smilingassassin

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper made two stops in Quebec where he praised his government, the Quebecois nation and took shots at Liberal governments of the past.


CTV.ca News Staff

Prime Minister Stephen Harper holds a press conference on Monday.
In Mirabel, Que., he said Ottawa will resell almost 4,500 hectares of land expropriated from farmers there for an ill-fated airport.

Harper talked about an "omni-present, centralizing" Liberal government.

"They had great ideas for large projects that were costing a whole lot of money," he said, speaking in French. "It actually led to a very heavy debt and income tax. But they didn't care. They were taking whatever they wanted."

Some of those who lost their land appeared on stage with Harper.

The Liberals under Pierre Trudeau expropriated 36,000 hectares of land in 1969 to build Mirabel, then touted as the airport of the future for international flights. The airport opened in 1975, the year before the Olympics in Montreal.

However, the airport, designed to handle up to 50 million passengers per year, never topped more than 2.8 million. Analysts blamed its relatively remote location northwest of Montreal and that flights continued to be split with the then-Dorval (now Pierre Elliott Trudeau) Airport.

Harper noted the fact that Dorval now bears the name of the politician who created Mirabel, which was closed to passenger flights in 2004. That airport now just handles cargo flights.

Harper said Mirabel really only needs 2,400 hectares. an additional 200 hectares will become a wetlands preserve.

In 1985, then-prime minister Brian Mulroney, a Progressive Conservative, also resold about 80 per cent of the expropriated Mirabel land back to the farmers, he said.

The airport sits in the federal riding of Argenteuil-Papineau-Mirabel. The Bloc Quebecois has held it since 1993. A Conservative finished second there in the 2006 election, capturing 23 per cent of the vote, about 29 percentage points behind.

Quebec politics

Monday evening, Harper travelled to Jonquiere in the Saguenay region northwest of Quebec City -- an area considered Bloc heartland.

"We took a historic step forward," Harper said in his speech there. He was referring to the government's motion calling the Quebecois a nation within a united Canada.

"In adopting this motion, Canadians said yes to Quebec and Quebecers said yes to Canada."

He said the Quebecois had become a nation through a history of building, not through a constitutional process.

"Canadians everywhere see that Quebec has a unique culture and history, a nation, that gave birth to Canada."

Liberal Michael Ignatieff was the first to raise the 'Quebec-nation' issue during the Liberal leadership race this summer.

Harper's two events in Quebec come on the eve of the one-year anniversary of a speech he gave in Quebec City on Dec. 19, 2005.

That election speech is considered to have helped propel the Tories to win an unexpected 10 seats in Quebec in the Jan. 23 federal election.

Dion in Quebec

Harper wasn't the only federal leader in Quebec on Monday. Liberal Leader Stephane Dion announced in Quebec City that he was naming Michael Ignatieff his deputy leader.

Ignatieff placed second to Dion at the recent Liberal leadership convention and is seen as popular in Quebec.

Ignatieff replaces veteran Quebec Liberal MP Lucienne Robillard. Dion didn't say what role Robillard would be fulfilling on his team.

Dion said he wouldn't support a threatened Bloc motion of non-confidence over the Afghanistan mission.

"I don't think the aim of Mr. (Gilles) Duceppe is so much Afghanistan but to rush into an election," he said of the Bloc leader.

In recent public opinion polls, the Tories are running behind the Liberals -- although both parties are far behind the Bloc Quebecois. The Tories find themselves on the wrong side of Quebec public opinion on issues like climate change and the Afghanistan mission.

The prime minister said on important issues to Quebecers -- the fiscal imbalance, UNESCO, federal intrusions into provincial jurisdiction -- "Quebecers will find there's the same three choices there were last time."

Asked if he was making a pre-campaign visit to the province, Harper said, "I hope it's not a pre-election campaign. I don't detect any desire (among) the public to have a second election within a year.

"We think were getting things done, we're fulfilling the promises that we made, and we'd like to keep doing that," he said.

The Mirabel announcement fulfilled a campaign promise, he said.

Harper did say he favoured protecting property rights in the Constitution to help protect people against things like expropriation, but that his government doesn't intend to re-open the constitutional file at this time.

With a report from CTV's Rosemary Thompson and files from The Canadian Press

ZFBoxcar

Good. With the revival of the Conservatives and the Liberals moving perhaps moving slightly to the left, hopefully the Bloc will be squeezed on both sides. If the next election results in the Liberals and Conservatives gaining a significant number of seats and a Bloc decline, maybe Quebecers will see the Bloc as pointless, it is only relevant when they hold the balance of power (like they do now). As long as Federalists take back Quebec, I'm happy, although I would like a more healthy split between Liberals and Conservatives than in the 1990s.

smilingassassin

I'm happy too as long as the Liberals and Conservatives steal voters from the Bloc and the NDP.