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| SLIM VICTORY
June 3, 1997TRANSCRIPT |
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The governing liberal party won a slim 4-vote majority in Monday's elections. Prime Minister Jean Chretien must now find common ground with 4 strong opposing political parties. After a background report, Charles Krause leads a discussion on what the election results mean for Canada's future.
CHARLES KRAUSE: Joining us now to analyze the election results are two Canadian journalists: Lise Bissonnette, the editor of the French language newspaper Le Devoir in Montreal; and Jeffrey Simpson, national affairs columnist for Toronto’s English language newspaper the Globe and Mail. Thank you both for joining us. Lise Bissonnette, was there a principal issue that decided this election?
A RealAudio version of of this segment is available.
NewsHour Links:
June 3, 1997
A report on the close vote in the 1997 parliamentary elections .
May 2, 1996
A report on how the referendum for Quebec separatism has effected the economy of Montreal and the Province's minority population.
April 23, 1996
Lucien Bouchard, the premier of the Quebec Province, discusses the future of a "Free Quebec".
Outside Links:
CANOE - Canadian Online Explorer Election Site.
A comprehensive list of Canadian election links.
LISE BISSONNETTE, Le Devoir: Well, I think there were two main issues in this election. The record of the Liberal Party, especially on the economy, which isn’t that bad, but it has been a very tough time of deficit cutting, and obviously that created a protest vote in some of the poorest provinces; people were very hard hit by this. This was one issue that cut across the country. And the second one that came during the campaign--we didn’t think at the very beginning that the question of Quebec would be such an issue--but we have to remember that there has been a referendum during the last mandate of this government and that the--the federalist forces led by Mr. Chretien almost lost it, so suddenly it became--the debate came back during the electoral campaign.
CHARLES KRAUSE: Jeffrey Simpson, the economy and Quebec, do you agree?
JEFFREY SIMPSON, Globe and Mail: Yes, I do, and, in fact, almost the entire reason why the liberal majority has been reduced is because they suffered losses in the Atlantic provinces which are the poorest provinces where people responded against cuts to government programs and particularly to unemployment insurance, which are somewhat more generously lavished on citizens in this country than in the United States.
And, look, let’s face it, the Quebec issue, the prospect of Quebec seceding from Canada--there is a secessionist government in power in Quebec. There are Bloc Quebecois members, as your excellent report indicated, now in the House of Commons again. This question continues to roil Canadian politics. It is unresolved, and it will be unresolved until another referendum. You know, up here we’ve had two already. The premier of Quebec says we’ll have another. We call this the "neverendum."
CHARLES KRAUSE: Tell me, your paper this morning talked about the balkanization of Canadian politics as a result of this election. Is that a reference solely to the Quebec issue, or are there other issues that are sort of creating this regional feeling in Canada?
JEFFREY SIMPSON: Well, I think there are a few. First of all, the reaction that I just spoke about, an Atlantic Canada, that’s an area that’s been heavily dependent upon government spending for many decades. And in the rest of the country there was a fatigue with deficits; there was a concern about high taxes; and there was a desire to reduce the scope of the government, so there’s a bit of a cleavage there. Similarly, this Quebec issue has been going on now for more than a quarter of a century and it irritates people outside the rest of the country, and the threat of secession has produced or helped to produce the Reform Party in Western Canada, where people tend to think that no province, Quebec in particular, should receive some kind of special treatment. So there is an opposite reaction, if you like, in the rest of the country. And the last thing I would say, as your report indicated, this government has 2/3 of its seats from Ontario.
Now, in the United States, California, the most populous state, has about 13 percent of America’s population. Ontario has about 30 percent. Being big means being not loved, and outside Ontario people don’t tend to like the province. So when you have 2/3 of the seats in a government coming from Ontario, you have a geographically top heavy and probably unloved government outside Ontario.
CHARLES KRAUSE: To what extent is the Reform Party--is it really solely a reaction to Quebec, or are there other--
JEFFREY SIMPSON: No. There’s a long history in this country of western alienation, a sense that Ontario and Quebec have too much power; that the government in Ottawa is dominated by the concerns of Central Canada; that the kind of social conservatism that exists in Western Canada is not adequately represented in Ottawa; and then there’s a third factor which is over the last I’d say ten, twelve years, some conservatives in this country have imported from the United States the Reaganite tax-cutting government-slashing philosophy of what we might call the neo-conservatives, and the Reform Party articulates that view with its call for tax cuts and much smaller government. So you put the three together; a concern about Quebec’s demands on Canada; the neo-conservative tax-cutting and anti-government message and traditional Western alienation, and you have the Reform Party.
CHARLES KRAUSE: Lise Bissonnette, do you see a balkanization taking place, and do you think it is, as Jeffrey Simpson said, more than just Quebec?
LISE BISSONNETTE: Well, I think balkanization is a strong word that we must be very careful about using that, because of course it refers to the Balkans, and there’s nothing violent in what’s going on in Canada. But obviously Canada is a society that prides itself on accommodating differences, whether they are linguistic or regional. But, in fact--that’s in theory--but in fact, it’s always been very, very difficult to accommodate these regional differences--the strength of Central Canada and especially of Ontario is obviously there again, and these regional differences have never been as strong as they are right now.
You were asking about the collision between Reform and the Bloc Quebecois. The Reform Party is--has run a campaign that was partly--not entirely but partly really anti-Quebec--I mean, to the point of being--of being for all people insulting--well, Canada has always been very careful about that. We’ve been discussing this issue of Quebec separation for almost 30 years. It’s always been quite civilized. There were coded words. There were ways of rejecting the demands of Quebec, and they kept coming again and again and again, because it was never settled. But nobody ever really said to the point that the reforms during this campaign that you know, the next prime minister shouldn’t be from Quebec or, you know, rejecting almost a whole people. That was the trend, and it’s a very nasty trend. So is it--is it going to come to a head during the next mandate? Well, the parliament has said so that it will happen--the fact that the reform is the official position, the Bloc Quebecois is the official position--that is a very important status because you get to set the agenda, apart from the government, but you--the next government--use of the agenda. Reform is going to be very nervous about anything about Quebec, and there might be, so that that’s why the--the sovereignists in Quebec do hope that this is going to happen because it’s going to fuel sovereignist sentiment in the province.
CHARLES KRAUSE: Briefly, let me ask you about the vote that the Bloc received in Quebec. It was a reduced vote, about 10 percent less than 1993. Does that signal that Quebeckers, themselves, are having second thoughts about separating from Canada?
LISE BISSONNETTE: Part of the sovereignist vote has always been soft. It went up to almost 50 percent in the referendum of 1995, and the Bloc had won 49 percent also in the election of 1993. It--but as always, I would say 10 percent of it has always been soft, and now what we say is that it’s been parked somewhere else. This 10 percent was very unhappy with what’s going on in Quebec. There is--the government of the province of Quebec right now is a sovereignist government that has been also quite large with deficit cutting and things like that, and people are a bit unhappy in the province, so there’s 10 percent of this--of this vote that has gone to the Conservative Party which has--a third party--and they’re waiting and they’re going to see--
CHARLES KRAUSE: Very briefly, I’m sorry, but let me go to Jeffrey Simpson for a brief comment here. Do you agree that the Reform Party was insulting to the French-Canadians, first of all, and second of all, quickly, do you think that the drop in the Bloc vote means that perhaps the pressure for separation or the support for separation is reduced?
CHARLES KRAUSE: I’m afraid we’ve run out of time but I want to thank you both very much for joining us.
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