The Bloc's Missed Opportunity

The Bloc Québecois could have been a force for good across Canada. It could have united the francophone communities in all ten provinces and three territories into a single, cohesive force. Instead, it has continually opted for exclusive identity politics and ethnic nationalism, offering nothing tangible either to Canada as a whole, nor the province it pretends to represent.

While Canada is facing an existential external crisis, a party born as the fraternal twin of the Reform Party out of the ashes of the Progressive Conservative coalition continues to undermine Canada’s very existence.

For over thirty years, the Bloc has made its purpose to demonstrate that a united Canada cannot succeed, that Canada can do no good for the people of Quebec, that Quebec is not an essential part of Canada, that Canada itself should not be.

This week, the leader of the Bloc said “We are, whether we like it or not, part of an artificial country with very little meaning, called Canada.”

That ‘les canadiens’ was first used to describe the nation’s francophone population, not its anglophones, is an irony lost on a movement anchored in anger and false narratives. It is more a cult, whose billionaire manipulators, while more subtle than their MAGA counterparts, are just as effective at having their supporters vote against their own interests while blaming an abstract enemy.

The representatives that Quebec sends to Ottawa in the name of the Bloc exist to obstruct the progress of the country, to prevent federal programs and grants from reaching Quebec residents, to cleave Quebeckers from the confederation that they themselves made possible. Their objective is to demonstrate that Canada is not, and cannot be, there for the people of Quebec.

“I choose Québec” is this year’s Bloc slogan, a vague and substance-free message of division in a country that more than anything else today needs unity. We need unity of purpose, we need unity of message, we need to stand united on the world stage against a military and economic aggressor that expressly wants to annex our country, that was once a stabilising force whose gyroscope has toppled.

The Conservative Party of Canada is echoing the Trump administration’s “America First” slogan with “Canada First” and wannabe-oligarch Pierre Poilievre is consistently copy-catting Trump’s messaging on dogwhistle issue after issue, showing clearly and unequivocally how he would rather be Prime Minister to a vassal nation than a loyal citizen of a sovereign one.

Against the Conservative’s Vichy aspirations, the Bloc is not an effective counterweight. While some separatists understand, without irony, that a sovereign Quebec can only exist next to a sovereign Canada, the reality is that a movement intent on undermining Canada’s unity undermines Canada’s sovereignty — and therefore, by their own admission, Quebec’s.

But it does not have to be this way.

Every single province and territory in Canada has a francophone population. It was the Liberals under Pierre Trudeau, not the Bloc Québecois under anyone, who established francophone rights nationwide, who made it mandatory to allow francophones to have access to French federal services wherever they find themselves in Canada. What the Quebec nationalists saw in that was not a movement to defend French across Canada, but a threat to French being the exclusive purview of their province.

Quebec nationalists will speak of the poor service francophones receive in eastern Ontario while trying to reduce the quality and quantity of English services in Quebec, using it as a tit-for-tat example rather than using the enormous political weight of Quebec to fight for those franco-Ontarians who clearly need the support.

The Bloc Quebecois should have been, and could still be, the Bloc Canadien, running candidates in every community in the country with a measurable francophone population. They could be collecting support from those who not only grew up in French-speaking households, but those of families who understand the value of bilingualism and see its importance to Canada’s sovereignty and identity.

Bloc candidates running in eastern Ontario defending the rights of francophones in communities like St-Albert and Hawkesbury would do more for the success of the French language in Canada than an entire province full of Bloc MPs who use the weakening of francophone rights and services in those eastern Ontario communities as an example of why Canada is a failure.

Canada was created as a coalition of disparate people as a direct reaction to the threat posed by the United States following that country’s civil war. It is not a coincidence that there were barely two years between the end of that civil war and the establishment of the Canada we know today. We realised then and understood that we needed to come together, to work together, to build together, to protect a version of the colonial world that did not give in to America’s belief in Manifest Destiny.

If Quebec were to truly separate from Canada, the Indigenous communities that the Bloc pretends do not exist would be unlikely to follow. Their own sovereignty within the borders of Quebec would be a rapidly opened question. All of both the United States and Canada were, after all, a colonial invention, not one truly built in partnership with the Indigenous peoples already here.

Montreal, the economic heart of Quebec, would be wise to go its own way as well. If Canada is divisible, after all, so is Quebec.

The natural resources that the Americans are after in the Ring of Fire would be defenceless. Quebec needs Canada as much as Canada needs Quebec. We are not discrete entities, we are a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Bloc could be part of the solution, working toward making Quebec a critical part of Canada’s success. Instead, they’re still intent on making it easier for the Americans to fulfil their 200-year old dream of annexing our “artificial” country.

In a world where the Conservatives are heading for a comprehensive and long-term end to their credibility by throwing in their lot with MAGA nation, Canada will need a new alternate party.

A Bloc Canadien that understands the value of the diversity and multiculturalism of the country — rather than attacking it in favour of an ethnically pure Quebec — could have an enormous, real impact on everything the Bloc Québecois currently pretends to care about.