MONTREAL - MONTREAL (CP) - Francoise David leads a bare-bones upstart political party called Quebec solidaire, where every sign is carefully counted and a donation basket sits prominently on the front desk of campaign headquarters.
A volunteer cracks a joke on a frigid afternoon about the cold political winds pushing David toward victory in her difficult Montreal riding.
David, a longtime social activist, clasps her hands and lowers her head just above the donation basket, as if she's praying to the political gods with an offering.
"That would be a great start," David says later. "It's only a first step, but it would be an important first step. A big step."
It might take divine intervention for David to win the Gouin riding, a longtime Parti Quebecois stronghold, but David's party along with a revitalized Green party won't need a miracle to achieve another goal - to turn Quebec's electoral system upside down.
For the first time in more than 100 years, political observers in Quebec see the possibility of a minority government in the March 26 election.
The main reason is the surge of the ADQ, which has risen in polls to the point of threatening to overtake the Parti Quebecois in a historic shift.
More subtly, the fourth and fifth place parties took about 10 per cent of popular support in recent polls, more than the margin of victory in about 50 of Quebec's 125 ridings in the 2003 election.
The Greens and Quebec solidaire could damage the big parties without winning a seat by taking precious percentage points in those highly competitive ridings.
"It's not too strong to say the Green party, Quebec solidaire and the progression of the ADQ is in the process of blowing up the system," Green party Leader Scott McKay said in an interview.
"It's to the credit of the people. The expression of ideas among the population of Quebec cannot be stuck in a mold. The population is blowing up the molds and it's all for the better."
But even David cautions her supporters that strategic voting on election day could make those gains disappear as her supporters drift away to block one of the big parties.
"I am certain that among some of the people who say they like us, some will not vote for us to block another," David said. "It's very unhealthy as a system."
Where winning parties often won with more than 50 per cent of the vote through the 1970s, political scientist Jean-Herman Guay points out that it's become rare since the rise of third parties.
"It is no longer outlandish" to predict a minority government with the rise of the fourth and fifth parties and the strength of the ADQ, said Guay.
"Essentially, one voter in 10 is sticking out their tongue at (the three main parties) in favour of something new," Guay wrote in a recent analysis.
"The phenomenon is no longer marginal."
While the ADQ has a long way to an electoral win and the Greens and Quebec solidaire have yet to take a seat, they still have power, said political scientist Jean Crete.
The professor at Laval University in Quebec City said the small parties are bringing new ideas to the scene and forcing the main parties to pay attention.
Crete points out the Liberals stole ideas from Reformers and New Democrats during the 1990s, keeping those parties in the margins while putting their ideas into force.
"Even if the small parties don't grow, they force the big parties to move, to stay in contact with the population," Crete said.
"They have an important use for society, even if they don't win seats."
David's Quebec solidaire has promised a dramatic boost of the minimum wage to $10 and at least three weeks vacation per year, up from two.
David finds people like the ideas, even if big media in Quebec don't exactly take them seriously yet.
"It gets attention from ordinary people who say they totally agree but the big media treats every one of our proposals as something nice but utopian," David says.
"I think there are a lot of political and economic elites who know very well that over the medium and long-term we are a major threat to them.
"It's going to take time, but it will happen.
