This week’s column was written in rural Newfoundland.

Yesterday was spent in downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland. I tell you this for two reasons. My perspective on the Quebec election may be distant and ill-informed by isolation and time.

The second is to tell you that Newfoundlanders seem more interested in Premier Danny Williams’ ad in the Globe Mail, railing against the Harper government’s broken promise in respect to the exclusion of offshore oil and gas revenues from the calculation of equalization payments. In this province, everyone is talking about Williams.

Indeed, one fella told me proudly that his premier does not accept a salary and works only for the good of Newfoundlanders. Nobody here seems to be talking about Quebec. So be it!

Here’s my take on the election.

Pollsters correctly forecast that Quebec would elect its first minority government in 130 years. The Liberals dropped from 76 seats to 48. The Parti Quebecoise lost ten seats. Mario Dumont and his Action démocratique du Quebec (ADQ) party jumped from 5 seats to 41 seats. He was the big winner.

Some pundits cast this election as a win for the federalists. In my view, it was a loss for the Liberals. 66.02% of eligible voters voted against the Liberals - Jean Charest hung on to his seat by less than a one percentage point. Others called the election a win for Stephen Harper because it apparently collared small “c” conservative votes.

There was only one winner and that was Mario Dumont. He won because he converted five seats into forty one seats and in the process became the Official Leader of the Opposition. He won because he did not become Premier.

Now, he has an opportunity to recruit quality candidates who will permit him to offer a legitimate government alternative in the next election.

I take issue with those who call this a win for the federalists. Mr. Dumont is a former President of the youth wing of the Quebec Liberal Party and an early federalist. He voted “Yes” in the last referendum. He has disavowed referendum in the short-term but has called for Quebec “autonomy” a Quebec constitution and recognition of Quebec’s unique identity.

Just for the record, Webster defines autonomy as the quality or state of being self-governed; a self-governing state. Sounds like independence or separation to me.

One of the underlying issues in the Quebec election was concern for the accommodation of religious and ethnic minorities in Quebec, (read intolerance for immigrants). Dumont seems to have tapped into that feeling, reminding one of Jacques Parizeau’s outburst the night of his referendum defeat in 1995 when he blamed new Canadians for defeating his referendum. Preservation of the Quebec identity is synonymous with the notion of exclusion. It is symptomatic of insecurity in a Province where the religion and language of history define a people.

Those who want to characterize ascendancy of the ADQ and Mario Dumont as a positive anti-separatist vote should understand that intolerance of immigrants is no different than intolerance of English speaking Canadians except in the fact that it is disguised as a response to physical apparel (turbans, facial coverings, ceremonial swords) and non-traditional religious practices. Quebec nationalism turns on the issue of identity.

Anything that challenges that identity is threatening.

Some might consider the Quebec vote to be a vote for change, I suspect it was more a vote against the arrogance of Jean Charest and Stephen Harper who joined together to offer voters a $700 million tax-cut at the expense of Canada. These are the same two who brought us recognition of the “Quebecois as a nation within Canada”. It will be interesting now to see how fast Mr. Harper puts daylight between himself and Mr. Charest.

Quebec will be in a state of disarray for some time. With no clear majority and no obvious alliances, it will be difficult for the Liberals to govern. The knives will be out for Charest. The PQ will be gunning for Andre Boisclair. Already there is speculation that Gilles Duceppe will be called into service by the Parti Quebecois. Without Duceppe, Mr. Harper could lose Bloc support in Parliament.

Mario Dumont is a Quebec nationalist. The fact that he rejected the PQ challenge of an immediate referendum does not make him a federalist. His platform called for Quebec autonomy and a Quebec constitution, presumably within Canada but not necessarily so. It called for a massive transfer of powers and more money from the federal government.

The suggestion that Mr. Harper is a winner in this election is based on the premise that Dumont is a fiscal conservative. The emergence of a small “c” conservative vote in Quebec would seem to bode well for a potential surge in votes for the federal Conservative Party. Mr. Harper may believe that conservatives have made a break-through in Quebec on the coat-tails of Mario Dumont but my guess is that he will ultimately be treated by Quebec in much the same manner as was Jean Charest.

In fact, the Quebec election result may have been an accident of history.

It’s likely that Quebecers did not believe Mario Dumont could win the election and therefore felt safe in parking their vote with the ADQ. That happened in Ontario with the provincial Liberals in 1988 when David Peterson won a minority government and then went on to win a majority in the next election.

It happened four years later, when Bob Rae won a majority from Peterson. If Mario Dumont conducts himself as a premier in waiting over the next few months and Jean Charest fails to connect with Quebec voters, Dumont will become the next premier.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com