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`Outed' Dumont an inviting target for Charest

QUEBEC'S MARIO Dumont charmed the Toronto business community with his maiden out-of-province speech on Monday, but his performance may also have been the kiss of death for his honeymoon with Quebecers.

By travelling to Toronto to address the Canadian Club, the young leader of the Action démocratique du Quebec was seeking to enhance his domestic stature as premier-in-waiting.

For all of Dumont's rising popularity in Quebec, there are lingering doubts as to his untested party's capacity to govern. And so, the underlying message to skeptics was meant to be that if a Bay Street crowd was willing to take Dumont seriously, Quebec voters should, too. Forget the inconvenient fact that there was a time, not so long ago, when the same Toronto movers and shakers lost their proverbial shirt on Stockwell Day and the Canadian Alliance.

The optics of Dumont's Ontario trip worked out well.

Quebecers, who like to take pride in their leaders, took positive note of the front-page treatment afforded their rising political star by the Toronto media.

But, in his quest for credibility, Dumont may also have gotten more than he bargained for.

In time, his speech in Toronto may come to stand as a turning point in his meteoric ascent, the moment when Quebecers start to take stock of their fling with Dumont and assess whether or not it should evolve into a long-term relationship.

His insistence that he cannot be bothered with the constitutional issue predictably rankled some Quebec commentators. Their ire may yet turn out to be the least of the ADQ's worries.

Quebecers are as reluctant as most other Canadians to resume that particular debate. They are unlikely to think a lot less of Dumont for conveying their widespread diffidence.

But they may not take as kindly to some of the new high-profile company the ADQ leader is keeping.

The bulk of Dumont's rising support comes from the ranks of the Parti Québécois, former Yes supporters who assume that they have found in the ADQ a constitutional no-man's land where they can keep their options open.

To them, Dumont's fence-sitting is a major attraction. But, in the wake of his Toronto speech, some of the prominent business people who campaigned ferociously against sovereignty in the last referendum have suddenly become Dumont's bosom friends. They, at least, are convinced he has turned his back on sovereignty for good.

Liberal Leader Jean Charest never recovered from the perception that he was a tool of the Quebec federalist business community. The sight of the same unity warriors lining up behind Dumont is bound to be food for thought for some of the many lapsed sovereignists who have converted to the ADQ over the past few months.

In the end though, and notwithstanding Quebec watchers' undying fascination with the unity debate, Dumont is much more likely to founder on the shoals of his rather simplistic economic and social policies than on his ambiguous stand on Quebec's political future.

The main planks of the ADQ platform — as bluntly spelled out in Toronto — place the party to the right of both the Alberta Tories and the Canadian Alliance.

Neither Stephen Harper nor Ralph Klein would ever be caught promoting the kind of two-tier medicine that Dumont sees as a cure for Quebec's waiting lists.

He argues that allowing people to pay to get on a fast track for treatment will unclog Quebec's health services. But some of the best conservative minds in the country have rejected the notion of letting the market solve medicare's woes for fear of creating even greater ones.

Dumont's proposals are also unlikely to survive even a loose interpretation of the Canada Health Act.

In the same spirit, the ADQ leader might look into why the Canadian Alliance is abandoning its flat-tax policy plank before venturing on the same shaky limb. Like Ottawa's, Quebec's complex tax system is too much of a tool of social engineering to be reduced to a flat rate easily or effectively.

In principle, Dumont's speech should be a blessing for embattled Charest.

It provides him with as large a policy target as he will ever have, just as long as he is not too busy guarding his back from the knives of his own party.

Since he has been in provincial politics, Charest has had a hard time finding his mark. Still, one would think it should not be so hard to score a few hits against Dumont's policies.

After all, to elect the ADQ, Quebec voters would have to endorse policies so right wing that they could not be sold anywhere else in Canada, including Tory Alberta.

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Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She can be reached at chebert@thestar.ca.