A Conservative majority in Ottawa?

Demonstrating a brutal political shrewdness that two scant years ago few in Canadian politics suspected he possessed, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has put himself in a position to turn his minority government into a majority one.

His finance minister, Jim Flaherty, brought down a budget last Monday that engaged every dubious expediency in the national political repertoire. It munificently bribed Quebec, catered eagerly to Ontario environmentalists and jeopardized his rock-solid home base in the West, which, as he well knew, wouldn't dream of voting against him anyway.

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The first post-budget poll showed his Conservative Party jumping up three points to 39 percent, the rival Liberals staying even at 31 percent, while the socialist NDP slipped two points to 13 percent, and the separatist Bloc Quebecois continued its fall and hit a low of 33 percent in Quebec. The Green Party, which had been riding a new wave of public environmental concern, found its gain stopped and reversed. It was down a single percentage point to 9 percent.

Pollster Allan Gregg said the result puts Harper's Conservatives on the "knife edge" of forming a majority government if an election were called. The Tories have risen 9 points since Jan. 1.

But Harper has done more than put himself in position to win a majority. He has defused, for now anyway, the separatist movement in Quebec. Ever since his minority government took office 13 months ago, he has been working closely with the seemingly doomed Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest, which had been running at 17 percent in the popularity polls.

Up to last fall, all the evidence signaled a victory for the separatist Parti Quebecois under its 40-year-old leader, Andre Boisclair, a homosexual and confessed former cocaine user who had been ushered into the leadership by the party's youth wing. Boisclair, confident of forming a government, announced he would hold the third Quebec referendum on separatism as soon as he took office. Whatever other problems Harper must contend with, Quebec posed what was undoubtedly his greatest peril. He did not want to be the prime minister who presided over the break-up of Canada.

In the election that put him in office in January 2006, Harper had broken a long Tory shutout in Quebec. His Tories took 10 seats there to the Liberals' 12 and the separatist Bloc Quebecois' 50. But to win a majority, Harper knows he must substantially increase the Tory Quebec showing.

To this end, he began lending a hand to the faltering government of Liberal Jean Charest, promising to substantially increase Quebec's share of equalization formula. This is a uniquely Canadian program by which tax revenues from wealthier provinces are distributed to the poorer ones, so that provincially administered education, health and welfare services will stand at roughly the same level across the country.

Since Quebec is among the poorest of provinces, the practical effect is to drain money out of Alberta and Ontario into Quebec. So generous has the transfer become, even before Harper inflated it last week, that Quebec provides the highest services in Canada – $7 a day per child for daycare, a family allowances that begins at $2,091 for the first baby, government additions to registered education savings plans, and subsidized retirement programs. No other province meets anything close to this standard. Yet despite the subsidies from outside the province, the Quebec debt stands at $122 billion, highest per capita in the nation.

To this munificence, the Tory budget last week upped the gratuity to Quebec by 34 percent – enough, it was hoped, to save the Charest government when Quebec goes to the polls on Monday. To further assure his re-election, Charest immediately announced he would use $700 million of the newfound money to reduce Quebec taxes.

Even so, his return is far from assured, due to another unforeseen development in Quebec politics. Something called l'Action Democratique du Quebec (Quebec Democratic Action), a populist right-of-center movement, was launched 13 years ago by a young leader, Mario Dumont. It has never elected more than a handful of members to the "National Assembly," (as the provincial legislature is called). Suddenly, it has come forward in the polls as a major challenge in the rural areas – major enough to deny Charest a majority.

Ironically, this could put Lise Thibault, the federally appointed lieutenant governor of Quebec, in the position of choosing which leader – the Liberal Charest or the separatist Boisclair – will form the government. Thibault herself, however, has been under inquiry for lavish expenditures in office. But a little thing like that is hardly noticeable in Quebec.