OTTAWA

In the two years since the 2008 parliamentary crisis, most Canadians have come to think of Gilles Duceppe as the disquieting but silent partner of the failed Liberal-NDP coalition bid. It seems he was a lot more than that.

In a book released this week Duceppe casts himself as the driving force behind the Liberal-NDP coalition agreement.

He credits the Bloc Québécois with providing the gist of the economic pact on which Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton agreed.

And he confirms that exploratory talks aimed at preventing the Conservatives from serving a second mandate took place some time before the government’s fiscal update triggered a mega-parliamentary storm.

According to Duceppe, Layton first sounded out the Bloc about participating in an opposition coalition designed to unseat the re-elected government three weeks before Finance Minister Jim Flaherty stood up in the House to present his update.

The 2008 election took place on Oct. 14 and the Throne speech was read out on Nov. 19. The fiscal update was brought down on a week later. The Layton-Duceppe chat about a possible coalition would have taken place before the re-elected government had even reconvened Parliament.

Duceppe originally told Layton that the Bloc would never take on more than a support role in a coalition scheme. After Flaherty delivered his controversial update, he says he decided it was time to follow up on his chat with the NDP.

Duceppe says he first contacted Dion and then told Layton to get in touch with the Liberal leader. Having set up a date between his two opposition colleagues, Duceppe also prodded them into endorsing his party’s spending plan. ‘’We alone had a realistic, detailed and fully costed plan,” he says about the Bloc’s package.

On top of placing the Bloc’s recession-fighting prescriptions on the agenda of the future coalition government, Duceppe brags about wrestling one more major concession from his opposition partners – a concession that was more symbolic but also more specifically tailored to his sovereignist agenda.

Noting that the coalition communiqué referred to Quebecers and Canadians as two distinct peoples, he says: ‘’Coming from the federal Liberals, it was a surprising development. (Former prime minister) Trudeau must have been spinning in his grave. It was pure candy. When Jacques Parizeau read that, he was delighted. He backed it (the coalition) 100 per cent.”

Over the past two years, a number of coalition players have given their take on the episode. They have all tended to focus on their own role. Duceppe is no exception.

The book – which really is just a 221-page transcript of a lengthy conversation between Duceppe and journalist Gilles Toupin—is aimed at a francophone audience.

It is primari;y meant to revisit the Bloc’s 20-year tenure and provide the rationale for a permanent sovereignist presence on Parliament Hill.

In the book, Duceppe argues that if the Bloc were ever to voluntarily withdraw from the federal scene, it would be admitting that the sovereignty project is dead.

The coalition episode barely takes up two and a half pages and they are meant to respond to the criticism by some sovereignists that Duceppe made a pact with the devil when he shook hands with Dion – the so-called father of the clarity act—on the coalition.

In Quebec the coalition was always popular and Duceppe’s role in it is largely bullet-proof.

But the same is not true of the Liberals and the New Democrats elsewhere in Canada.

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At the time of the parliamentary crisis, Duceppe’s mere appearance at the official signing of the coalition pact provided the spark that allowed Prime Minister Stephen Harper to light a fiery public opinion fire under the Liberals.

In Harperland, his just-published chronicle of the prime minister’s four-year reign, journalist Lawrence Martin reports that Harper was considering relinquishing the reins of power to the coalition without much of a fight until Duceppe appeared on live television alongside Dion and Layton.

Harper has kept his guns trained on the coalition ever since and Duceppe has just added a new round of live ammunition to the Conservative rhetorical arsenal.

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