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Canadians need to realize that this was not a vote for separation, but a vote against a corrupt government that has been in power too long. The people did not have a viable alternative Federalist party to vote for, therefore they split their votes between the only alternatives they had available. People will only put up with a corrupt government that ignores the will of the majority of honest people for so long, and then they will kick them out. Other Canadian governments should take note.



Charest’s calculations wrong

CAQ leader François Legault, who soared to the top of polls last fall before launching his party, received a rude lesson that breaking the PQ-Liberal lock on power in Quebec is no easy task. Mr. Legault told party supporters that they can be proud of the work accomplished in just nine months of existence. “The results tonight show that the Coalition Avenir Québec is here to stay,” he said. “From now on, the Quebec political landscape will no longer be the same.”

Never loved by Quebecers, Mr. Charest entered the election campaign with just one in four people approving of the job he was doing as Premier.

He called the unusual summer campaign hoping the violent student protests that shook Quebec this spring would be fresh in voters’ minds while the corruption cloud hanging over the Liberals would not erupt into a full-fledged storm.

On both scores, his calculations proved wrong. The student protests over tuition hikes had led to rioting, defiance of court injunctions, nightly marches and a general sense that the rule of law was on shaky ground.

“Fundamentally,” Mr. Charest said on the campaign’s first day, “we’re going to be choosing what kind of society we want to live in, after everything we’ve been through in the spring and everything we saw: the lack of respect for some of our laws, for court rulings, the lack of respect for democracy.” A vote for the PQ, which encouraged the student protests, would be a vote for the street, he said, an acceptance that those who yell loudest and create the most disruption get their way.

But debate over the tuition increase and the implications of the protests was strangely absent from the campaign, robbing Mr. Charest of one of his strongest cards.

[color="red"]It was no secret that he was in a hurry to get the election over with before the commission of inquiry into the corruption in the provincial construction industry hit full steam in mid-September.

But when Jacques Duchesneau, former head of a provincial anti-collusion task force, announced in the campaign’s first week that he would run for the CAQ, it was clear the issue was not going away. Mr. Duchesneau had told the inquiry in June of a “clandestine empire” of collusion and kickbacks costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Against Ms. Marois, Mr. Charest could land only glancing blows with his go-to weapon — the threat of a referendum. Ms. Marois refused to commit to holding a sovereignty vote during a first mandate but promised supporters she would do everything possible to create the right conditions. In the campaign’s last week she appealed for a majority mandate so she could “make Quebec a country.”

She campaigned on a platform designed to create conflict with the rest of Canada, promising to demand the transfer of powers and accompanying budgets from Ottawa in such fields as language, culture and employment insurance. The PQ’s so-called identity initiatives – banning religious garb from the public service, requiring immigrants to prove knowledge of French before running for office, blocking francophones and allophones from attending English CEGEPs — would all face Charter challenges.

But the prospect of federal-provincial tensions and a sovereignty push did not seem to trouble voters too much. In a statement Tuesday night, Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Ms. Marois and said Quebecers don’t want to ‘‘revisit the old constitutional battles of the past.’’

In the end, whatever the outcome, the campaign of 2012 will likely be remembered as one in which big questions were left unresolved. Street protests or the rule of law? Sovereignty or unity? The Quebec model of big government or a stripped-down approach? The answers will have to wait.