In the month since Thomas Mulcair won the leadership of the NDP, every sovereigntist indicator dropped sharply.
On Tuesday, a CROP poll reported that support for the Bloc Québécois had fallen below 20 per cent.
Over the same period, the Parti Québécois lost six points and only 36 per cent of Quebecers would have been inclined to vote yes in a referendum.
It is hard to credit these changes to any event other than Mulcair’s victory. From a Quebec perspective, it was the only positive federalist development in a pretty glum month:
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives brought down an austerity budget that took shots at popular Quebec icons such as Radio-Canada.
Quebec took its counterpart to court to preserve the province’s gun registry data.
The federal government announced it was closing a major penal institution in Laval and declined to put up a fight to salvage hundreds of airplane maintenance jobs at Aveos.
Dissatisfaction with the provincial Liberal government rose to 73 per cent from 70 per cent as a massive student strike brought daily demonstrations to the streets of Montreal.
The CROP figures were published on the very day when former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was raising eyebrows for his depiction of Canada as a federation whose solitudes had grown so far apart as to have little incentive to continue living together.
In a BBC interview, Ignatieff argued that the two referendum battles had left Quebec and the rest of Canada with precious little to say to each other. When asked whether Quebec independence was inevitable he answered: “I think eventually that’s where it goes.”
It is possible that Ignatieff’s analysis stems from his own failure to connect with Quebecers in last year’s election. His thesis of a massive post-referendum devolution of powers does not hold water.
Every province has run its own health and education systems since Confederation and Quebec’s immigration powers predate the referendum wars.
But Ignatieff’s conclusion also overlooks the fact that another federalist leader had no problems finding common ground with Quebecers last May and that his party has continued to do so in the face of an untimely leadership succession.
Part of Jack Layton’s implicit bargain with Quebecers last May was that if they relinquished a protest party that they controlled for the NDP, it in turn would do what it took to be a serious contender for federal power.
The post-convention pro-NDP, pro-federalist uptick suggests that selecting a ready-for-prime-time leader such as Mulcair amounted to living up to that bargain.
For the record, it was New Democrats from the rest of Canada — in particular Saskatchewan and British Columbia — who made Mulcair’s victory possible.
The day the CROP poll was published was also the day after Alberta voters rejected the isolationist calls of the Wildrose Party to hand an unexpected majority to Tory Premier Alison Redford.
One of her campaign mantras involved reaching out to the rest of the country. One of her early moves as party leader was a visit to Quebec.
Yes, there is precious little dialogue between the current federal government and Quebec. But then, over the past two decades, there has been precious little dialogue between the Liberal party that Ignatieff recently led and most of Western Canada.
And yet neither region retreated behind the wall of reciprocal indifference that Ignatieff describes. Instead, the Reform movement outgrew its Western roots, got itself a bilingual leader and became a major force in Central Canada. And Quebecers set the Bloc aside to support a national party that could bring a progressive government back to federal power in three years.
By the numbers, Quebec sovereignty has failed to make a single convert since the closely fought referendum seventeen years ago. One in five 1995 Yes supporters has since switched sides.
Ignatieff has said that his BBC comments were taken out of context. There is no doubt his were the musings of a public intellectual and not those of a recent aspirant to the job of prime minister.
But in either role, it would have been nice if his assertions had been borne out by more actual facts.
Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer for the Toronto Star.