Two signs the Tories are done in Quebec

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/conservatives-reject-funding-for-montreal-gay-festival/article1226490/

The removal of funding for Divers-Cite is particularly ironic, given that:

The directors of Montreal's Divers-Cite had actually sprung to the defence of Stephen Harper's government earlier this month, telling The Canadian Press that the Conservatives had never treated them differently.

Well, now they are being treated differently. The Montreal gay community has to be pretty low on the list of demographics voting Conservative, but this action proves that the social conservatives are running the show in the Conservative Party right now, and the Tories are seemingly in a race to the bottom in Quebec.

Which might explain this: http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/est-quebec/2009/07/20/010-bernard_genereux_elections_fed.shtml

Which says that local mayor Bernard Généreux is considering running for the Conservatives in Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup, which is due for a by-election around November. Bernard Généreux is really only notable as a candidate in the sense that he is not Mario Dumont. Dumont resigned his Rivière-du-Loup seat in the National Assembly, and Paul Crête, the BQ MP for the federal riding, also resigned to unsuccessfully try and win the seat for the Parti Quebecois. More than a few pundits have suggested that getting Dumont to run for the seat federally could be the Conservatives last chance to pull out a game changer in Quebec (to show how much of a personal vote Dumont had, in the provincial by-election in the riding he had represented for over a decade, the ADQ candidate could barely muster 15%). Dumont had remained at least somewhat in the Quebec Tory loop, showing up at Harper's big speech in Montreal a few months back, but other than that has refused to comment on a potential run for the federal Conservatives. If other candidates are looking at the riding, I think that is a good sign that Dumont will not run, depriving the Conservatives of the only real star candidate they could have potentially mustered in the province.