ADQ Leader: Mario Dumont

A little less than two years after the Action Dmocratique du Quebec swept into Opposition in a stunning election result, party leader Mario Dumont will face his toughest challenge yet in the election campaign: proving the ADQ is not a fleeting, one-man show.

Dumont, 38, and the ADQ performed beyond hope and expectation when they trounced their opponents in the March 2007 election. The party won 41 seats, far more than the 12 it needed to get official party status, and came second in 45 other ridings. The ADQ's strong showing denied the Liberals a majority and bumped the Parti Qubcois to third-party status, with the ADQ replacing it as the Official Opposition.

It was a remarkable coming of age for the ADQ and Dumont, who triumphed by rallying Quebec's latent conservative heartland around his relatively inexperienced recruits while tapping into voters' anger toward the ruling Liberals.

Quebec's political ground had shifted, Dumont declared, promising the ADQ was the province's new "voice of change."

The aftershocks have been rough for both the ADQ and Dumont, who spent much of his time as leader of the Official Opposition holding the balance of power and watching his popularity sag in the polls as he deflected criticism that his party was no more than a one-man show.

The biggest blow came this October, when two Action Dmocratique MNAs Andr Riedl and Pierre Michel Auger crossed the floor to the Liberals, expressing their disappointment in Dumont, who they said betrayed them as leader. The departures left the party with 39 seats heading into the election. The Liberals hold 48; the PQ 36.

"The ADQ is a one-man party, without a [governing] plan for Quebec, nor a coherent economic program," said Riedl.

Other ADQ members have been openly courted by both the Liberals and the Parti Qubcois, fuelling speculation Dumont has been unable to build or maintain unity within his party.

The defections provided tangible proof that Dumont's conservative, common-sense politics characterized by tax cuts, privatization, financial support for families and autonomy but not full sovereignty for Quebec have not taken root as well as the ADQ leader had hoped they would.

Opposition dance daunting for Dumont

Observers have characterized Dumont's Official Opposition as weak and fragile.

While he has proven himself an energetic and congenial leader in the national assembly, the ADQ caucus is largely composed of political neophytes who have made gaffes that reflected their inexperience and hurt the ADQ's credibility.

As Opposition leader, Dumont has also faced his share of setbacks.

He tabled a government confidence vote on school board reform in the fall of 2007 in an attempt to spark debate on education after the Liberal government refused his request to abolish school boards and turn over their responsibilities to municipalities.

Both the Liberals and the PQ soundly defeated the confidence motion, calling it irresponsible, and Dumont was forced later to admit his message and the intent behind his reform weren't communicated effectively.

Dumont ensured the Quebec government's survival earlier this year when the ADQ supported the Liberals' budget, which he said held "interesting" measures for families and seniors.

But he and the ADQ opposed the previous 2007 budget and $950 million in tax cuts, throwing the legislature into uncertainty until the Parti Qubcois decided to largely abstain from the vote, preserving the Liberal minority.

Dumont has tried to take credit for certain measures brought in by Charest's Liberal government, claiming several of them from reinstituting numbered grades on report cards to cancelling the privatization of the Mont Orford provincial park were borrowed from the ADQ.

At the same time, he has doggedly attacked the Liberals, accusing them of governing without focus or direction.

Dumont's occasional contradictions prompted Charest to call him a "girouette" (weathervane) last year for being consistent only in changing his mind on issues.

The ADQ leader scored political points in the legislature this fall when he worked with the PQ to block Liberal Yvon Vallires from being elected president, or speaker, of the national assembly and instead helping to elect Parti Qubcois veteran Franois Gendron.

But overall, the ADQ has lost speed in the latter part of the minority government as most polls showed Dumont and his cohorts slipping from public favour.

Dumont's support for Harper backfires

Dumont was hurt by his party's unbridled support in the federal election for Stephen Harper's Conservatives, which were shut out from central Quebec and the greater Montreal region in favour of the Bloc Qubcois.

It was further proof that the ADQ is struggling to consolidate support in those key areas of the province.

In contrast, Liberal leader Jean Charest deliberately distanced himself from the Tories, refashioning himself as a nationalist-minded defender of Quebec's interests.

Dumont will have to find new ways to distinguish the ADQ from its opponents, reposition himself as a real alternative to Quebec's traditional Liberal-PQ dichotomy and strive to shed his chameleon image if he wants to hold on to gains made in the last election.

The ADQ leader must demonstrate that his party has substance and refine its identity in order to connect with voters on the right side of the political spectrum who remain a vote-splitting threat to the Liberals.

Dumont's reaction to the economic crisis will also be key in these elections. At the ADQ's recent general council meeting, he said the aftermath of the financial crisis will be a ripe time for "great changes" in Quebec, and he vowed to focus on limiting the impact from the economic slowdown before addressing other priorities such as modernizing the state and rebuilding school systems.

He has also called for increased government spending as a means to beat back the recession, surprising many observers who point out that the suggestion is coming from a fiscally conservative political party that has repeatedly railed against public debt.

Dumont is firmly autonomist in his views on Quebec nationalism and has recently revived talk of launching constitutional discussions with Ottawa to seek official recognition of Quebec as an autonomous state in the Constitution, entrench its exclusive jurisdiction over education, health, municipalities and other areas. The party would also establish a Quebec constitution and a type of Qubcois "citizenship."

Never short on words, Dumont is always ready with a snappy quote when asked for his opinion on any matter. But as the face of the ADQ, he will be pressed to make room for his colleagues on the campaign frontlines to counter the reputation he's earned as an autocratic leader.

Dumont founded ADQ with fellow disgruntled Liberal

Dumont was born in Cacouna, near Rivire-du-Loup, on May 19, 1970. As a teen, he was a member of the youth commission in the Quebec Liberal Party, which he eventually chaired.

While studying economics at Concordia University in Montreal, Dumont was a vocal presence during national debates over the Charlottetown Accord, co-chairing an organization called the Network of Liberals Voting No.

When he finished school, he dedicated himself to politics and co-founded the ADQ in 1994, with Quebec Liberal Jean Allaire, partly in protest against constitutional compromises agreed to by then premier Robert Bourassa during the Charlottetown Accord talks.

Dumont became ADQ president and then leader before winning the party's first and only seat in the 1994 Quebec election, in Rivire-du-Loup. He played a pivotal role in hatching the ADQ's political philosophy and conservative values on basic policies such as tax cuts and debt reduction.

He was re-elected as the sole ADQ representative in 1998, and the party won four more seats in subsequent byelections.

The ADQ took four seats in the 2003 election, with 18 per cent of the popular vote, and later won a fifth seat in the Vanier riding during a byelection in September 2004.

The Adquistes upset Quebec's traditional political order in 2007 when Dumont led his brigades to a 41-seat victory, surpassing the Parti Qubcois and almost catching the Liberals.

An outspoken sovereigntist in his early career, Dumont campaigned for Quebec's independence in the 1995 referendum, but his views on nationalism and sovereignty changed through the years.

He once called for a moratorium on referendums, and in 2007, he urged an end to the longstanding federalist-sovereigntist split in Quebec, offering an alternate vision of autonomy without complete separation from Canada.

Dumont and his wife, Marie-Claude Barrette, have three young children: Angela, Charles and Juliette.