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In between sips of sangria, Bloc member Hans Morin said sovereigntists like him were saddened to see the PQ drop to fourth place following the provincial election. Many voters switched allegiance from the PQ to the Coalition Avenir Quebec, in part, to give the Liberals the boot after almost 15 years in power.

“I think we maybe didn’t want to have seen such a conclusive defeat,” said Morin, 34, about the PQ’s election result.

With the party’s devastating loss came the realization there were few venues in the halls of power for sovereigntists to make their voices heard.

Morin said by sending a large contingent of Bloc members to Ottawa in October, sovereigntists will gain a national platform from which to recruit.

At the provincial level the sovereignty movement is not dead but it's on standby

The collective guilt Quebec sovereigntists feel for helping to crush the PQ will push them to vote Bloc in October, Morin predicted. “Generally, I think people — in their collective unconscious — will end up doing that.”

The guilt factor may also be helping the Bloc’s finances. Figures from Elections Canada reveal that between April and June of this year, the party collected more than $514,000 from roughly 4,600 people.

That’s far from the millions collected by the Liberals and Conservatives during the same period, but the Bloc has significantly fewer costs compared with the larger parties because it only runs candidates in Quebec.

The number also represents a more than tenfold increase compared with what the Bloc collected during the same quarter a year ago, when the party was falling apart under the leadership of Martine Ouellet.