Bloc Québécois

Bloc Québécois, Canadian national political party formed by members of the Canadian Parliament from the province of Québec. The party was officially founded on June 15, 1991.

The Bloc Québécois (BQ) promotes sovereignty-association, or equal status with the federal government of Canada, for the primarily French-speaking province. Sovereignty-association is not precisely defined. Generally, however, its supporters—known as sovereigntists—envision a Québec where the federal government could not interfere in local Québec affairs. Québec would remain associated with Canada in a kind of partnership that would include a common trade policy and the use of a common currency.

Another political party dedicated to sovereignty-association, the Parti Québécois, has existed on the provincial level since 1968. The Parti Québécois and the Bloc Québécois differ primarily in that they operate at different levels of government. As a federal party, the Bloc Québécois provides an avenue for sovereigntists to be represented in Canada's capital of Ottawa, Ontario.

Lucien Bouchard founded the Bloc Québécois after the Meech Lake Accord of 1987 was not ratified. The federal government intended the Meech Lake Accord as an answer to those in Québec—only some of whom were sovereigntists—who wanted to increase self-government in the province. It would have modified Canada’s 1982 constitution, which Québec had rejected, to provide recognition of Québec as a distinct society and to guarantee provincial powers. After the accord’s failure, the new party attracted Québeckers who believed that change would not come about through the Canadian political system. The 1992 failure of a second attempt at constitutional reform—the Charlottetown Accord—further increased the party’s popularity.

In 1993 Liberal Party leader Jean Chrétien campaigned for prime minister on the position that the Canadian government should avoid constitutional debates and concentrate on other issues. Chrétien’s campaign led many Québeckers to believe that the federal government had little concern for Québec’s autonomy—especially since Chrétien had opposed the concessions offered to Québec in the Meech Lake Accord.

French-speaking citizens of Québec voted heavily for the Bloc Québécois. The party won 54 of Québec’s 75 electoral seats in Parliament; only the Liberal Party won more seats. As the runner-up party, the BQ became the official opposition in Parliament. The opposition’s duty is to develop alternatives to the ruling party’s policies so that it will be ready to govern if the ruling party loses power. For the first time in Canadian politics, the opposition’s declared intention was to secede from the federal system.

In September 1994 the Parti Québécois won the provincial election in Québec, and party leader Jacques Parizeau became the province’s premier. As he had promised during his campaign, in 1995 he called a referendum to let the voters of Québec determine whether the province should declare sovereignty after making a formal offer of partnership to the rest of Canada. The Bloc Québécois pledged its support, and Lucien Bouchard played an important role in winning public support for the yes side in the referendum. The referendum was held October 30, 1995, and the proposal was defeated by a narrow margin.

On October 31, 1995, Parizeau resigned as premier of Québec and Lucien Bouchard replaced him. Bouchard resigned his seat in Parliament, stepped down as head of the Bloc Québécois, and was elected head of the Parti Québécois. Michel Gauthier replaced Bouchard as head of the Bloc Québécois and federal opposition leader. In December 1996, confronted with growing criticism that his low-key and uncommunicative style was hurting the party’s standing in opinion polls, Gauthier announced his resignation as head of the BQ. In March 1997 Gilles Duceppe, a close acquaintance of Lucien Bouchard, was elected to succeed Gauthier.

In a Canada-wide parliamentary election in June 1997, the Bloc Québécois lost ten seats in the House of Commons and was replaced as the official opposition by the western-based Reform Party. The Reform Party (later folded into a new party called the Canadian Alliance) opposed distinct-society status for Québec. Most of the seats lost by the Bloc, however, went to the Progressive Conservative Party, which favored such a status. In the November 2000 parliamentary election, support for the Bloc continued to decline; the party won just 38 seats, down 6 from its total before the election. In 2003 the Parti Québécois lost control of the provincial government to the Liberal Party of Québec.

The BQ’s fortunes rebounded in 2004, as the party captured 54 seats in the Canadian Parliament, tying its highest total ever. Still highly popular, Duceppe predicted even better results when federal elections were held again in early 2006. Instead, the BQ lost three seats in the elections, as the newly unified Conservative Party made big gains in Québec and took power in Canada. See also French Canadian Nationalism.