Le 5 juillet 2000

AQ as Copps's lapdog

Now the supposed watchdog of English rights in this province has become the personal Quebec lapdog of Sheila Copps, the federal Liberal minister of Canadian heritage. 

Copps has promised Anthony Housefather, the Alliance's new president, once and perhaps still aspiring federal Liberal candidate and her former leadership campaign worker, to give the Alliance $300,000 as a reward for his sitting up and begging so cutely. 

Housefather had appealed to Copps directly, shamelessly playing on his past political connection to her, to make up for a crippling proposed cut of more than 30 per cent in the Alliance's annual grant from her department. 

Stacked Deck 

That cut was the result of a process set up by the department itself
and to which the Alliance inexplicably submitted, even though the cards were clearly stacked against it. 

The process involved the department's setting a funding envelope for 21 English Quebec organizations, then asking them for a recommendation of how the total should be split among them. The smaller groups had an obvious financial interest in ganging up on the Alliance, which had always received the lion's share of the money. The less the Alliance got, the more would be left for the rest of them. 

On top of that, there was considerable animosity between the Alliance and the smaller groups, most of which were based on the province's mainland and whose interests diverged from those of the Montreal-based Alliance, which had burst into the open while
Housefather's predecessor, William Johnson, was Alliance president. 

The bitter vindictiveness of the other groups toward the Alliance has reached the point of irrationality, judging by the reaction of some of them to the news of Copps's promise. 

The promise won't cost any of them a cent. The $300,000 will come out of Copps's discretionary budget, a sort of office slush fund that federal and provincial cabinet ministers are allowed to spend on just about anything they want, as long as it's legal. It will be added on top of the split recommended by the groups. Yet some of them seemed furiousthat the Alliance had been spared the punishment they had tried to mete out. 

Housefather sounded appropriately grateful at Copps's promise. "She has been kind enough to grant us $300,000 from her discretionary funding," Housefather happily arfed. 

Down, Boy, Down 

Down, Skippy. To paraphrase Mae West, kindness probably had little to do with it. Now the Alliance has become dependent upon a handout from a politician and not just non-partisan civil servants. And politicians don't give handouts without expecting something in return. Housefather and the Alliance now owe Copps big time. 

And if Copps doesn't go all the way and scrap the flawed process whose results she has disavowed, then Housefather will have to depend upon the minister's "kindness" next year. In the meantime, Housefather and the Alliance had better keep their little wet noses clean and not have any accidents on Copps's carpet. 

Housefather said Copps's promise "should be a win-win situation for everyone." But the Alliance and its ministerial benefactor will both pay a political price for it. 

Perception is reality in politics, and whether or not Copps's promise
comes with any strings attached, she now will be seen to have the
Alliance on a short leash anyway. Whatever the Alliance does - or
doesn't do - will be laid at the minister's door. 

Some francophones will see the Alliance even more as a front for the federal Liberals' Plan B; already Housefather has said he intends to use some of Copps's money to resist municipal mergers imposed by the Bouchard government. The small but very vocal crankyphone faction from Planet Galganov that already catches a whiff of lamb off Housefather will be even more suspicious of him. And among mainstream anglophones, the Alliance loses more credibility, if it still has any left to lose. 

- Don Macpherson is The Gazette's Quebec-affairs columnist.