From Lord Durham’s report to the hanging of Louis Riel and from the Conscription Crisis to the Referendums of 1980 and 1995, politicians of all political stripes have struggled to accommodate the needs of Québec in the context of the needs of the rest of the country.

Since the formation of the Bloc Québecois, a federal party dedicated to a sovereign Québec, the question of how to respond to Québec has become more and more a question of how to respond to the Bloc. One of two parties built out of the ashes of Brian Mulroney’s government (the other being Reform, which became the Canadian Alliance, which became the Conservatives), the Bloc has won the majority of Québec seats in the last four federal elections. Other parties still haven’t figured out how to respond to them.

When former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien testified before the Gomery commission he explained why, after the near miss in the referendum of 1995, the Liberals felt the need to pour money into a program to fly the maple leaf throughout Québec, with the apparent goal of diminishing the Bloc’s influence in Parliament (of course, it was just a coincidence that this would help the Liberal Party in Québec). Not only was the program grossly insulting to Québec voters and a tremendous waste of public resources, but it hasn’t exactly wiped the Bloc off the political map, has it?

After the 1993 election, the third place Reform Party demanded that it be named as the Official Opposition, simply because the Bloc didn’t believe in a united Canada (although Reform’s own caucus was home to a number of former western separatists). Later, Reform’s infamous “No Québec politicians” television ads were instrumental in turning the tide of the 1997 election campaign, angering enough Québec voters to actually increase the number of seats won by the Bloc.

Through the various incarnations of Reform, it and the Bloc have been perfect foils. The Bloc can point to the Reformatories as an example of how the rest of Canada will never accept Québec’s aspirations, while the Bloc makes a convenient whipping post whenever the right wingers need to stir up their own base.

The NDP has had a challenge in responding to the Bloc as well. While the Bloc was originally founded by disillusioned Conservative and Liberal MPs, the first MP elected under a Bloc banner was Gilles Duceppe, a union organizer and former communist. The provincial wing of the NDP was shut down after it endorsed Duceppe ahead of the NDP’s candidate in that by-election.

Québec’s sovereignty movement, from René Lévesque onward, has normally tilted left. Because of this, the NDP’s policies would seem to offer a lot to the voters who are choosing the Bloc, if they could be convinced to vote for a party that ran candidates outside of the province.

CAW President Buzz Hargrove, always willing to tell NDP leaders how to do their job, suggested last year that “the NDP should abandon the pretence of trying to represent progressive forces in Québec — the vast majority of which are nationalist and hence will never support a party rooted in English Canada.” Not surprisingly, NDP leader Jack Layton rejected the advice to abandon Québec to the Bloc, but the discussion did highlight the continuing frustration felt by many in the party at its inability to reach an audience that endorses virtually everything in the party’s platform.

In a majority Parliament, the Bloc represents a minor challenge to every other party. That challenge became far bigger last June when voters sent a minority government to Ottawa. Either the other parties have to work together (which, given their differences, is unlikely to hold for long) or they have to work with the Bloc. Belinda Stronach even used the Reformatory’s coziness with the Bloc as her excuse for crossing the floor.

It’s quite comical to watch each of the parties taking turns working with the Bloc, and then taking turns condemning the other parties for doing so. That tactic reached new lows last week when Conservative Leader Stephen Harper (who had no trouble working with the Bloc in a bid to defeat the budget and force an election), charged that same-sex marriage wouldn’t be “legitimate” because the Bloc was (for the most part) voting for the bill.

I was disappointed to hear Layton engaging in anti-Bloc posturing after Duceppe declined to support the NDP amendments to the federal budget. Instead of criticizing Harper for “getting into bed with the separatists,” Layton should have criticized the Bloc for “getting in bed with the reactionaries” and not supporting a budget that implemented many initiatives that the Bloc supports. He hinted at that in subsequent remarks, but his credibility in advancingthat argument was undermined by his earlier criticism, which bordered on thekind of dismissiveness that Harper would later make explicit.

It’s time for all MPs from all parties to admit that — just as they were — Bloc Québecois MPs were elected by voters and have the same legitimacy in Parliament as anyone else. By all means, take them on regarding their policies and tactical decisions. Make your best argument for why you deserve Québec votes and they do not. But let’s get past this ridiculous argument that they can be discounted just because they don’t agree with you on the future of Québec in Canada.

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Scott Piatkowski

Scott Piatkowski is a former columnist for rabble.ca. He wrote a weekly column for 13 years that appeared in the Waterloo Chronicle, the Woolwich Observer and ECHO Weekly. He has also written for Straight...