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Friday, April 23, 2004
CPC declines candidacy of Bloc MP
It's nice to see that the Conservative Party is not putting opportunism ahead of principle in Québec. The CPC rejected the candidacy of the sitting Bloc MP for the riding of Jonquière, Jocelyne Girard-Bujold. She had been defeated at the Bloc Québécois nomination meeting for the new riding of Jonquière-Alma in a smaller-scale reenactement of the Copps-Valeri affair and had been considering thereafter joining the Conservatives. Michel Rivard, chief CPC organizer for the East of Québec then said that "we hope she comes to the Conservative Party because she understands and likes the program and that she is not separatist nor nationalist anymore, but federalist." There must have been a great temptation to welcome Ms. Girard-Bujold nevertheless because her riding is in the region of Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, a bastion of Québec separatism.
I often wrote that the CPC could appeal to Quebecers, including moderate nationalists, by emphasizing a third way between Liberal centralization and Bloc separatism (though it probably won't bear fruits until the next election after this one) However, there is a difference between appealing to nationalist voters and recruiting nationalist and separatist candidates and it is better to maintain no ambiguity on the latter. The irony is that the Liberals are probably more busy recruiting nationalist candidates (like Jean Lapierre and Lévis Brien) yet still hold little appeal to nationalist voters.
Posted by Laurent Moss on April 23, 2004 in Canadian Conservative Politics | Permalink
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» A Bloc MP running for the Tories? No. from Le blog de Polyscopique
I wrote some comments on the Shotgun about the decision of the Conservative Party to decline the candidacy of Bloc MP Jocelyne Girard-Bujold.J'ai écrit quelques commentaires sur le Shotgun à propos de la décision du Parti Conservat... [Read More]
Tracked on 24-Apr-04 12:21:39 PM
Comments
Just a quick comment on semantics, nothing to do with the subject of this post - "CPC" is already the official abbreviation of the Communist Party of Canada - not sure if it's copyrighted, but I believe it's registered with Elections Canada anyway - so the Conservative Party of Canada will not be able to use that abbreviation for official purposes - and unofficially, let's face it - "Tory" is the easiest shorthand. They're the Tories, just as the Conservatives before they were called "Progressive Conservatives" were called Tories, just as the Conservative Party in the U.K. are the Tories. This indicates a historical continuity with the party of the same name in 19th century Britain, and kinship with the same party in the U.K. today. (Although, like Colby Cosh, I do realize the word has lost all of its original meanings and connotations, alas: http://www.colbycosh.com/archives.html#ltso )
Posted by: Will S, | 23-Apr-04 9:32:11 PM
excuse me, not "copyrighted"; I meant "trademarked".
Posted by: Will S. | 23-Apr-04 9:37:17 PM
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