harm’s way.

It does not help Trudeau that, in the eye of many francophone voters, the history of the federal Liberals in Quebec is one of repeated breaches of constitutional trust.

Or that the unanimity of the main federal parties against Bill 21 fuels an us-against-them approach to Monday’s vote.

And then, as of the Thanksgiving weekend, 75 per cent of Bloc sympathizers — according to Abacus — still expected Trudeau to head the next federal government.

That has Liberal strategists hoping that as the possibility of a Scheer win sinks in, a critical mass of progressive voters will reconsider their decision to support the Bloc.

But the reverse could also happen with the prospect of a Conservative victory acting as another incentive for Quebecers to give the Bloc as strong a hand as possible.

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

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