The Montreal Gazette  |  November 15, 1998

SEPARATIST FORTRESS

For Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, independence goes with the territory

By Eric Siblin

A man with half a century of factory work behind him strolls by a hardware store called Potvin & Bouchard Inc., tightens his scarf against a fierce Saguenay wind and considers the town's political fortunes.      “It's the first time up here we've had our own premier,” he says, speaking of Lucien Bouchard, who represents this riding of Jonquiere in the Quebec legislature.      There are gripes. There's a rabble-rousing union leader who's set up shop to unseat Bouchard. And there's a “petite madame” with three children who is running as the candidate for the Liberals.      “But Bouchard is still strong,” the man says. “I myself am a Bouchard.”      So are a great number of Jonquiere residents, if not in name, at least in voter predilections.      It is here, 200 kilometres north of Quebec City, where Bouchard grew up. His father delivered lumber supplies for the hardware store that bears his name. It is here where the premier breezed to power in a 1996 by-election with 94.82 per cent of the vote. And it is here, where separatist sentiment comes with the Saguenay-Lac St. Jean territory, that Bouchard is supposed to have a lock on the 1998 electorate; in campaign parlance, it is his “chateau fort.”      “All over the Saguenay we vote Parti Quebecois,” said Raymond Bouchard, who is not related to the premier. “Federalists never did anything for us.”      That's one view, the one expected to carry the day on Nov. 30. Yet there are cracks in the walls of Bouchard's fortress.      If independent candidate Michel Chartrand has his way, those cracks will look more like cannonball marks on election day.      Chartrand, 81, former union leader and firebrand emeritus, is challenging Bouchard on the grounds of social democracy and separatism, items that the PQ usually claims as its birthright.      Referring to the premier as a “master double-crosser” and “the riding's former deputy,” Chartrand had a captive market of 600 people jam-packed into a community centre one night last week. The final vote tally he gets could well be one of the election's eyebrow-raisers.      Also planning to chip away at Bouchard's fortress is Liberal Party candidate Guylaine Caron, a 31-year-old housewife with three children and zero political experience. Galvanized by cuts to the city's health services, Caron has thrown her hat into the ring to oppose a “dangerous” man with a “thirst for power.”      The dissent in Jonquiere was evident when the premier came to his fiefdom one week ago for his swearing-in ceremony as candidate and found himself surrounded by 1,000 protesters angry over plans to merge services with a sister hospital in nearby Chicoutimi.      During marathon negotiations conspicuous for having taken place when the premier's chateau fort was threatened, a last-minute deal involving more than $1 million prevented 47 doctors from resigning en masse.      Critics outside the greater municipality of 70,000 complained that social peace had been purchased and pork-barrel politics employed in Bouchard's home riding.      The advantages of having the premier as your local MNA were no doubt made obvious to locals, but many here dismiss the deal as Band-Aid material.      Those inclined to criticize the premier talk about cuts to other social services, a four-lane road that has yet to be built through Parc Laurentides, government favouritism towards Chicoutimi and an absentee landlord in Quebec City.      “The people in this riding are very disappointed,” Chartrand said. “They have a premier and he hasn't settled anything.”      Holding court in his campaign office with a cigar in hand and a cell phone in his shirt pocket, Chartrand cuts the figure of a poet more than a politico. His posters, complete with the slogan “Zero Poverty” (a dig at the PQ's zero-deficit plan), have the look of a chansonnier. He is an Old Testament prophet one minute, inveighing against the excesses of capitalism, and a rollicking comedian the next: a Marxist, in the sense of both Groucho and Karl.      That he doesn't reside in Jonquiere - he lives in Richelieu, though he promises to move here if elected - hasn't damaged his credibility. (Chartrand's roots are distinctly bourgeois, having been raised in Outremont. Yet he ran once before in this riding, back in 1958, taking on the Duplessis man and ending up in a respectable second place.) A few weeks ago, he packed his bags for Jonquiere to confront Bouchard head-on. Why this riding? “There is only one boss in the province,” he replied.      Chartrand denounced that boss for targeting a zero deficit at the cost of human suffering. His complaints are many: unemployment, youth suicide, poor roads, federalism, aluminum companies, the shortage of schoolbooks, Bouchard's readiness to sign a constitutional deal - the rhetoric rises like the smoke from his Cuban cigar.      The upshot is that he sees no discernable difference between Charest - “le frise (curly-haired) de Sherbrooke” - and Bouchard - the “toupee of the Saguenay.” Tweedledee or Tweedledum, he said, adding for good measure in a speech that night: “Two cheeks on the same bum.” If there is a protest vote waiting to happen in Jonquiere, it will go directly to Chartrand.      A more touchy-feely alternative is the Liberal Party, which received about 27 per cent of the ballots cast in the provincial election of 1994. (The party did not field a candidate in the by-election two years later when Bouchard swept up the vote.) Caron, who describes herself as a reformed PQ voter, lacks the stage presence of Chartrand and Bouchard, but is eloquent in her own right and more than capable of taking partisan shots.      “When Bouchard came here he had a halo. Now it's disappeared,” she said in an interview at her electoral office on the town's main drag. Caron's concerns are locally rooted: cutbacks at the hospital, the exodus of young people, the demise of commerce, an aging populace.      The engine of her opposition, however, has been health cuts. She gathered 10,000 signatures to protest against the elimination of the local hospital's pediatric clinic; when she tried to present it to Bouchard, she said, she received a rude reception from the premier. That set her in motion. She had stopped working five years ago to raise three children (a fourth is on the way), and hadn't planned to change career gears so quickly: “I thought, 'Nobody is standing up to Lucien Bouchard. I will do it.' “      As the Liberal contender, she has expanded her pitch to include anti-separatism, echoing Charest's line that the independence obsession has forced cuts to the health-care budget. Bouchard's approach, she argues, has been “Vive Quebec - and Quebecers to the devil!”      Chatting with people in this rough-hewn, friendly town gives the impression of disgruntlement, primarily over the PQ handling of health care.      At the Jonquiere hospital that shook Bouchard's campaign, occupational therapist France Potvin said that the last-minute deal between the PQ and local doctors will not gain the premier any points. “People are very disappointed,” she said.      Her take on the hospital crisis points to the entrenched rivalry between Jonquiere and Chicoutimi that got in the way of merging services. “It is as if there is a large stone wall between the two cities,” she said.      It is true that many Jonquiere residents attribute their woes to Chicoutimi, the town less than 20 minutes away by car, a majestic place on the banks of the Saguenay river, a town - as one Jonquierois put it - that “wants everything.” A stroll down Chicoutimi's main street in fact reveals urban amenities that cannot be found on Jonquiere's equivalent strip: espresso coffee bars, luxury sports cars, a Lebanese restaurant and a slick Internet cafe. By contrast, Jonquiere has a backwoods feel, a punch-clock economy and a sense that the future is going on elsewhere.      Chicoutimi envy is an old story; Bouchard was aware of it when he was a youngster in town, and his first career move meant going to Chicoutimi as a young lawyer.      In Jonquiere these days, there are disappointments, but there is also a viewpoint that politics is politics, and that Bouchard, whatever his government's faults, is still Bouchard - a politician, as one of the town's ubiquitous hair-stylists put it, who “knows how to stand tall.”      Though there is no PQ candidate going door to door and handing out pamphlets, the Pequiste election office is more a beehive of campaign activity than its competitors. In the same building is Bouchard's riding office, where three political attaches are kept busy in the premier's absence.      “The campaign is going very well,” said Nancy Lavoie, the premier's representative in the riding. Wearing a “J'ai confiance” Bouchard campaign button, Lavoie mentioned the margin of victory in the 1996 by-election: 23,539. It is a big number.      Internal surveys conducted by the PQ indicate that Bouchard's support is solid in all sectors, Lavoie said. And she refuted the idea that the MNA is rarely in his stronghold.      “He is here twice a month,” she said. “He knows every road. He recognizes the people here. He is 'chez lui.' “      Lavoie maintained that in a short time Bouchard has addressed a number of local concerns and has been actively involved in all the major issues. Among the accomplishments she cited: industrial rescue schemes, money pumped into education, development of the river and road construction,.      To expect anything but a Bouchard win, at the end of the day, is to go against the laws of political gravity.      Standing on a bridge overlooking Riviere-aux-Sables, longtime PQ supporter Jean Tremblay allowed that Jonquiere has had a “hard time with Bouchard.” He cited health cuts, the missing four-lane road, a referendum question that's been dragging on too long and the concentration of government largesse in Chicoutimi.      “It's all the same, whether we vote bleu or rouge,” said Tremblay, using the nicknames for Pequiste and Liberal.      “Before, I voted 100 per cent for the PQ. Now I might vote for Chartrand.”      Then he reconsidered, citing the “charm” of the premier, and said he might end up casting a “sentimental” vote for the PQ: “I'll probably come through for my friend Bouchard.”