CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

Is this how it ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper?

The demise of the Bloc Québécois has been well trumpeted, and there is no doubt that  their purchase has been crushed by the meteoric rise of the NDP in Quebec. Their future is bleak, and they have commanded precious few column inches as of late.

But the Bloc’s oblivion has been virtually assured by effective axe that has been driven into their back by the Canadian (and Quebecoise) media.

The Bloc - once a poster child for virtually all of the Quebec-based media - has become  ex-communicated, it seems.

According to a Google News search, Paillé has been mentioned in 33 news stories in the past two months - many of those are stories about federal polling numbers, several others simply feature a picture of Paillé and one is a letter to the editor referencing him. By my count, there were only about a dozen stories that carried quotes from Paillé - several were on the same subject, and a couple were about community events or deaths. Most were, understandably, Quebec media outlets.

Let’s compare this to Elizabeth May who, by all accounts, has had a great month. She returned over 1,600 stories, mostly in national papers.

To put that into perspective for a moment - the Bloc were mentioned 664 times in that same span. Yes, the entire party. Nevermind the individual MPs - none of whom appear more than 30 times in the past 60 days. Some of those hits are actually just other Quebecers with the same names who, apparently, get as much press as their Bloc MPs. And many of those legitimate mentions are throw-aways - brief mentions of how the Bloc voted on a particular bill, or a mere acknowledgement of their existence.

And that’s understandable. May has made herself known due to a hard-fought campaign to get the House back to work. Paillé, on the other hand, isn’t even in the House of Commons.

But there’s a dangerous precedent, here. Paillé and the Bloc nearly doubled May’s Canada-wide popular vote in the last election - despite only running in one province. The Bloc, as a caucus, is also four times as big as the Greens.

So why are the Bloc in the dog house?

It’s no secret that the rest-of-Canada isn’t terribly interested in giving up - good, Canadian - column inches to Paillé and his brigade of sovereigntists. It’s also no great scandal to say that the Bloc have done an absolutely horrendous job trying to get into the headlines. They neither appear to be trying, nor do they appear to appear to be trying. They trudge through the corridors of Parliament with all the exuberance of a condemned man’s stroll to the electric chair.

And before I get to the next step on my logic hopscotch, I do not want to suggest that the Canadian media simply give the Bloc press because they are obliged to do so. They should not.

But the Canadian media ought to lift its foot from the small of the Bloc’s back. It’s undignified for a nation’s news media to ignore a political party with such commitment. The Bloc is being denied the coverage that, traditionally, is owed to a party of its stature.

While Elizabeth May, every fresh-faced Dipper backbencher and 800 different Joe Schmo Liberal leadership contenders have each gotten a plushy feature in the national pages, the Bloc is struggling to get twenty words in a story that directly concerns them.

And these people still have to represent their constituents. Disagree with their stated purpose all you like, it is an MP’s duty to fight for the people of their riding. If an MP is completely invisible, that job becomes much harder. Several months ago, Liberal Irwin Cotler rose on a point of privilege to argue that the Conservatives were marginalizing his ability to work by spreading a misinformation campaign. I would suggest that if the Bloc’s situation is just as bad as Cotler’s. 

A government needs a critical press. But so do all the parties. Simply ignoring the Bloc as though they are an unwelcome house guest is unacceptable in a participatory democracy. 

Don’t block the Bloc.