"In the event of a Bloc comeback, what impact could Blanchet’s team have on the balance of power in the House of Commons? In the ever-so-likely case of a hung parliament, the chances that the Bloc will be tapped to form a coalition are nonexistent, no matter how many seats the party gains"

The last two federal elections have been trying for the Bloc Québécois.

In 2011, the “Orange Crush” passed through Québec, booting the Bloc from all but four (of previously 49) ridings in the province, many of which they had thought to be safe. In 2015, it was the turn of the Liberals to sweep many of the Bloc’s key ridings, including former leader Gilles Duceppe’s own, Laurier-Sainte-Marie, and leaving the Bloc with (10 seats) – just shy of the 12 seats necessary to gain official party status in the House of Commons.

Loss of official party status since 2011 has come at a heavy cost for the Bloc, notably in terms of administrative and legislative resources, as well as in committee representation and in-house airtime. Between 2015 and Jan. 2019, the party went through some soul-searching and several leaders. In early 2018, seven of the Bloc 10 MPs jumped ship in protest of new leader Martine Ouellet’s leadership style.

READ MORE: The Bloc surge?

By then, some observers were predicting that maybe the party had come to the end of its useful life. A new referendum was nowhere in sight; most Quebeckers, especially the millennial generation, did not show any inclination in reopening this debate. Old federal wounds had healed. The party was in shambles.

Turn the clock to 2019. In January, new leader Yves-François Blanchet, a former music industry agent-turned-politician, is chosen. Today, hours away from election day, the Bloc is again a force to contend with if the polls are any indication, standing at a predicted 35 seats. It is nowhere near the 54 seats obtained in its first election in 1993, when the Bloc became the unlikely official opposition in a gravely divided House of Commons. It is nevertheless an important improvement from its last two scores, bringing it comfortably back into official party territory, and possibly surpassing the NDP in terms of seats.

Liberal, Conservative, and NDP leaders, who did not appear to take the Bloc’s chances of gaining new seats seriously at the beginning of the campaign and all have seats to lose to this new Bloc surge, must now be regretting this oversight.

How did this comeback happen?

For starters, new leader, Yves-François Blanchet, has been a uniting figure in a party previously fraught with internal strife. A former environment minister under Pauline Marois’s short-lived provincial government from 2012 to 2014, he used to have a reputation for acting like a goon. This may come as a surprise to some; observing him during this campaign, one can only say those tendencies have been kept in check.

Blanchet has also worked towards changing the face and the voice of the Bloc, moving away from a defensive, separatist rhetoric, rather adopting a collaborative but nevertheless autonomist tone. In this sense, Blanchet is riding on Québec Premier Legault’s coattails, at a moment when the governing party, Coalition Avenir Québec, is widely popular in the province. Blanchet’s full endorsement of Bill 21 again signals the two leaders are very much in tune. The message from the Bloc leader has been clear since Day 1 of the election: if the government in power in Ottawa has an agenda that will benefit Québec (and butt out of provincial jurisdictions, a statement he has made time and time again during the leaders’ debates), it will have the Bloc’s support.

READ MORE: 50 years since the Official Languages Act, language still a federal election issue

Blanchet has also sought to make the Bloc more attractive towards the younger generations of voters, who will outnumber baby boomers for the first time this election, and for a lot of whom secession is an old-timers’ quarrel. For example, its environmental plan is decidedly more progressive than what the party has presented in the past, surpassing that of Blanchet himself as Environment minister. Among other policies, the Bloc proposes to make equalization payments “green” by granting federal transfers to provinces who have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions – a wild distortion of the original intent of equalization, but a creative proposal nonetheless.

The new leader may have even garnered some sympathy among the rest-of-Canada population, notably in his participation to the English-language leaders’ debates, where he acted like the adult in the room. His no-nonsense approach to domestic and foreign affairs, his reminders that provinces are equal partners in the Canadian federation, as well as his mocking quips towards a rather disruptive Maxime Bernier, have been met by a sympathetic audience, reaching far outside his own battlefield. He has even gone out of his way on the campaign trail to stop in Casselman, Ont., to deliver a message of solidarity with the Franco-Ontarian population on their annual day of celebration, Sept. 25.

In the event of a Bloc comeback, what impact could Blanchet’s team have on the balance of power in the House of Commons? In the ever-so-likely case of a hung parliament, the chances that the Bloc will be tapped to form a coalition are nonexistent, no matter how many seats the party gains. Coalition governments already have a rather low level of acceptability in Canada; any minority government to officially join forces with a party who doesn’t have the national interest at heart, no matter how marginalized the issue of separatism has been during the election, would face enormous criticism.

However, the Bloc could prove to be an ally to both a Liberal or Conservative government on a number of agenda items: pushing forward an environmental agenda for the first; less interventionist policies for the second; and the renewal of the Official Languages Act for both. It will, however, risk becoming irritated with the NDP, whose platform sometimes reads like more of a provincial than a federal party playbook, despite its progressive policies – many of which appeal to Québec voters.

Under Blanchet’s leadership, the Bloc appears to have found its new groove. After the election, it will have to demonstrate for Québec voters that it indeed still has a raison d’être. And in doing so, it will have to choose its allies carefully, in a once again profoundly divided House.

READ MORE: Quebec results up in the air

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