Let's cheer: Quebec supporting a nationalist party

Christopher Majka, The Vancouver Sun:

Official Opposition leader Nycole Turmel's past and present politics illuminate the choices clearly.

Anyone with a shred of perspicacity will have realized that in the last election a huge swath of the Quebecois population moved from supporting a socially progressive sovereigntist political party to a socially progressive federalist political party.

This should be cause of great optimism throughout the country, a significant step forward for "national unity," an opportunity for francophone and anglophone Canadians to realize how deep our common progressive values are.

Apparently not so for the Stephen Harper Conservatives, the vast majority of whom changed political allegiances repeatedly from Progressive Conservative, to Reform, to Canadian Alliance, to Conservative.

Rather than rhetoric and division, we should join Nycole Turmel and all the Quebecois people on a rational, pragmatic, and optimistic road to building a democracy that reflects our common, progressive, Canadian values.