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As
for Dumont, well—good for him if he can finally find a real
job and do something productive for the first time in his
life.
Contrary to his idealised
image as a right-wing politician, Dumont is, like Charest, a
confused opportunist who has veered left and right over the
years in a desperate search to find support. True, his
political base consists mostly of suburban and rural
families with more traditional values than average. And over
the years, the ADQ has stood for more private health care,
cuts in the public service and government programs and an
end to multiculturalism and the proliferation of wacky
state-given privileges disguised as “minority rights.”
But “family-oriented
policies” can be understood in many ways and some are not
exactly consistent with libertarianism (perhaps more with
big government conservatism of the type we have in Ottawa
and Washington—but that’s another issue). The ADQ in fact
became the champion of all kinds of government interventions
and subsidies favouring families, which directly
contradicted its small-government message. In recent years,
it even adopted an economic platform that advocates propping
up the regions, centrally planning industrial investments
across the province, promoting local goods and services, and
all kinds of other policies that even Québec Solidaire would
not disagree with.
The ADQ denounced the tax
cuts enacted by the Charest government, saying that we
should spend more on families and reduce the debt instead.
The last point is of course not a bad one, but a real
conservative party should advocate spending and tax cuts to
reach that goal. It would have been impossible to say,
during the past two years, which of the ADQ or the Quebec
Liberal Party was the better (or rather least awful) choice
from a free-market perspective.
The interesting thing is
that when he was focusing on his more free-market policies
like private health care and a flat tax, Dumont was riding
high in the polls; and when he was sending confused
messages, his numbers were going down. But weird as it may
seem, nobody in the party seems to have spotted that
pattern. When it became suddenly very popular two years ago,
the party attracted a bunch of opportunists with no coherent
set of beliefs apart from their autonomist stand. The 41
MNAs that were elected in March 2007 never made any
impression on Quebec voters and it’s no surprise that most
of them lost their seat yesterday.
I have been saying for
many years that it is a waste of time to work and vote for
the ADQ. In 2003, after the ADQ was soundly defeated
following a disastrous campaign where they repudiated most
of their small-government positions (the media and interest
groups had been waging a virulent campaign saying that
Quebecers did not want such radical right-wing policies, and
the idiots bought it despite achieving their highest poll
numbers ever in 2002 with these policies), I wrote an
article entitled “ADQ Defeated: Good Riddance!” (in French,
« Défaite
de l'ADQ: bon débarras! » Still, many
of my libertarian acquaintances continued to work for the
party or say that it stood as our best option and should be
supported. Almost all of them have now abandoned that hope.
I don’t know what will
happen with the party now that the man who represented it
almost all by himself for so many years is leaving it. But
no one who believes in smaller government should lament the
ADQ’s defeat and Dumont’s departure. On the contrary, it
should be seen as a just reward for the waste of time and
political goodwill that he has been responsible for.
I am convinced there is a
political niche in Quebec for consistent free-market
policies, although democratic politics, with its bias
favouring vote-buying and opportunistic behaviour,
inevitably puts us at a disadvantage. Perhaps a leader and a
party with more consistent views will one day be able to
exploit it and it will be worth giving it our support. Until
that day arrives, I’m not wasting any time participating in
this electoral farce. And I’m happy to note that a great
many Quebecers agreed with me this time.
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At one point, Dumont became Stephen Harper’s best friend in Quebec.
Some even saw him as a future conservative minister, even though
Dumont never showed any interest in federal politics. The two
organisations worked hand in hand on the ground. The ADQ’s
surprising surge in last year’s election, when it became the
official opposition, following the Conservative breakthrough of the
year before, was proof that there was a niche for right-wing ideas
in Quebec. 