MONTREAL - Quebec's political parties are halfway through their run to the March 26 election and so far the acrimonious race has travelled around the world and back in time.
Old statements by candidates and leaders have come back to haunt them on topics including the 1989 murder of 14 women engineering students in Montreal, the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1995 sovereignty referendum.
Policy ideas, meanwhile, have fallen off the table amid verbal gaffes, mudslinging, personal attacks and the dredging of ancient history.
"This campaign, especially this week, is caught between weird and boring,'' said Christian Bourque, a pollster with Leger Marketing.
"It's just one weird tempest in a teapot after another. Without a single issue to focus the campaign, it's turned into a fistfight.''
In the latest punch-up, Mario Dumont and Action democratique du Quebec candidate Eric Dorion were hit Friday with Dorion's criminal record dating back some 15 years.
Dorion, who was 22 and had drug and alcohol problems at the time, was convicted of possessing a stolen vehicle. He acknowledged the transgressions in a Radio-Canada interview on Thursday.
Dumont has had to defend candidates over past actions and statements about a half-dozen times in the campaign and he was clearly fed up.
"These witch hunts on the distant past of people have really gone overboard,'' Dumont told reporters while campaigning near Montreal.
Dorion went through rehabilitation and has been a model citizen since, Dumont said.
Earlier in the campaign, Dumont dropped a candidate who said violence against women is exaggerated and who compared pay equity to apartheid.
Despite the troubles, Bourque said, Dumont has led the best campaign, surging in several polls to put pressure on Andre Boisclair and the Parti Quebecois.
Boisclair faced his own questions over candidate Robin Philpot who was accused of minimizing the massacre in Rwanda in 1994. Boisclair claimed the accusation was exaggerated but was far less vocal in his defence of Philpot on Friday.
"The people of (his riding) Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne will make their choice on March 26, and I'm confident they'll make the right choice,'' Boisclair said in Montreal.
In the most emotional moment of the campaign, Boisclair was confronted by the words of a radio host who proclaimed the PQ "a club of fags'' and mused that local factory workers in Saguenay, Que., weren't ready for a gay candidate.
The host, Louis Champagne, apologized this week.
Boisclair seemed shaken from the attack. His homosexuality has been well known in Quebec for years.
Jean Charest led a quiet front-runner's campaign until a verbal gaffe.
The Liberal leader declared Quebec would be "divisible'' after a vote for sovereignty, contradicting a long line of Quebec premiers who have stood up for the province's territorial integrity, no matter what.
Charest proclaimed it a slip of the tongue but the damage was done.
Old questions about his love of Canada and the level of his commitment to Quebec surfaced along with old speeches as a federal Conservative leader who was a leader in the 1995 fight to hold Canada together.
"Usually a gaffe made by the candidate is not enough to sink you in politics,'' said Bourque, the pollster.
"You need several in succession. Nobody has been tremendously hurt this week or by all that's happened.'' <
All three leaders cut back on campaigning Friday to attend the funeral of Daniel Tessier, a Laval police officer who was shot last week in the line of duty.
Boisclair made a quick subway stop in Montreal on his way to the funeral to promise a tax credit for public transit monthly pass holders while pledging to shrink the size of the Quebec government.
While Charest kept a low profile, Liberals presented an analysis of the ADQ platform which predictably showed it would break the bank should Dumont win.
Meanwhile, after defending Dorion, Dumont threw some mud of his own, suggesting some Liberals had been struck by legal trouble that hasn't surfaced in the campaign.
"Inside the government there are people who have had their own misfortune and, to my knowledge, Mr. Charest has not put out a press release saying where on the freeway it happened,'' Dumont said, referring to reports that members of the legislature have driven while drunk.
