MONTREAL — The Bloc Québécois were prepared to keep a Liberal-led coalition government alive for two years, if the coalition allowed Bill 101 to apply to federally regulated companies in Quebec.

But Marlene Jennings, left, the veteran Liberal MP in charge of negotiating
the coalition deal for the Liberals, said “no way” to the Bloc.

The proposed change to the province’s French language law would have allowed employees of federally regulated companies, including post offices and banks, to conduct business in French only.

“I said no. Never. Not while I have a breath in my body,” Jennings told a recent breakfast gathering at Shaare Zedek Congregation.

And the result, said the 11-year Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Lachine MP, was that the Liberals settled for the Bloc pledging to prop up the Liberal-NDP coalition during confidence votes for 18 months, not two years.

The coalition agreement to govern was formed because the Liberals, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc opposed the Conservative’s government November economic update. A confidence vote to oust the Conservatives was to take place in early December.

Jennings, the deputy House leader for the official Opposition, was the negotiator of the proposed coalition during a frantic weekend in early December, because Ralph Goodale, the Liberal Opposition’s House leader, was out of town for the weekend.

The whole coalition issue, however, became moot – at least temporarily – after Governor General Michaëlle Jean agreed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s request to have his threatened Conservative minority government suspended – or prorogued – until the House reconvenes Jan. 26 for the throne speech.

For Jennings, 57, the idea of having Bill 101 apply to federal institutions in Quebec was unacceptable.

“I was able to [say no] because I knew that for people in my riding, and English-speaking communities, and the Jewish community, and other communities, Bill 101 is anathema… for a variety of reasons,” she said.

“So I felt I had your support – that you had my back – to make sure that nothing went into those agreements… that would be detrimental to our communities.”

Another coup, she said, was that the Bloc agreed, in writing, to take sovereignty off its agenda for the 18-month period, which was deemed long enough to see if the economic stimulus program the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc proposed was working.

“I’m quite proud of it,” Jennings said, “because it’s the first time in the 18 years [since] the Bloc was first founded, that the Bloc, in writing, took sovereignty off its agenda, if the agreement was put into action.

“No other party, no other government has been able to do that.”

Several times Jennings adamantly denied there was a “coalition” at all.

“There is no coalition,” she said. “None, regardless of what Mr. Harper and ministers of his government are saying…

“The governance agreement only would have become operative had the Governor General asked the leader of the official Opposition to see if it could form an alternative government.”

And that didn’t happen.

She said there were, in fact, two agreements she negotiated: a “governance agreement” hammered out with NDP leader Jack Layton that would make the Liberal leader prime minister, and a separate “policy agreement” with the NDP and Bloc on an economic stimulus package that included the Bloc’s commitment not to defeat the Liberal-led government for 18 months.

Jennings said the Bloc did not take part in the governance negotiations.

Instead of the word “coalition,” Jennings said she preferred the term “co-operative government” to describe the deal with the NDP, contingent on Bloc support. If the coalition government ever came into power, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff would become prime minister and preserve “his authority and prerogatives,” including cabinet appointments – six of them from the NDP.

However, Jennings said if Harper tables a budget on Jan. 27 that is acceptable to the Liberals in providing appropriate economic stimulus, they would vote in favour of it and keep the Conservative government alive.

Jennings said the fact that the NDP and Bloc have already stated that they would vote against the Jan. 27 budget regardless of what it says is why they “are not fit to form a government.

“How do you condemn something you have not even seen?”

Jennings said that Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe “did not come happily” into the policy agreement but did so because he was “pushed by the unions,” his support base in Quebec. Similarly, the NDP, she said, was “pushed by the unions” outside Quebec.

Regarding Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s infamous botched videotape – considered by many as Dion’s coup de grâce as Liberal leader – she said that Dion rewrote his speech, which was in response to Harper’s address to the nation about the political crisis, and kept the video crew from entering his office until close to air time. A broken “focus” button on the camera also contributed to the delay in getting the videotape out.