Bloc Quebecois having trouble raising funds

Bloc a party in search of a cause Jul 04, 2007 04:30 AM Chantal Hébert OTTAWA - As the Parti Québécois slipped to third place in the National Assembly last spring, donations to the Bloc Québécois dried up, leaving the federal sovereignist party with less than $35,000 in individual donations for the first quarter of 2007. By comparison, the seatless Green party collected four times as much from six times as many donors. (The Toronto Star)

I have not followed the news from Canada of late, but this is something that demanded my attention. I grew up and was politically aware during the 1980s when the Bloc, less formal than now, tried to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada. They tried and failed, to the relief of many Canadians, not a few of them Quebecois. Over the following years, they tried a number of things to get "more rights" from the other provinces and the Federal Government for Quebec. At their popular height, they were the official opposition party, something almost unheard of.

Today, as reported in this article, they have fallen on hard times. Or perhaps the people of Quebec no longer feel they are "being taken advantage of" or "ignored" by Ottawa.

As political parties go, the Bloc is one I would not be sad to see drift into the sunset.