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editorial

The sudden departure last week of seven of the Bloc Québécois's 10 MPs has left the once-formidable sovereigntist party in disarray.

The MPs who quit say the abrasive style of party leader Martine Ouellet and her hard-core views on independence have made it impossible for them to consider returning to the fold. They have since formed their own independent caucus, while Ms. Ouellet has refused to resign and was somehow given a vote of confidence by the party executive over the weekend. It's an utter disaster.

But what seems like the real-time disintegration of the BQ is, in fact, more than that. It reveals problems in the separatist movement that go well beyond the leadership frailties of Ms. Ouellet, who sits in Quebec's National Assembly as an independent and heads the BQ in her spare time.

Born in crisis after the failed Meech Lake Accord, the Bloc has long been beset by internal tensions between damn-the-torpedoes sovereigntists and more moderate members who view the party as a vehicle to promote Quebec interests at the federal level.

Over the past three or four years, the hardliners – with their unrelenting focus on Quebec independence and nothing but – have been in the ascendancy, even as opinion polls show support for independence has fallen to its lowest level in 50 years.

That slide in support began two decades ago in the post-referendum Clarity Act era. Since then, sovereigntist politicians in Ottawa and Quebec City have road-tested multiple narratives to arrest it: "winning conditions," cultural diversity, sectoral referendums, "they're robbing us blind" (i.e., the federal sponsorship scandal), and, more recently, full-on nativism.

It hasn't worked. That's not to say Quebec's indépendantiste flame has died out, just that it no longer burns brightly enough to light a new path forward.

As moderates and soft nationalists do their political shopping elsewhere, centre stage is increasingly occupied by hardliners-in-a-hurry. People like Ms. Ouellet, for example, whose two failed runs at the PQ leadership were supported by none of her caucus or cabinet colleagues, and who rose to the Bloc helm by acclamation last year.

Ms. Ouellet and her fellow travellers seem to believe the answer to seducing Quebeckers who have turned a deaf ear is to simply repeat the latest gospel more loudly and incessantly. As well, a discourse of ideological purity has taken root. Yesterday's comrade-in-arms is today's ideological enemy.

For instance, Ms. Ouellet's leadership rise was orchestrated by former Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste president, short-lived Bloc leader and remaining Bloc MP Mario Beaulieu. He, in turn, gained prominence in the 1990s as head of the PQ's rabble-rousing Montréal-Centre wing, pushing hard on language and identity issues.

But Mr. Beaulieu's political tag-team partner from that era, Luc Thériault, now sits among the dissident former Bloquiste MPs, as does one of the party`s founders, Louis Plamondon. They are outcasts in their own party.

As well, while the current Bloc crisis is undeniably about Ms. Ouellet's inflexibility, it is also central to a proxy fight at the provincial level involving Mr. Beaulieu, who stepped aside as BQ leader prior to the 2015 federal election because of his flagging poll numbers (the party turned to Gilles Duceppe – it didn't help).

A nomination battle is under way in the east-end Montreal PQ stronghold of Pointe-aux-Trembles that pits current SSJB president Maxime Laporte, an ally of Mr. Beaulieu, against Jean-Martin Aussant, a former MNA and the hand-picked star candidate of PQ Leader Jean-François Lisée.

Mr. Aussant, who bolted the PQ in a huff in 2011 because then-leader Pauline Marois was too squishy on sovereignty, now finds himself painted as the candidate of the mushy establishment middle.

Life comes at you fast in today's separatist movement. The ideological nature of the Parti Québécois riding battle mirrors the divorce between the BQ dissidents and Ms. Ouellet.

The bottom line is that the hard-core elements in Quebec's sovereignty movement are out of ideas. They have nothing left to do but tear their parties apart with infighting about who is and who isn't a true believer.

With a provincial general election coming in the fall, it is just going to get uglier.

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