Home > New focus for Canada’s key smaller parties
By Bernard Simon in Toronto
For much of their careers, Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton have been accustomed to crusading rather than compromising.
Mr Duceppe, leader of the pro-separatist Bloc Québécois, spent five years as an orderly in a Montreal hospital, trying to recruit unskilled workers to a hard-line communist group.
Mr Layton, head of the New Democratic party, made his mark as one of Toronto’s most flamboyant city councillors, railing against the establishment and campaigning for marginalised groups such as the homeless and the city’s gay community.
As the political leaders who emerged from last Monday’s general election holding the balance of power in Canada’s House of Commons, Mr Layton and Mr Duceppe may need to perform more delicate roles in the months, and perhaps years, ahead.
No party gained a clear majority of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. With the ruling Liberals holding 135 seats and the opposition Conservatives 99, the stability of the new parliament will depend heavily on how the Bloc, with 54 seats, and the New Democrats, with 19, play their cards.
The Bloc Québécois was formed in 1990 with the goal of turning the predominantly French-speaking province into a sovereign state.
"There are two different visions of Canada," Mr Duceppe said shortly after taking over as the Bloc’s leader in 1997. "One supported by all the other leaders and the one we are proposing."
The son of a famous Quebec actor, Mr Duceppe, 56, has ascribed his separatist leanings partly to hearing as a boy "God Save the Queen" played before the puck was dropped at ice hockey games in Montreal.
Mr Layton, 53, has invigorated the left-leaning NDP since taking the helm 18 months ago.
He flew the equivalent of 1½ times round the world during the five-week election campaign, seeking converts to the NDP’s platform of increased government spending on healthcare and daycare, proportional representation and opposition to US plans to secure Canadian support for its missile defence system.
Since the election, Mr Duceppe and Mr Layton have set down markers on the price of co-operation. The Bloc’s priorities, Mr Duceppe says, include increased health care funding, a significant transfer of spending powers from the federal government to the provinces, extended unemployment insurance benefits for seasonal workers and more development aid for remote regions.
Mr Layton says the NDP will oppose both plans to sell the government’s remaining 19 per cent stake in Petro-Canada, a big oil and gas producer, and mergers among the six big Canadian banks.
The government said before the election that it would set out guidelines for bank mergers by September.
Nevertheless, political observers are virtually unanimous that none of the parties, including the Bloc and the NDP, will be eager to precipitate another election for some time.
Although this week’s poll gave the NDP won five new seats in parliament, Mr Layton had expected many more.
The vote showed the NDP remained vulnerable to a perception among many voters that the best way of keeping the Conservatives out of office was to vote Liberal, not NDP.
John Sewell, a former Toronto mayor, says that in spite of the NDP leader’s penchant for showmanship, Mr Layton "is a good person to negotiate with people with different viewpoints". After all, Mr Sewell says, "that’s what you have to do at City Hall if you want to get anything done".