The Back Story

A while back, I referred to a column which Josh Freed had written in The Montreal Gazette. Freed wrote that the SNC Lavalin furor was playing differently in Quebec than in the rest of Canada. This morning, May Warren expands on that theme in The Toronto Star:

“It’s a big part of Quebec Inc.,” said Andrew McDougall, a lecturer in political science at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “It looks like they were trying to do their best to make sure that that company did well and they didn’t get blamed for any job losses that arose out of the company suffering a conviction or moving away.”

Dan Horner, an assistant professor at Ryerson University and expert in Quebec history and society, said the company employs a lot of people in positions that are seen as “very good jobs.”

Furthermore, “Quebecers are used to SNC-Lavalin having a huge influence there, through the donations that they make to political parties both provincially and federally,” Horner said.

“They’re sort of a point of pride in Quebec, because they are sort of a Quebec-based firm that is a major player on the international scene as well.”

And the Liberals view Quebec as their insurance policy:

“Clearly their strategy is that if they suffer losses elsewhere in the country, they could pick up seats in Quebec,” Horner said.

It’s “a simple numbers game,” said Sean Simpson, vice-president of public affairs at the polling firm Ipsos — the Liberals need to keep at least 170 seats for a majority government so they can’t afford to lose many.

They’re already looking at potential losses in other parts of the country, like the three seats in Alberta that Simpson calls “probably a lost cause.”

Meanwhile, support for the NDP “is anemic” in Quebec, he said, and has been declining since Jack Layton’s 2011 surge of support there.

“If you’re looking around for a target of where you’re going to grow in the face of declines elsewhere, Quebec is almost the only option that provides a decent return on investment in terms of the number of seats you could potentially pick up.”

Historically, a party needs seats from Quebec to form a government:

With roughly a quarter of the population and a quarter of the seats in the House of Commons, the traditional notion has been “that you cannot be prime minister without winning a good number of seats in Quebec,” [Sean] Simpson said — and, other than the Bloc, the Liberals have been “sort of the default party” there.

The Conservatives haven’t been able to gain traction since the days when they had a charismatic, French-speaking leader.

“That’s what made Brian Mulroney win with some of the biggest majority governments this country has ever seen, because he was somehow able to unite people in Alberta and people in Quebec.

That's the back story.

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