The last time Quebec voters delivered such a large contingent of unknowns to the House of Commons, Lucien Bouchard enforced strict control on his caucus as the Bloc Québécois suddenly became the official opposition in 1993.
The tight discipline loosened after Mr. Bouchard’s departure, but for two years, he kept his party out of trouble.
Today, Jack Layton and the NDP are facing the same headaches as he and his party try to manage a series of postelectoral controversies that underline the fragility of the New Democrats’ dalliance with Quebeckers.
In the latest glitch, and for the second time since its unexpected electoral breakthrough in Quebec, the NDP blamed party workers for overinflating the online biography of one of its novice MPs.
The NDP had to withdraw a claim that controversial new MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau had a college diploma after a school official said Ms. Brosseau had never graduated.
Ms. Brosseau’s biography originally said that she has a diploma in advertising and integrated marketing communications from St. Lawrence College in Kingston.
However, Gord MacDougall, the college’s vice-president for student and external affairs, said she didn’t graduate.
NDP spokesman Kathleen Monk said Ms. Brosseau had told the party she didn’t complete the program but was misunderstood.
“When her bio was posted on our website, a party staffer inadvertently changed the wording. We apologize for posting this information in error and regret any inconvenience this has caused Ms. Brosseau,” Ms. Monk said in an e-mail.
The NDP had also blamed a staffer when the online biography of another newly elected Quebec MP, Mylène Freeman, wrongly stated that she had grown up in the riding where she sought office, Argenteuil-Papineau Mirabel.
Royal Galipeau, the Tory MP for Ottawa-Orléans, faced a similar problem during the campaign. The Ottawa Citizen reported that he had to retract a claim on his online biography that he graduated from the University of Ottawa.
But the NDP’s troubles are intriguing because they raise questions about the strength of the party’s large, untested Quebec caucus.
Neither Ms. Brosseau nor Ms. Freeman actually campaigned in the ridings where they ran for office, being sacrificial lambs for a party that didn’t expect so many wins in Quebec.
The controversies dogging them underline two unavoidable dynamics of Canadian politics, said Laval University political scientist Réjean Pelletier.
The first is that pan-Canadian parties have to field candidates in every riding, no matter how weak some of them are, otherwise the party’s legitimacy would be questioned.
The second, Prof. Pelletier noted, is that parties get a $2 subsidy for each vote they receive, providing they get 2 per cent of the national vote and 5 per cent of a riding’s ballots. “So even if you only get 4,000 or 5,000 votes in a riding and lose, it’s worth fielding a candidate.”
Ms. Brosseau was a placeholder candidate who wasn’t expected to win in the riding of Berthier-Maskinongé, a mostly rural area midway between Montreal and Quebec City where 77 per cent of the population speaks only French.
She didn’t visit the riding and her only scheduled interview, with a local radio station, was cancelled because her French was too halting.
Historically, Quebec has often seen political unknowns carried to office during electoral waves, from the Bloc’s 1993 breakthrough at the federal level to the Action démocratique du Québec becoming the provincial official opposition in 2007.
The NDP has tightly controlled access to Ms. Brosseau since her election, saying she needs French-language classes.
She has given only one interview, with a local paper, Le Nouvelliste, in which she said she was shocked by her victory.
She and Mr. Layton sent automated telephone messages to her new constituents thanking them for placing their trust in her.
In the message, in hesitant but correctly executed French, Ms. Brosseau says she is working with a strong NDP team in the region to offer excellent service to the people of Berthier-Maskinongé.
As a mother, she adds, she understands the challenges of raising a family and assures those in her new riding that they will have a strong voice in the House of Commons.
