Two dates are circled on Gilles Duceppe's calendar: Sept. 24 and Oct. 2, the dates when the televised French-language leaders' debates will be held. For the Bloc Québécois Leader, they represent the ultimate lifesavers – about his only chance of (maybe) propping up his party and escaping rout and humiliation.
Mr. Duceppe, with 21 years of continuous political experience under his belt, including 14 as party leader, should dominate the debates. Speaking in his native language, he will be more articulate than the others. For Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, French is a second language. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is sometimes incoherent and at a loss for words when he speaks French. New Democratic Party Leader Thomas Mulcair is comfortable in French (his wife was born in France), but he will have a hard time answering Mr. Duceppe's tough questions about the relative indifference of the Official Opposition to Quebec issues and the near-invisibility of the NDP's big Quebec caucus.
Some of the Bloc's attacks against Mr. Mulcair have already fallen flat, however. Mr. Duceppe accused the NDP Leader of being a turncoat who, when he was a Liberal MNA, professed some admiration for former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher's legacy and occasionally attacked the Parti Québécois government for being too close to labour unions. But these attacks, echoed throughout Canada, only helped Mr. Mulcair appear as a non-dogmatic politician located around the centre of the political spectrum – exactly where he wanted to be seen.
A hard worker known for having always been on top of his files, Mr. Duceppe should normally emerge as the winner in both of the debates, which could provide his party with some momentum. But many viewers could feel a tinge of annoyance and boredom at seeing him again on the scene. Quebeckers have seen him in action for a very long time, and the unequivocal message he got in 2011 was that it was time to go. His sovereigntist mantra will fail to mobilize viewers; for now, at least, sovereignty is seen as something that's so last-century.
For now, the Bloc campaign is a non-starter. By late August, the federal party that once dominated Quebec was in third place with 16-per-cent support in an Ipsos poll, badly trailing the NDP, which was leading with 40-per-cent support in the province. Even more disheartening for Mr. Duceppe, a CROP poll commissioned by the NDP found him with only 20-per-cent support in his Laurier-Sainte-Marie riding, 37 points behind Hélène Laverdière, the NDP's lacklustre incumbent. This is the last nail in the coffin, thought La Presse cartoonist Serge Chapleau, who drew Mr. Duceppe being measured by an undertaker.
Since his resounding defeat in 2011 at the hands of the NDP, Mr. Duceppe has been in total denial. He attributed the Bloc's defeat to the charm exercised by le bon Jack, the sweet and smiling former NDP leader Jack Layton, and thought the NDP's massive victory was a fluke.
Even at 68, Gilles Duceppe was a reluctant retiree. He missed politics. His new life – as a commentator for Le Journal de Montréal and an occasional guest at public affairs programs – bored him.
He announced his return as Bloc leader in June, the day after the funeral of Jacques Parizeau. The outpouring of emotional tributes that followed the former PQ leader's death probably led Mr. Duceppe to believe that the event would trigger a surge of sovereigntist fervour. This didn't happen. Again, it was a miscalculation.
Lysiane Gagnon