The party is over for angry Anglos

BY ALBERT KRAMBERGER

editor@transcontinental.ca

Riding a wave of Anglo anger against the Robert Bourassa-led Quebec Liberal government, the Equality Party beat the incumbent MNA in Jacques Cartier by about 800 votes in 1989. In the 2003 election, Equality Party leader Keith Henderson garnered fewer than 800 votes as Geoff Kelley, MNA since 1994, took almost 80 per cent of the ballots cast. Other Equality candidates did even worse than Henderson in neighbouring West Island ridings in the last election. Realizing the English-speaking community has all but abandoned the party at the polls, Henderson decided enough was enough. Anglos won’t have to ignore Equality any longer, the party is not running candidates in the March 26 election, after appearing in four campaigns.

“The English-speaking community has accepted the notion of (language-rights) compromises,” Henderson said last week. “They have chosen a political party (Liberals) that doesn’t believe in the Clarity Act or the division of Quebec (after separatists win a referendum). The English-speaking community has decided to live with that — or they have left. “I would council any young (anglophone) person to go somewhere else where they don’t have to put up with language restrictions, or another referendum if the PQ comes back into power,” he added.

If West Islanders feel they are being taken for granted by the Liberals, they should have considered other options, such as Equality, Henderson said. “They turned their back on their options — on a more vocal (English-speaking) leadership.”

Henderson said Equality members made a difference after the 1995 referendum even if they couldn’t get elected, citing the federal government’s Clarity Act and the partition of Quebec as issues that EP spearheaded.

As well, he said EP made municipal de-mergers their key platform issue in the 2003 election. “We made it front and centre and said the Liberals won’t deliver,” Henderson said. “But we got even less votes than in the previous election. Now the mayors (from reconstituted municipalities) whine and complain their interests are not heard. We said we would carry their views to the National Assembly. They completely ignored us. Now some mayors say vote ADQ. Come on.”

It was a different vibe in 1989 for the Equality Party as they won seats in four western Montreal Liberal strongholds, including Neil Cameron in Jacques Cartier, who ousted Liberal backbencher Joan Dougherty.

Cameron said he was elected because English-speaking voters were vehemently upset with the Liberals for Bill 178, which sought to erase the presence of English wording on commercial signs, and for making Anglo Liberal MNAs vote in favour of a Parti Québécois proposed motion denouncing a federal official languages commissioner’s report that suggested Quebec Anglos felt humiliated.

“Anglophones blew up at Robert Bourassa,” recalled Cameron, a retired John Abbott College history professor.

Months after his surprising election victory, Cameron said he realized support for Equality was evaporating. “(Equality’s) victory was more of a plebiscite.”

Robert Libman was Equality’s first leader (and was elected in D’Arcy McGee). He and Gordon Atkinson (who won in NDG) both quit the party and sat as independents before their term was up since they were at odds with more “hard-line” party members over constitutional issues and the fact the Liberals adopted Bill 86, which allowed for some English words on signs, Libman said. The other elected Equality MNA was Richard Holden, who quit the party while in term and ended up joining the PQ — shocking his Westmount constituents. It all went downhill from there for Equality at the polls. Of the four Equality members who won in 1989, only Cameron ran under the party banner again in 1994, coming in third to Kelley behind the PQ candidate, with about 2,400 votes.

The death of the Equality Party is a “tragedy,” Cameron said. “There was a brief moment of hope. There were so many happy anglophones (after our victory).”

Meanwhile, Libman said there is now a void in political leadership within Quebec’s English-speaking community. “The community has been politically marginalized,” he said, adding he is saddened Equality is no longer running candidates.

For the period there were Equality MNAs in Quebec City, Libman said the English community had someone dedicated to pressing the government on education and health matters of importance to them. “It was a great time for the community to have a voice in the National Assembly.”

Henderson had a parting shot for voters who ignored them in recent elections in favour of the Liberals. “The English-speaking community has only itself to blame for the current malaise.”

Equality was an institution for Montreal anglophones, Henderson said. “It’s dead now and no one has noticed.”