Gilles Duceppe
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| Image:Gilles Duceppe.jpg | |
| Riding | Laurier—Sainte-Marie |
|---|---|
| Political party: | Bloc Québécois |
| First elected: | By-election: Aug. 13, 1990 |
| Profession(s): | Union organizer |
Gilles Duceppe, M.P. (born July 22, 1947 in Montreal) is a Quebec nationalist and social democratic politician in Canada. He is a Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons and the leader of the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois party. He is the son of a well-known Québécois actor, Jean Duceppe, and Hélène Rowley. His maternal grandfather was John James Rowley, a Briton by birth. Duceppe's British roots had him once quip that "I’m a bloke who turned Bloc."[1]
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Early life
Duceppe is a native of Montreal, Québec. He studied political science at the Université de Montréal. In his youth, he advocated communism, and was a card-carrying member of the Worker's Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). Duceppe later said his three-year membership in the W.C.P. (M.L.) was a mistake brought on by a search for fundamental change [2]. He later became a trade union negotiator.
When Duceppe was about 12 years old, he was involved in an incident that changed his views of Quebec's place in Canada. When Duceppe complained about francophone students having to stand on the bus, he was slapped by his anglophone teacher. Duceppe responded by slapping her back. He later stated in the Ottawa Citizen that: "If you're talking about social justice, that event marked me."
Election to Parliament
In 1991, Duceppe was elected to the Canadian House of Commons for the newly-formed Bloc Québécois in a by-election in Montreal's Laurier—Sainte-Marie riding. At the time, he was forced to run as an independent because the Bloc had not been registered by Elections Canada as a political party. All of the Bloc's other Members of Parliament had crossed the floor from either the Progressive Conservative Party or the Liberal Party earlier that year. Duceppe's victory in a by-election demonstrated, for the first time, that the party had electoral support in Quebec and was capable of winning elections. Previously, many pundits (and members of other parties) predicted that the Bloc would not be able to gain the support of the voters.
Leadership of the Bloc Québécois
In 1996, when Lucien Bouchard stepped down as Bloc leader to become leader of the Parti Québécois, Duceppe served as interim leader of the party until Michel Gauthier was elected later that year. However, Gauthier was forced out of the party leadership in 1997, and Duceppe became party leader again and Leader of the Opposition. Although, as Leader of Opposition, he was technically entitled to be sworn into the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, Duceppe rejected it.
In the 1997 general election, the Bloc lost official opposition status, slipping to third place in the House of Commons behind the Reform Party. Of particular note was a campaign visit by Duceppe to a cheese factory in which he was photographed wearing a hairnet which resembled a shower cap; the photo was widely parodied on Canadian television. The party's caucus in the Commons was reduced and went from 54 to 44 seats, and fell further to 38 seats in the 2000 election. Duceppe was criticized for his ineffective campaign skills in both elections, but no serious challenge to his leadership was mounted.
However, with the sponsorship scandal that erupted soon after Jean Chrétien's departure as Liberal party leader in 2003, the Bloc's fortunes improved markedly. In the 2004 election, Duceppe's Bloc won 54 seats in the Commons, returning to the party's all-time high. During the election's national debates, Duceppe's lucid explanations of BQ policy and chastising of the other national party leaders' promises lead to him being judged to be the best speaker by both the French and English media in Canada. The unification of the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties meant that the Bloc did not form the Opposition as it did when it last had as many seats.
With Chrétien's departure, Duceppe became the longest-serving leader of a major party in Canada. With the recent success of the Bloc, and his increasingly well-received performance as leader, speculation mounted that Duceppe might seek the leadership of the Parti Québécois, particularly when Bernard Landry stepped down as party leader on June 4, 2005. On June 13, 2005, however, Duceppe announced that he would not run for the leadership of the PQ.
In the 2006 federal election, Duceppe's popularity was expected to get the Bloc Quebecois the symbolic majority (>50%) vote in Quebec, but a late surge in Conservative support blunted the Bloc's support to only 42% and 51 seats on election day. Many in the separatist movement said a good performance by the Bloc would boost their movement but the unimpressive results put their momentum into doubt.
External links
- Leader: Gilles Duceppe, from CBC Canada Votes 2006
- How'd they vote?: Gilles Duceppe's voting history and quotes
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