His polling numbers haven't been terrific through the campaign to begin with although all 3 parties are quite close. Quebec may have its first minority government in more than a century. Its quite possible his party will end in 3rd place due to divisions within his own party. People seem to believe he doesnt really have the gravitas to be the leader and also there doesnt seem to be a lot of desire to go into another independence referendum as he advocates.

Boisclair's "yeux bridés" comment was apparenty no big deal in the French-language media, as evidenced by a column I found today by Gilbert Lavoie of the Quebec City newspaper Le Soleil . He essentially said that the anglophone media were over-reacting and being too politically correct. I thought Boisclair's opponents, Dumont and Charest, would have tried to capitalize on the remark, and perhaps drawn parallels to former PQ leader Jacques Parizeau who blamed the "ethnic vote" for the failed referendum in 1995. But in fact they didn't make any fuss about it either, which certainly suggests that the phrase does not have the same pejorative meaning in French as it does in English.

Personally, I think Boisclair should apologize or at least explain that no offense or disrespect was intended. He is probably not a racist, but being a member of a minority himself (gay), I should hope that he would display more sensitivity in his choice of words. He would be rightly offended if an opponent called him "queer"...

Time to change the title on this board - because not only is Boisclair not set to lead Quebec to Independence, he soon won't even be leading the Separatist PQ party. They finshed 3rd tonight - not only behind the Liberals, but also behind the right wing ADQ. Not only that - but the Liberals who won the most seats and will likely head a minority government, will have to do so without their leader Jean Charest who lost his own seat. What a mess!

Latest standing have the Liberals with 46 seats, the ADQ with 42 and Boisclair's PQ with 37. And the popular vote matches those seat totals pretty well. Liberals 32.4%, The ADQ 31.4% and the PQ with just 28.4%. Considering the PQ were well above 50% when they elected Boisclair as their leader, for him 28.4% means au revoir Andre.

I heard a different take-PQ wasn't really expected to either lose too many seats or gain too many either so Boisclair was still in okay shape-has he resigned as party leader?

Quick update on last night's results. Liberal leader Charest did hold on to his seat so he will still be Premier of Quebec with his party holding 48 seats.

The knives were out for Boisclair two months ago - when there was a better that 50% chance he would become premier. Basically he was not separatist enough for the hard core PQ. Now that he has had their worst result in terms of popular vote since 1970 - I don't give him much chance to last very long as leader.

Boisclair has announced his intention to stay on as leader of the 3rd place party but I don't think it is too likely that the party itself will want him to remain in place for the next election. There have been divisions within the party for sometime and there was some talk of older hardline Pequistes staying away from the polls because they could not bring themseves to support Boisclair. He campaigned on having a separation referendum asap after taking power and the public responded by voting for 2 federalist parties. Seems the people themselves decided they are tired of referendums. Politics in Quebec are never boring.

Boisclair resigns.

How does a man resign with any dignity with all those knives stuck in his back?

The entire issue of independence is dead, dead, dead. And it has nothing to do with Boisclair.

I agree with you 100%. It was obvious in the last election when the ADQ came in second, and PQ slipped to third. Most Quebecers, like Charet and Dumont, want a renewed Federalism, and realize that outside of Canada, they would quickly become irrelevant on the world stage.

But if you're going to renew Federalism, then Yukon, NWT and Nunavut should all have Province status. That way, they have control over their resources.

Just a small question, and I could easily look it up, but: why haven't Yukon, NWT and Nunavut been elevated to province status? Also, how do their populations compare to a tiny province like Prince Edward Island? Why does that island constitute its own province? The US also has a few tiny states (Rhode Island) or lightly populated ones (the Dakotas, Wyoming), and it took quite a while for Alaska and Hawaii to become states, so I'm just wondering about the three northern ones.

Yukon, NWT and Nunavut, are all territories. All of them have legislatures, called Territorial Governments. They have a lot of the powers that provinces have, but not all.

The most populous territory is probably NWT, followed by the Yukon. Nunavut, the newest territory, (it was carved out of the NWT about 10 years ago) only has 30 - 50k people. The capital, Iqaluit, only has about 8 - 10k.

Nunavut was formed as part of the largest native land claim settlement in Canada's history. It gave control of over 350k square miles to the aboriginal peoples of the area.

A friend of mine from University works in Iqaluit (pronounced Ee-kal-oo-it). The government mandate is that by 2009/2010, all senior government positions must be held by the Inuit peoples.

Nunavut has 3 official languages. English, French and Inuktatuk (which I think is also known as Innu).

Personally, I have been to the Yukon, but not the other 2. Eventually I want to go. My friend says I should come during Iqualuits winter festival. My response is that a "normal" day during the winter up there is -30 - -50 FARENHEIT. Is he freakin kidding?

And yes, the High today for Iqaluit is -4 with snow.