A very poor choice of message

Needless to say, this isn't the way to make federalism work in Quebec:

A prominent Liberal candidate in Quebec City apologized yesterday for saying that Quebec was a poor province dependent on Canadian federalism to keep itself afloat.

Hélène Chalifour-Sherrer, Liberal leader Paul Martin's former principal secretary and now candidate in the Quebec City riding of Louis Hébert, said this afternoon that contrary to popular belief, the province of Quebec "was a very poor province."

"People still have the impression that the province of Quebec is the milking cow for all of Canada. That is not the case. The province of Quebec needs equalization payments and money from Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia, otherwise it couldn't make ends meet," Ms. Chalifour-Sherrer said.

Of course, Chalifour-Sherrer moved quickly to try to retract the comments. And I'll readily acknowledge that it's not fair to hold parties to too high a standard for every word out of the mouth of every candidate over the course of a campaign.

But a different standard has to apply when the words come from a member of the Prime Minister's inner circle, and when the quote goes to the main issues at play in Quebec. The retraction aside, this is the type of comment that could completely undermine the Liberals' claim to be able to speak for Quebec; it's not difficult to hear the echoes of Harper's past insults toward Atlantic Canada, and all the more bizarre for Chalifour-Sherrer to have made such a comment about her own home province.

That, of course, leaves one federal party which hasn't seen prominent members go out of their way to insult wide swaths of Canada. And with any luck, Chalifour-Sherrer will help push more voters to give that party a closer look as the voice of federalism in Quebec.