Jean Charest has to rank as one of the most hapless first ministers Quebec has ever endured. From the beginning, with his sneak attack on child-care workers, and his attempt to undermine the fabled public, five dollars a day, day-care system, he has seemed determined to alienate himself and his government from Quebec society, segment by segment, starting with parents, and moving quickly on to public servants, students, hospital patients and even skiers.

Though governments normally win consecutive mandates in Quebec, Charest looked ready to break the trend, and lose the next election. At the end of 2005, the Liberals trailed the opposition PQ by 19 points in public opinion polling.

Imagine the surprise just over a year later as a new CROP poll shows the Liberals now ahead, barely, of the PQ, as the province readies itself for an election likely as soon as April. While 52 per cent of Quebecers are dissatisfied with the Liberal government, it is the fall in public approval for the PQ — down in Francophone Quebec by six points in the last month alone — that is creating a stir.

It seems Jean Charest has a lucky star. In his first year on the job as PQ leader, the bright, personable, young André Boisclair is making Charest look okay by comparison.

Boisclair has picked up — and made his own — the Charest strategy of turning off the very people he needs to support his party if he wants to win. His latest foray in that direction was his comment that it was time to break with the cronyism, which in the past he said, saw PQ prime ministers going out with trade union leaders to drown themselves in drink, at overly friendly dinners in fancy restaurants.

The president of the PQ is Monique Richard, a prominent former trade union president of the very nationalist Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN). Trade union votes are important in a province that has a high rate of unionization, rivaled only by BC in Canada. So, why not kiss off the labour-PQ relationship, and see what happens?

The knives are now out for Boisclair with the first call for his resignation coming from Yves Michaud, a PQ activist since the days of René Levesque. Michaud thinks Bernard Landry (whose resignation prompted the leadership contest which Boisclair won) should take over again. Landry himself is speaking critically of his successor and former protégé. Writer Victor-Lévy Beaulieu wants the PQ to just disappear, so that a social democratic nationalist party could replace it.

Support for the young party of the left, Québec Solidaire, co-led by prominent feminist Françoise David, is running at five per cent, and it expects to benefit from the disaffected PQ trade union vote.

Mario Dumont and the ADQ — a one-time breakaway faction from the Liberals — look to win seats, and could create a minority government situation.

The prospect of a second Charest government brings smiles to the faces of Ottawa Conservatives. A PQ victory would immediately make Stéphane Dion the man of the hour ready to take on the separatists in another epic Quebec battle.

As it is, the federal Liberals are up nearly ten points in Quebec since Dion became leader, mostly at the expense of the Bloc Québecois. The Conservatives are holding on to their support, which is concentrated in the Quebec City area.

PQ weakness puts the spotlight on Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe in Ottawa. Come budget time will he be tempted to vote with the Conservatives so as to forestall a federal election, and allow a Quebec vote his nationalist allies could well lose? Or will he be prepared to force the issue, and see a federal election pre-empt an April Quebec election?

Charest deserves to lose, Boisclair has done nothing to merit a win. With now a small party of the left in the mix, as well as the ADQ on the right, Quebec politics seems to be fragmenting, much as it has federally.

The PQ are losing ground in Montreal, but not in Quebec City. The Charest Liberals are stagnant outside Montreal.

Given the trends, look to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to do his best to boost the Quebec Liberal fortunes for an April election in his upcoming budget, and watch the federal opposition parties try and figure out how to react. With support for the Bloc slipping, it will be loath to pull the plug on Harper, precipitating a federal election, and delaying a Quebec vote.

The best bet is that Charest and Boisclair will go head to head, before the Conservatives engineer their own defeat in the House of Commons and trigger an election or any of the opposition parties decide to force a national election the Conservatives could well lose.

Duncan Cameron

Duncan Cameron

Born in Victoria B.C. in 1944, Duncan now lives in Vancouver. Following graduation from the University of Alberta he joined the Department of Finance (Ottawa) in 1966 and was financial advisor to the...