At the Parti Québécois convention last April, where party leader Pauline Marois scored a 93% confidence vote (the best to date for any PQ leader), Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, then campaigning for the May 2, 2011 federal election, came to lend Marois a hand.

With 47 of Quebec’s 75 federal seats, Duceppe then had a better track record than Marois. At that time, the PQ was the second party in the Quebec legislature, with 52 seats out of 125.

In his speech to the delegates, Duceppe said the coming federal election would give the “sovereigntists” more than 50% of Quebec’s combined federal and provincial seats, and he anticipated a future PQ win.

With “a strong Bloc in Ottawa and the first woman premier in Quebec City,” Duceppe said, referring to Marois, “everything becomes possible.” Meaning Quebec sovereignty.

Then came the May 2 election, with Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party catapulting to 59 seats in Quebec from one. The Bloc fell to four and Duceppe resigned on the spot.

The collapse of their Bloc allies cast the PQ into a funk. That funk was compounded by a caucus revolt against Marois after Agnès Maltais, the only PQ member of the National Assembly in a Quebec City riding, agreed to present a private-member’s bill to retroactively confirm the legality of an agreement between Quebec City and Quebecor Media Inc.

That agreement gave Quebecor management of a proposed new “amphitheatre” that would really be a hockey arena for the return to the capital of the National Hockey League’s Quebec Nordiques.

PQ MNAs from the Montreal area balked at the proposal and when Marois tried to enforce party discipline, five of her caucus members left to sit as independents.

Two more PQ MNAs have since left to join François Legault in his new Coalition Avenir Québec, which has been leading Quebec polls since June, even though it only officially became a party in November.

Legault, a former PQ minister, is offering a party that promises no new sovereignty referendum and has none of the political baggage linking it to the corruption allegations that plague Premier Jean Charest’s Liberals.

But the polls also indicated Legault could be beaten by the PQ if Gilles Duceppe was party leader. Before Christmas, as a more-or-less open caucus revolt further weakened the position of Marois, Duceppe offered her his support, without denying his own ambitions.

Then, in January, Duceppe let it be known he was “available” to lead the party, suggesting Marois should make the right decision — resign.

But Duceppe’s ill-planned putsch had no support within the PQ caucus and Marois, after letting that fact sink in, addressed Duceppe’s challenge at a news conference, saying her decision was to stay.

A rapid one-two followed. La Presse reported Duceppe had paid the salary of the Bloc’s Montreal-based director from House of Commons funds, suggesting impropriety. The following day, Duceppe said he would defend his integrity against the allegations and would not return to politics.

So, Duceppe is not the PQ’s saviour and Marois gets to fight again, against Legault and Charest, the victor in three consecutive elections in spite of perennially low voter satisfaction.  IE