Others have said this much better than I, but it bears repeating: Québec politics is a sort of cloud coocoo land full of irrational dreams and devoid of any reasonable sense of history. No one, not Lucien Bouchard and not Jack Layton can or could ever meet Québec's expectations because they are, simultaneously, irrational and contradictory. But Layton played the nationalist card and, for better or worse the NDP is the opposition in parliament and, therefore, for the media, the government in waiting. The NDP caucus is top heavy with young, inexperienced Québec political neophytes who, in most cases, I think, ran on NDP ideals but ended up winning with nationalist votes. They cannot deliver – no one can: Trudeau could not, Mulroney could not, Bouchard could not, Chrétien could not, Duceppe could not, Layton could not have, either.
Québec will fragment again – two or three federalist parties and two or three nationalist parties; it will be interesting to see into which group the NDP falls.
Harper is, I believe learning to govern without Québec – not against Québec, just without it. When AB, BC and ON have even more seats in the HoC Québec and it's fractured, fatuous politics will matter less and less and the other major national party, the Liberals, will, finally, understand that, too.