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When Jean Charest called an election on Nov. 5, he said he needed a stronger mandate to steer Quebec through the global economic crisis. He even went so far as to make his campaign slogan “The economy first -- Yes!” But last week, Le Journal de Montreal called the Liberals’ strategy into question when it published a poll that found that health care trumps the economy as Quebeckers’ number one concern this election.

In his analysis of the poll’s findings, Le Journal’s Jean-Philippe Décarie called Quebeckers’ continued fixation on health care “strange” considering the current global economic turmoil, but suggested that perhaps voters don’t yet perceive the scale of the crisis and how it might affect the province’s economy.

The next day in Le Devoir, Jean-Robert Sansfacon agreed that most Quebeckers won’t take the economic crisis seriously until they see more “tangible” evidence of its negative impacts. He pointed to the poll results in Le Journal as evidence that Mr. Charest “might have been off the mark when he made the economy the central theme of his campaign.”

On his blog for l’Actualité, Pierre Cayouette pointed out that Mr. Charest ran his 2003 campaign on health care reform, and that now that the issue has “come back to haunt him,” he has been forced to revert to his “old tune” of blaming the Parti Québécois (especially former health minister and current PQ Leader Pauline Marois) for letting the system fall apart in the first place.

In the Saturday edition of Le Devoir, Michel David opined that a debate on health care during this campaign is the “last thing Mr. Charest could want.” Mr. David argued that the Liberals have failed to live up to many of the promises they made in 2003 and called Mr. Charest’s record on the issue “embarrassing.”

Mario’s less than super week

Media coverage of Mario Dumont and the ADQ’s flailing campaign went from bad to worse last week.

On Nov. 9, Mr. Dumont called for a moratorium on the province’s new ethics and religious culture course for elementary and high school students. “The people who came up with this course,” said Mr. Dumont, “are the same people who fight against Christmas trees in classrooms and who want to see words like Easter disappear from schools.”

In an article on Monday, Le Soleil’s Julie Lemieux identified Mr. Dumont’s comments an attempt to “re-launch the debate on reasonable accommodation” - a tactic which helped him win official opposition status in 2007.

Mr. Dumont seems to have had some trouble getting it back off the ground. On Tuesday, La Presse’s André Pratte wrote an editorial under the headline “Enough, Mr Dumont!” which accused the ADQ Leader of once again trying to “stir up people’s prejudices and mistrust” with “incendiary declarations that encourage ignorance and intolerance.”

On the same day, Le Devoir published an article which detailed all the things that had gone wrong for Mr. Dumont on Monday. The list included showing up at the wrong daycare centre in Hull; the Montreal school board’s refusal to let Mr. Dumont visit one of its institutions; and a controversy surrounding ADQ attack ads against PQ Leader Pauline Marois, which resulted in Mr. Dumont having to personally ask the webmasters of the ADQ site to take down the offending videos.

Then on Wednesday, Le Journal de Montreal’s Marco Fortier accused Mr. Dumont of running an “American-style negative campaign” against the two “old parties.” Mr. Fortier went on to criticize the production values and the message of the ADQ’s TV ads, which he said “ring false.”

A week of bad news for the ADQ ended on Friday with a Journal de Montreal story under the headline “Minorities quasi-invisible in the ADQ,” which pointed out that the ADQ has the lowest percentage of visible-minority candidates running in this election. The article noted that of the candidates who represent diverse cultural communities, most are running in ridings where the ADQ doesn’t stand a chance.

Video of the week

This video making fun of Ms. Marois’ command of the English language caused some controversy last week - mostly because one of the actors in the clip, which was made some time ago, is none other than newly minted PQ candidate Jacques Nadeau.

In a report in Le Soleil, the creators of the video -- members of the comedy group “Prenez garde aux chiens” -- claimed that the PQ threatened to strip Mr. Nadeau of his candidacy if they did not remove the video from their site. A PQ spokesperson responded that the party asked for the video to be removed to avoid “confusion,” but there “was never an ultimatum.”

Special to The Globe and Mail