Bloc attempts to connect with Cree voters appears troubled

PEGGY CURRAN
Postmedia News

VAL D’OR, Que. — Rene Kistabish has a quick answer when asked what’s going to happen on May 2.

“There’s going to be a fight.”

Born in Amos, Que., Kistabish jokingly calls himself an Algocree — a nod to his Cree and Algonquin heritage. Now he lives in Val d’Or, a hub for aboriginal people like himself who love the outdoors, but are old enough to appreciate the services of a regional centre.

It doesn’t take much to get him going on the topic of politics, which he follows religiously, even though he doesn’t think much of the candidates and doesn’t plan to vote.

So when Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe paid a visit to the Native Friendship Centre in Val d’Or the other day, Kistabish was happy to stay back.

Not that Kistabish or most of the other aboriginal people at the centre that morning were asked to join. During Duceppe’s campaign swings around the province, most events are by-invitation-only, brief photo ops aimed at giving the television crews the images they need with little mingling with the public.

Heading into the crucial final leg of the campaign, with a succession of public opinion polls showing the BQ in a three-way race with the Conservatives and the New Democrats, Duceppe divided his time between television and radio interviews and speaking at party functions. When Duceppe visited a CEGEP in Ste.-Hyacinthe, the BQ leader spent nearly all his time visiting a textile workshop looking at machinery. Only by chance did he bump into and chat with a handful of students in the corridor on the way out.

Duceppe’s visit to Val d’Or was designed to shore up support in the riding of Abitibi-James Bay-Nunavik-Eeyou. At 843,721 square kilometres, it is Quebec’s largest federal district.

But the BQ’s prospects don’t look good this time around. The New Democratic Party candidate is well-known Cree leader and lawyer, Roméo Saganash. Should he win, he’d be the first aboriginal person to represent a region that is home to 16,000 Cree and 11,000 Inuit.

It really didn’t help when early in the campaign, the BQ candidate Yvon Lévesque said he didn’t expect Saganash to do well because a lot of people wouldn’t want to vote for a native person.

Lévesque apologized, but Duceppe’s whistle stop visit was obviously intended to mend fences.

“For me, it would be unheard of to visit a city like Val d’Or without meeting with people from the First Nations,” Duceppe told reporters. “I have always said we are Quebecers without exception, and in the Quebec nation there are the 10 First Nations.”

Yet, except for a quick tour around the centre and a private meeting with community leaders, the BQ didn’t make much effort to talk to the seniors gathered in the TV room or to the young people huddled around table in the cafe.

Certainly nothing to persuade Kistabish or others on hand to change their minds.

Kistabish said he wasn’t all that bothered by Lévesque’s remarks. He just doesn’t trust politicians, any of them.

Kistabish was asked whether he thinks we’d be better without any government at all?

“We don’t know, do we?”