Off to the races

Politics is a dirty business at times, and the sooner everyone out there learns politicians are in the business of getting re-elected, the better off we’ll all be for it.

On Monday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced $1.5 billion worth of funding earmarked to help Canada’s provinces enact their environmental plans —and of that, $350 million is coming to Quebec. Good news for Quebec and even better news for embattled Quebec Premier Jean Charest, who was standing next to Harper as he made his announcement. Even better for Charest, Harper made the announcement in Charest’s home riding of Sherbrooke. The riding is held federally by the Bloc, another good reason to release such an announcement there. Isn’t it nice when you can kill three birds with one stone?

Charest, a former federal Progressive Conservative leader, had to be thrilled because the federal government’s looking out for Quebec — the Parti Québécois’ biggest current raison d’être is the federal fiscal imbalance, and it seems Harper is hell-bent on taking that plank out of the PQ platform. It’s also interesting because the provincial Liberals, with their right-wing leader and platform are looking more and more like conservatives, all the while casting the PQ into the tax-and-spend mold.

Fact is, Harper’s announcement may have put the Charest Liberals back over the top in a coming provincial election after four years of government that has seemed more like four years of bluster and mismanagement. Charest’s government has consistently botched every major undertaking since they came into power in April 2003, but they remain the frontrunners in a provincial election that will be more about image and less about issues. Really, the only thing Charest has done right since he took over the big office was cozy up to Harper and get some much-needed federal-government love for La Belle Province. In fact, he must be credited for it, because the sovereignist cause grows weaker every day when the feds are doling out the money Quebecers see as rightfully theirs, but the fact remains that Charest is again the favourite to hang on to his job even though he has yet to answer for the agglomeration-council structure that robs residents of de-merged municipalities of any type of representation at that level as well promised tax breaks that never materialized. A politician’s job is to get re-elected, and it’s the media’s job to ask the hard questions even when things appear to be rosy. So, here goes.

Are West Islanders going to forget the last four years of half-kept promises and de-merger hurdles when Charest comes out this time next week and promises to restructure the council he put in place the first time around if West Islanders are fortunate enough to have their Liberal MNAs (and pretending there will be any kind of serious opposition here is a delusion) sitting in government again? A popular bumper sticker during the de-merger battles in 2000 and 2001 read ‘Je me souviendrai’ (I will remember) les fusions forcées (the forced mergers). Here’s hoping voters also won’t forget about the fight for local democracy that raged after it as well.