I’m not sure if it’s a good thing if the Conservatives are wresting seats away from the Bloc Quebecois. Oh sure, each seat they win in such a contest is a good thing, but the BQ has usually sided with Conservatives in chosing the leadership of Canada. Each seat the Conservatives hold pressures the BQ into taking an oppositional role to Conservative policies. Obviously, if a Conservative beats a BQ MP, that MP must’ve been taking too much of an oppositional role in the first place, so that’s a plus. But what happens to all of the other BQ MPs? Do they drift to the right to shore up their conservative support, or do they start attacking the conservative positions, making it impossible for them to credibly govern with conservatives? The fact that they vote liberal but “caucus” (to use an inappropriately American term) with the conservatives suggests to me that they are more likely to become liberals; if running to the right were the way to stay in office, I’d suppose they’d’ve tried it long ago when their opposition came chiefly from the Left.
On the other hand, if Quebec is actually FOLLOWING a conservative trend, we might actually get the happy result of BQ moving to the right to retain their status as the dominant non-Leftist party of Quebec.
Can I get a third hand? :^D The Left may be overplaying its card with gay marriage and its ties to the so-called Religious Left. Under the leader of Marc Cardinal Ouillette, the Catholic Church is becoming a more authentically conservative institution. These two events may be significantly empowering the Catholic Church to renewed moral authority. Is the BQ losing some of the most religiously/politically tone-deaf of its members?
The BQ is not going to move to the right because of the nature of its members. They are almost all ideological leftists. This might not have been so true when Lucien Bouchard was the leader, but it’s the case today. They’re pinker than the Liberals, greener than the Greens, and gayer than the NDP. They ain’t moving right.
I think it is a combination of a resurgence in religion and more to do with the vanguard of Generation X entering politics. Generation X will more likely prove to be more “conservative” then our Baby Boomer parents. We haven’t seen this, yet in American Politics. I think the youngest is still over 40 and thus the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation. It will be very interesting to see how things turn out here when my generation starts getting elected to political positions.