QUEBEC CITY

It would be tempting but wrong to see the selection by the Bloc Québécois of a hardliner to lead it in next year’s federal election as a token of the determination of the flagging sovereigntist party to not fade gently into the night.

In fact it is the exact opposite, for if so many mainstream sovereigntists had not already given up on the Bloc, Mario Beaulieu, who won 53 per cent of the votes cast by a bit more than 10,000 members on Saturday, would not have been elected as its leader.

First the Bloc lost Quebec, now it has lost its ecumenical soul to a sect.

For Beaulieu hails from what can only be described as the zealot section of the sovereignty movement.

In the past, he has had little time for the garden-variety sovereigntists that his predecessors built the federal party for.

He rose to fame within the sovereignty movement by being a constant burr in the saddle of a succession of Parti Québécois leaders that he deemed too soft on the language issue and not proactive enough on the front of sovereignty.

A man who has always flown with the language hawks, Beaulieu believes that Quebec’s current regime — with its emphasis on the predominance of French — amounts to an open door to the province’s anglicization.

For Beaulieu, the English language, in its many public manifestations in Quebec — is a permanent threat to the province’s identity.

In his previous incarnation as the head of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste earlier this year, he issued a blanket condemnation of the non-Quebec critics of the PQ’s values charter, charging them with Quebec-bashing.

It did not matter that many of those critics were echoing the position of many sovereigntist elder statesmen starting with former premier Jacques Parizeau.

At least one former Bloc leader clearly has little or no time for his newly-chosen successor.

Gilles Duceppe came out swinging after Beaulieu used the slogan “Nous vaincrons” (we shall vanquish) in his victory speech on Saturday. The phrase was introduced into the sovereigntist lore by the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) at the time of the 1970 October Crisis.

It was the second time that Beaulieu’s rhetoric earned him a public reprimand from Duceppe. The latter has already taken issue with Beaulieu’s contention that he was running for the Bloc leadership to turn the page on “two decades of defeatism.”

Beaulieu has vouched that on his watch, the Bloc will spend more time aggressively promoting sovereignty and less time in the House of Commons.

On that score, he could end up making a virtue of necessity.

Richmond-Arthabaska MP André Bellavance, whom he beat for the leadership, had the support of the other three Bloc MPs. None of their ridings could be described as bedrock solid for the Bloc. They will now have to decide whether to run again under the radicalized banner of their party.

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Until the weekend, the Bloc was the least of the worries of most sovereigntist activists as they struggle to come to terms with the Parti Québécois’ stunning April 7 provincial defeat.

With sovereignty off the radar for the foreseeable future, the federal party was left to sink or swim on its own and many presumed that it would do the former in the next election.

But at a time when job one for the PQ is to make its cause more amenable to Quebec voters, Beaulieu’s election is not what they had in mind.

Over the years, sovereigntist hardliners have turned more Quebec nationalists off the pursuit of Quebec independence than the reverse.

The notion that one of them will be on the soapbox of a federal election debate at such a fragile time in the movement’s history is sending shivers down the spine of some of its remaining leading lights.

By comparison to the backlash simmering in the sovereigntist backrooms, the reactions of the NDP, the Liberals and the Conservatives to Beaulieu’s victory was understandably muted.

If anything, the outcome of the Bloc’s leadership campaign has made it easier for soft sovereigntists to support a federalist party next year.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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