In Quebec, sacrificial candidates such as Mlle. Brosseau are often referred to as "poteaux" or posts. And sometimes, in politics, poteaux such as Mlle. Brosseau can get really lucky. And...it wouldn't be the first time something like this happened in La Belle Province. In the 1984 Mulrouney sweep, the Progressive Conservatives, one poteaux was a Purolator driver enlisted to run by party activists when he was delivering a package.
Of course, in our tradition of the Westminister Parliament, a citizen doesn't vote for the leader of a party, but for the candidate of a party. But because the leader of a political party, defacto, is the party, the fine residents of Berther-Masikinonge placed a vote beside Mlle. Brosseau as an endorsement of her leader, the Hon. Jack Layton. But I believe that that the residents of Berther-Masikinonge have buyers remorse for several reasons as follows:
- On vacation during the middle of a campaign. Now..most candidates are in it to win, and would not do this, but of course, with family schedules and the unpredictability of a minority government it may be reasonable to take a vacation during the writ. There were other candidates that did this from other parties (and I believe that includes the Tories) so that is not necessarily a big deal.
- Not around/barely visible in the riding. There are plenty of charges of this all around. Right now, there is a case of a new Conservative MP, Jim Hillyer (Lethbridge), who is in the middle of a controversy of running a very low profile campaign. As one of my Green Party facebook friends, suggests, Conservatives were running away from candidate debates all over the place. (Ha! I am critizing the optics of what my party has done!). Of course, there were also other candidates that were also nowhere near their ridings because they were working in other ridings.
- Poor command of the language of the residents of the riding. Apparently Mlle. Brosseau's command of the french language was so bad that a local radio station had to scrap her interview from going on air. Cyberpresse used the headline: ""Ruth-Ellen Brosseau: fantôme et anglophone?"" (no translation necessary here!). If you had an MP in an anglophone riding, that only spoke broken french, how much confidence can you have in them to help with a refugee claim, a dispute over your OAS, or some other "routinely complex government issue?" The MP staff can only cover a small portion of the MP's shortcomings.
A candidate can survive a bit of controversy with either of the first two points. The last point invites much more scrutiny. Put all three together, and the temperature is high, high, high. It's at the point where the Liberals look like they are wanting to go ahead with a legal challenge of Mlle. Brosseau's victory (I doubt this will go anywhere).
I do firmly believe that the voters are never wrong but I must confess that in this case, my resolve in this belief is severely tested. Populistic movements and their candidates (and Quebec has had a couple now with this NDP surge and even with the ADQ provincially in 2007) need to be examined by the voter before their ballot is cast.
