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rfmcdonaldPaul Wells wrote last Friday about the Liberals' latest problems.
While the Québec Liberal Party under Jean Charest currently forms the provincial government, it has been disassociated from the Liberal Party of Canada since 1955, this latter's provincial branch scoring relatively few seats at the federal level and having its strength concentrated in the multiethnic and multilingual island of Montréal.
As for "Duplessisme," that refers to the conservative and clerical nationalism that preceded the great secularization and modernization of the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. The letter's writers did not mean it as a good thing. Without regaining some strength in Québec, not least strength on the ground, the chances of the Liberals to form the Canadian government are that much slimmer.
The letter that Wells references is here.
A long letter in La Presse finds hints of “Duplessisme” in Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal party’s Quebec wing. “We deserve better,” the authors write, in a twist on Ignatieff’s own campaign slogan. The authors are John Lennard, who worked on Bob Rae’s leadership campaign and whose blog carries pictures of Dalton McGuinty, Stéphane Dion and Bob Rae (find the missing Liberal), and Jonathan Pedneault, who seems like an earnest fellow. (As a bonus, Lennard’s blog has an English version of the La Presse letter.)
This is almost precisely where I came in. In April 2008 I watched Stéphane Dion try to explain that the Quebec wing of his party was doing fine. This is always difficult when it isn’t so. As Mr. Ignatieff will soon demonstrate.
While the Québec Liberal Party under Jean Charest currently forms the provincial government, it has been disassociated from the Liberal Party of Canada since 1955, this latter's provincial branch scoring relatively few seats at the federal level and having its strength concentrated in the multiethnic and multilingual island of Montréal.
As for "Duplessisme," that refers to the conservative and clerical nationalism that preceded the great secularization and modernization of the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. The letter's writers did not mean it as a good thing. Without regaining some strength in Québec, not least strength on the ground, the chances of the Liberals to form the Canadian government are that much slimmer.
The letter that Wells references is here.
