Gilles Duceppe
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Gilles Duceppe, MP (b. July 22, 1947 in Montreal) is a Quebec nationalist and social democratic politician in Canada. He is a Member of Parliament (MP) in the Canadian House of Commons and the leader of the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois, also known as the Bloc or BQ. He is the son of a well-known Québécois actor, Jean Duceppe, and Hélène Rowley.
Duceppe is a native of Montreal, Quebec. He studied political science at the Université de Montréal. In his youth, he advocated communism, and was a card-carrying member of the Worker's Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). Duceppe later said his three-year membership in the W.C.P. (M.L.) was a mistake brought on by a search for fundamental change [1] (http://www.uni.ca/duceppe.html). He later became a trade union negotiator.
In 1990, Duceppe was elected to the Canadian House of Commons for the newly-formed Bloc Québécois in a by-election in Montreal's Laurier—Sainte-Marie riding. At the time, he was forced to run as an independent because the Bloc had not been registered by Elections Canada as a political party. All of the Bloc's other Members of Parliament had crossed the floor from either the Progressive Conservative Party or the Liberal Party earlier that year. Duceppe's victory in a by-election demonstrated, for the first time, that the party had electoral support in Quebec and was capable of winning elections. Previously, many pundits (and members of other parties) predicted that the Bloc would not be able to gain the support of the voters.
In 1996, when Lucien Bouchard stepped down as Bloc leader to become leader of the Parti Québécois, Duceppe served as interim leader of the party until Michel Gauthier was elected later that year. However, Gauthier was forced out of the party leadership in 1997, and Duceppe became party leader and Leader of the Opposition. Although as Leader of the Queen's Loyal opposition he was technically entitled to be sworn into the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, Duceppe rejected it.
In the 1997 general election, the Bloc lost official opposition status, slipping to third place in the House of Commons behind the Reform Party. The party's caucus in the Commons was reduced went from 54 to 44 seats, and fell further to 38 seats in the 2000 election. Duceppe was criticized for his ineffective campaign skills in both elections, but no serious challenge to his leadership was mounted.
However, with the sponsorship scandal that erupted soon after Jean Chrétien's departure as Liberal leader in 2003, the Bloc's fortunes improved markedly. In the 2004 election, Duceppe's Bloc won 54 seats in the Commons, returning to the party's all-time high. During the election's national debates, Duceppe's lucid explanations and chastising of the other national party leaders lead to him being judged to be the best speaker by both the French and English media. The unification of the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties meant that the Bloc did not form the Opposition as it did when it last had as many seats.
With Chrétien's departure, Duceppe became the longest-serving current leader of a major party in Canada.
With recent success of the Bloc and his increasingly well-received performance as leader, speculation mounted that Duceppe might seek the leadership of the Parti Québécois, particularly when Bernard Landry stepped down as party leader on June 4, 2005. On June 13, 2005, however, Duceppe announced that he would not run for the leadership of the PQ.
| Preceded by: Lucien Bouchard | Leader of the Opposition in the Canadian House of Commons (first time) 1996 | Succeeded by: Michel Gauthier |
| Preceded by: Michel Gauthier | Leader of the Opposition in the Canadian House of Commons (second time) 1997 | Succeeded by: Preston Manning |
| Preceded by: Lucien Bouchard | Leaders of the Bloc Quebecois (first time) 1996 | Succeeded by: Michel Gauthier |
| Preceded by: Michel Gauthier | Leaders of the Bloc Quebecois (second time) 1997-present | Succeeded by: incumbent |
| Preceded by: Jean-Claude Malépart, Liberal | Member of Parliament for Laurier—Sainte-Marie 1990-present | Succeeded by: Incumbent |