By Lloyd Mackey

The QUEBEC election, which took place last Monday, has returned that province to virtual two-party status.

Jean Charest's Liberals returned to power with 66 seats, three above that required for a majority. For the past 18 months, the provincial Liberals have held power as a minority, after having held 76 seats for four years from 2003.

Arguably, the main reason for returning to majority status for Charest, was the drop of the Action Democratique du Quebec (ADQ) from official opposition status to only seven seats. A quick analysis shows that two-thirds of the ADQ vote moved to the Liberals and one-third to the Parti Quebecois.

Some readers will detect where I am heading on this.

The Quebec Liberal party, like its British Columbia counterpart and the Saskatchewan Party which formed the government in that province a year ago, is largely conservative in makeup. It has some blue Liberals and red Tories on its leftish fringe. Charest was environment minister in Brian Mulroney's Tory cabinet and led the party after its rout reduced it to two seats in 1993. So the Quebec Liberals are led by a bona fide conservative, albeit not quite as far to the right as might be one from Alberta. And that is the way it is in Canada.

In British Columbia and Saskatchewan, the opposition slots are held by NDPers. In Quebec, with the demise of the ADQ, the sovereignist PQ resumes the official opposition role it had held in Charest's first term.

So, in each of the three provinces, there is now a centre-right party in power. These provinces bear watching, in terms of what can be learned at the federal level, over time.

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I noted with interest the defeat of Daniel Turp, a former Bloc MP and, since 2003, a PQ member of the Quebec assembly.

He was edged out by the Amir Khadir, the male deputy leader of Quebec Solidaire, a radically-left feminist-rooted philosophically-sovereignist party.

I first met Turp about eight years ago, at a faith/politics/social justice conference at Queen's University in Kingston, although I had seen him from a distance on the floor of the House of Commons.

He was introduced to the conference by Gerald Vandezande, then in the process of retiring from the leadership of the organization he had developed, Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ).

After being introduced, Turp gave witness to his own Christian faith and pilgrimage, and provided some explanation to a largely federalist audience as to what he hoped would be a "conciliatory" approach to Quebec sovereignty.

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We had opportunity to talk several times, subsequently, about his faith and his political views before he was defeated as an MP and ran successfully for the PQ in Quebec.

His faith pilgrimage began, for all practical purposes, when he met and fell in love with Bartha Knoppers, the daughter of a Christian Reformed Church pastor. He was a nominal Catholic and she, a serious follower of Christ in a Calvinistic setting.

When it came to find a place that they, together, could be part of, and where they could encourage their children in the faith, their choice was the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, a Presbyterian landmark congregation on Sherbrooke Street West in the heart of Montreal.

He likes to recall that an elderly Scottish woman, who sat in the next pew to his family, talked with him after church on a few Sundays, about his pro-sovereignty appearances on television.

When she indicated disapproval of his stance, he gently reminded her that she likely could make a pretty good case, herself, for the independence of Scotland from England.

Turp and Knoppers are both lawyers and have tenure at the University of Montreal. Turp's specialities are in the constitutional area, Knoppers, in genome law.

In the riding he served, Mercier, southwest of Montreal, Turp's rather soft and conciliatory approach to sovereignty appeared to make him a victim, on Quebec election day, to a party which sees things much more radically.

An aside: When Preston Manning was developing policy for the Canadian Alliance on reproductive, euthanasia and other emerging life issues, Knoppers provided a fair amount of the research he needed.

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I have this wishful thought that Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper will hit it off well, once they have squared off in their first meeting. Though leaders in different parties, they are, politically and philosophically often on the same page. I would call Ignatieff a "blue Liberal", almost indistinguishable from a mainstream conservative.

I have received a number of eminently sensible suggestions from a number of e-mailers, in the past few days, expressing the kind of "coalition" they would like to see. For the most part, they want a good working arrangement between the Conservatives and the Liberals, for preparing and passing the budget and the economic stimulus it will contain.

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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006), More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005) and Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning (ECW Press, 1997). Lloyd can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

December 11/2008