We all know how much Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe has capitalized on the Liberals’ demise lately. Over the past few weeks, he’s been portraying them as corrupt, used and unfit to govern morally. And rightly so.

But the fact is that the Bloc owes its entire new life to the Liberals and their monstrous and incessant scandal-mongering. If it weren’t for Liberal mismanagement and culture of entitlement as described by Justice John H. Gomery in his report, the Bloc wouldn’t be thriving right now in Québec and it wouldn’t have gained new seats in 2004.

Following that logic, it is not surprising to see Duceppe ask Québecers to “give themselves a gift on January 23rd” and vote Liberal corruption and scandals out of Québec, and out of Commons.

But the recent surge of conservative support throughout La Belle Province now has Duceppe singing a very different tune : he’s now attacking Harper as much as Martin due to his party losing support to Harper’s Conservatives. While the Conservatives’ support base mostly consists in attracting federalist voters of traditionnally Liberal allegiance their way, they’re also thinning “soft-sovereigntist” and “soft-federalist” support for the Bloc. Duceppe is now saying (to my astonishment) that things will remain the same in Ottawa whether it is the Liberals or the Conservatives who hold power. To make that claim seem plausible, he uses his recent definition of the Option Canada scandal as being a federal scandal rather than a Liberal one. Whether that theory holds water or not depends largely on what role the Conservatives who were CUC (Canadian Unity Council) members really played in Option Canada. My guess is that Duceppe’s allegations - of which we have yet to see a confirmation - are just an electoral strategy for the Bloc to stop the hemorrhagy of potential Bloc voters switching to Harper’s Conservative party, which has, to its greatest credit, finally succeeded in positioning itself as the REAL federalist alternative in Québec, their support base now greater than the Liberals’. That’s a first since Brian Mulroney’s 1984 sweeping victory.

Now, one would think that, considering all that’s been said, Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Québécois would be quite happy about the regime change in Ottawa. But somehow they don’t seem to be. It’s quite a paradox, since putting the Conservatives in power is the only way to vote out the Liberals. As Le Soleil/La Presse well-known columnist Alain Dubuc puts it, “For three years now, its [Bloc Québécois] main-selling argument has been the denounciation of Liberal corruption, who had to be cleared out of Ottawa. And now that it appears like a possible scenario, it is surrealist to see Bloc supporters turn their coats and attack the Conservatives, the only ones who can actually make it happen.” (English translation of an Alain Dubuc column excerpt in La Presse, January 14, 2006 - French excerpt below)

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Such are the Bloc’s numerous paradoxes. One could almost make out from all this that the Bloc really prefers having the Liberals in charge, as they are easy targets for them after all. I’d love it though if they were consistent with what they actually say. I used to be a Bloc supporter in 2004, and I actually volunteered for the Bloc candidate in my riding. But I’m through with the Bloc for those reasons and a LOT more, and even if I still believe that Québec deserves to be its own country someday and that sovereignty is not a bad idea, I can’t bring myself to vote for people who have an interest in keeping everything from working properly so they can be reelected. Plus, I’m too right-wing for Duceppe, who was (if you didn’t already know) a communist party member when he was younger.

I’m really, truly a Harper guy. And I even wish he’d go further on a lot of things (lowering taxes, privatizing parts of healthcare, devolving powers to the provinces and pulling out of Kyoto come to mind).

That’s why me, a former Bloc voter, have cast my ballot for my local Conservative candidate in an advance polling station last Friday, in the hope that, in the end, it’ll really change Canada.

(Doing my part to help THE BLUE FINGER CAMPAIGN of the Blogging Tories)

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The aforementioned Alain Dubuc column excerpt in its original French version:

“Depuis 3 ans, son fond de commerce a été la dénonciation de la corruption des Libéraux, qu’il fallait chasser. Et maintenant que c’est à portée de la main, il est surréaliste de voir les Bloquistes se retourner contre les Conservateurs, ceux-là même qui rendent cet objectif possible.”