In Quebec, an outside politician will be considered a "national" leader only if he or she makes the right noises about the province's rich and distinctive culture and the importance of the French language, pays lip service to some traditional nationalist demands, and is seen in situations that Quebecers can relate to. Photo-ops with Bonhomme Carnaval in Quebec City usually do the trick. Actually winning votes is another matter, but taking these steps at least ensures that you're not considered an irrelevant foreigner. 
  
          Sadly, Preston Manning never understood this simple rule of Canadian politics, and wound up being seen in Quebec as coming from another planet. The fact that he had great difficulty uttering three consecutive words in French should not have been an insurmountable obstacle: Belinda Stronach proved that you can become popular in Quebec even if you're not bilingual, so long as you look like you genuinely care and promise to learn. 
  
          But Mr. Manning was never really interested in what was going on in the province. Instead, he kept repeating that he was waiting for his "Lafontaine" to show up – a reference to Sir Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine, the Canada East half of the Baldwin-Lafontaine reformist duo under the Union regime in the 1840s. As high-minded as it may have sounded, this was mostly just a way to justify his unwillingness to do what was necessary to reach out to Quebecers. 
  
          Despite all the controversy surrounding his views on social matters, Stockwell Day actually enjoyed more personal popularity in Quebec. Eric Duhaime, his spokesman and one of his chief strategists, saw to it that he said and did the right things. And in the 2000 election, his Canadian Alliance polled more Quebec votes than Joe Clark's Tories. 
  
          When he succeeded Day in 2002, Stephen Harper stood to benefit from his superior French and his strong understanding of Quebec issues, which far surpassed either Manning's or Day's. But until recently, he showed little interest in putting those assets to work. 
  

“In Quebec, an outside politician will be considered a "national" leader only if he or she makes the right noises about the province's rich and distinctive culture and the importance of the French language, pays lip service to some traditional nationalist demands, and is seen in situations that Quebecers can relate to.”

 
          During the 2002 Alliance leadership campaign, Duhaime warned me that Harper would give up on Quebec and waste all the gains the party had made here if he won. And as one of two people who helped organize his sole campaign event in the province, I saw for myself that wooing Quebecers ranked way below drumming up support in Kelowna or Sault-Ste-Marie on his list of priorities. Granted, there were few Alliance members to rally. But it would have been the perfect time to attract media attention and start building a positive relationship with Quebec voters. Unfortunately, Harper's handlers couldn't even find half-a-day during the entire campaign for him to attend a meeting with the editorial board at La Presse, Quebec's most influential daily. 
  
          Harper effectively disappeared from view in Quebec during the next two years – so much so that at one point, editorialists at The Gazette in Montreal challenged his knowledge of the country's geography by mailing him a roadmap with the route from Ottawa to Montreal highlighted. Perhaps he spent too much time listening to friends and advisors like George Koch and John Weissenberger, who recently penned an op-ed in the National Post headlined "You can win without Quebec." 
  
          Because of the new leadership selection rules giving equal weight to all ridings in the new Conservative Party, though, Harper had to show up in Quebec more often than he might have wished during this past winter's leadership race. And when he launched his party's campaign in Montreal on May 24 with a speech reportedly written by Brian Mulroney's former speechwriter, he finally pushed all the right buttons. Even Le Devoir published the conservative leader's picture on its front page the next day, and put a positive spin on it. 
  
          Harper, though, may have taken too long to rediscover the province. Despite the recent surge in the rest of the country, the polls tell us that Conservative support in Quebec presently stands at 13% – exactly the same as the combined Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance vote in 2000. True, if national trends continue, it may not be too late for this wave of support to reach la Belle Province and elect a few Conservative candidates. But it would have been a whole lot easier if Harper and his organizers had placed as much of a priority on Quebec as on the other provinces back when he was first elected leader.