According to the February 20 Globe and Mail, Bloc Quebecois leader Michel Gauthier said, “We want to help the government function for a while.” He added that his party would be happy with an end to Liberal centralization and the Conservative pledge to respect the constitutional division of power between the federal and provincial governments.

The Bloc Quebecois is a bourgeois nationalist party that runs in federal elections only in Quebec, one of Canada’s 10 provinces, with a quarter of the country’s population. Some 80 percent of Quebec’s inhabitants are French-speaking and face discrimination based on their language.

At the center of the Bloc’s program is the demand for sovereignty for Quebec. The Bloc defends the interests of Quebecois capitalists and upper middle-class layers, and seeks greater powers for Quebec to advance these interests.

The Bloc supports Ottawa’s imperialist intervention in Afghanistan. In a statement in the February 27 Globe and Mail, Claude Bachand, the Bloc’s defense critic, praised Ottawa’s role there. “The Canadian forces did very good work,” he said. “In Kabul, they were able to restore and maintain the semblance of order that the Afghan government needed to begin functioning. With the flight of the Taliban from Kabul, international intervention has become necessary in southern Afghanistan.” A Canadian now commands the NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, which include 2,200 Canadian troops.

During the recent election campaign, the Conservatives promised to give Quebec greater representation internationally and more financial powers. Such promises succeeded in winning votes away from Bloc Quebecois. Its share of the popular vote fell from 49 to 42 percent and its parliamentary seats from 54 to 51. The Conservatives, who had no seats in Quebec, won 10, and they took nearly 25 percent of the vote, up from 9 percent.

Echoing the Conservatives’ proposal for greater fiscal powers for Quebec and the other provinces, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives called for abolishing the federal goods and services tax and ending federal transfer to the provinces of funds for medical care and other programs. The CEOs proposed that taxation powers be shifted to the provinces.

Since the elections, Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper has met three times with Jean Charest, the Liberal premier of Quebec. In the last meeting, held on March 8, the two parties indicated they were close to an agreement to give Quebec representation at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Quebec, however, would only be able to address the body with the permission of Ottawa.

While accepting the Bloc’s support in federal parliament, Harper is promoting the Liberal government of Quebec as an alternative to the Parti Quebecois (PQ), a bourgeois nationalist party that runs candidates in elections in Quebec and is closely allied to the Bloc. The PQ has organized two votes on sovereignty and has promised to do so again if reelected. In the last referendum in 1995 sovereignty got 49.4 percent of the vote.

The Conservative government has also endorsed moves by the Quebec government that weaken the public health-care system. This includes providing services based on one’s ability to pay and expanding use of private clinics to perform operations funded by the government. Certain operations like hip replacements can now be performed at private clinics and be paid for with private insurance, purchased by those who can afford it.

Figures from 2003 show that Quebec is the province that spends the least for its health-care network. Medical expenditures per person was $2,247 last year, $213 less than the Canadian average. This is a reflection of inroads made by successive Parti Quebecois and Liberal governments over the last quarter century against socialized medicine.  
 
 
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