THE LIBERALS IN QUEBEC

The last Liberal debate in New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual province, had the unfortunate effect of upsetting some francophones about the amount of French being spoken. Considering the quality of French being spoken was more Joe Clark stumble than Trudeau/Mulroney fluency, it's bad news for the Liberals.

Liberal prospects are rather dim in Quebec at the present, and a leader with weak French would only do more harm. In the last federal election the Liberals came third in 44 of Quebec ridings and fourth in three. The Liberals received less than 15 per cent of the vote in 37 of the Quebec ridings. It was the seventh consecutive federal election where the Liberals did not win the majority of ridings in Quebec, a disasterous fall from the last Trudeau win with 74 of 75 Quebec seats.

Michel C. Auger recently wrote that the Liberals hoped to sign up 10,000 new members during the leadership contest, but they are struggling to achieve one third of that goal. The next election doesn't look any better for the Liberals. Strapped for cash and not the most effective party at fund-raising, the Liberals have to wonder how much money they can afford to spend in ridings where they came third, with as little as three per cent of the vote in one riding. With the Conservatives coming second in forty ridings, and with the Conservatives having money to spend, it will be the Conservatives who are now the voice of federalism in Quebec.

Chretien delivered power to the Liberals and all it cost them was Quebec. With no room to grow in Cape Breton and PEI, the Liberals must now look to the west. With Alberta out of the picture for them, that really means BC. Will it be another 25 years before the Liberals win big in Quebec? What happens in Quebec when the ridings are next redrawn to reflect the growing population off of the island of Montreal? The Chretien/Gagliano gang that delivered the power and patronage that Liberals so love may have wound up also killing the Liberals in Quebec-and there is no one on the horizon to fix the problem.