I don’t know enough about Canadian politics to do in-depth coverage of provincial elections, but I thought I’d do a wrap-up of yesterday’s provincial election in Quebec.
Liberal Party premier Jean Charest was re-elected as Premier. Charest was a minister in Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was the sole minister to survive the 1993 landslide, becoming PC Leader. After recovering ground in the 1997 federal election, Charest moved to Quebec politics, leading the Liberals into the 1998 election, which saw the separatist Parti Québécois government re-elected with a similar result.
At the 2003 election the PQ was defeated, and Charest was elected Premier, leading a majority Liberal government. While the party is called the “Liberal Party”, it does not have formal links with the Federal Liberals, and the main dividing line between the Liberals and the PQ were along federalist/sovereigntist lines, with Charest effectively leading the anti-separatist effort in Quebec. The election also saw the right-wing Action démocratique du Québec gain seats. After its leader Mario Dumont won the party’s only seat in 1994 and 1998, the party won four seats in 2003.
After four years in office, Charest went to an election in 2007. The surging ADQ won a massive 37 seats, bringing them to 41 seats. The result was an effective three-way tie in both popular vote and seats. Charest’s Liberals formed a minority government with 48 seats, while the ADQ won 41 against 36 for the PQ.
Yesterday’s result, only 21 months after the last election, saw an expected result, with the Liberals regaining a slim majority, with 66 seats, and the PQ regaining its clear position as the Official Opposition, with 51 seats. The ADQ was decimated, falling to 7 seats, which saw Mario Dumont resign as leader of the party he founded.
So after the last 21 months, it appears that Quebec politics has returned to the norm of a centre-right federalist party and a centre-left independence party, which has existed for the last 35 years, and the PQ are now in a position to return to government in 2012.
