The federal election campaign prompted a great deal of hand wringing by Quebecers about the state of Canadian democracy. La Presse columnist Lysiane Gagnon wrote it off as a campaign of "indifference and disenchantment." Editorialists were resigned to a Liberal victory long before election day, even if they held out hope for a minority government. And campaign coverage was frequently bumped as the lead news item by the U.S. presidential election, municipal mergers, the Grey Cup, growth hormones in Canadian beef, and the firings of the Montreal Canadiens' coach and general manager. Even if the polls suggested that the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois were neck-and-neck in the contest for the 75 seats in Quebec, everyone knew the Bloc's real challenge would be coaxing supporters of the sovereignist option to vote.

The actual election results – a third straight majority for the Chrétien Liberals, a continuing slide for the Bloc Québécois, and low voter turnout (62.9 per cent across Canada, 63.5 per cent in Quebec) – provided the final punctuation mark on what La Presse's chief editorialist Alain Dubuc characterized as a Liberal win "by default."

It would be wrong, however, to presume that a disappointing election campaign produced lackluster journalism. On the contrary, the gradual realization that the Liberals were coasting back to power had a liberating impact on news coverage in Quebec. If in past elections, journalists favoured the horse-race approach to coverage – who's leading? who has the best strategy? – this time there was no horse race to cover. Opinion polls, campaign strategies and controversy – remember l'Auberge Grand-Mère? – had little resonance, giving news organizations considerable latitude in establishing their own agendas.

The gradual realization that the Liberals were coasting back to power had a liberating impact on news coverage in Quebec.

This was evident in two particular areas. First, the issues were covered, at least to a much greater extent than we've seen since the "free trade" election of 1988, when trade liberalization with the United States was hotly debated on television, radio and in the press. Second, we heard from many more voices than those of the five major party leaders. Some of those voices represented the marginal political parties, which are usually invisible at election time, while others spoke for women, native peoples and the black community. It was a campaign in which ideas – even wacky ideas – got some play.

With a week to go in the campaign, for example, the Montreal Gazette ran a front-page story on the issue of the environment, with reaction from each of the major parties and an environmental "report card" in which the party platforms were assessed. This was followed a few days later by a half-page report in Le Devoir discussing the relevance of environmental issues to the election campaign. These features were not the product of spin doctors, but of editors and reporters who felt they deserved some ink.

On the Saturday before the election, the Gazette also featured a lengthy article about the parties' neglect of cultural policy on the front page of its Arts and Entertainment section. Le Devoir opened its op-ed page to pieces on the parties' disregard for third-world issues and what the major parties were offering women. Two days before the election, La Presse devoted two facing pages to summaries of each of the major parties' platforms on health care, taxation, foreign affairs, debt reduction, law and order, social and cultural policy, economic policy, the environment, and Canadian democracy.

Perhaps the most surprising idea taken seriously by the Quebec press was creationism. Rather than simply regarding creationism as yet another reason to dismiss the Canadian Alliance's Stockwell Day as a prime ministerial candidate, the Gazette gave page-four coverage to a debate at the Université de Montréal between biology professor David Morse and creationist Laurence Tisdall. Not a single cynical remark tarnished Kate Swoger's report. Similarly, La Presse editorialist Mario Roy used the issue of creationism to remind readers of the prevalence of paranormal belief in western society – between 41 and 66 per cent of Quebecers believe in such things as clairvoyance, spirits, extra-terrestrials, telepathy and reincarnation – and to provide some insightful commentary on humankind's inability to live with doubt and uncertainty.

When Alain Dubuc lamented the paucity of ideas in the campaign in a November 18 La Presse editorial, he was criticizing the parties, not the press.

If political reporters insisted on pushing ideas onto the agenda, they also gave voice to parties and communities typically ignored. Greens and Communists garnered television coverage on CBC and Radio-Canada, and not always as the butt of an easy joke. Le Soleil ran a lengthy story on the Natural Law Party and its three candidates in the Quebec City area.

Le Devoir sought out the aboriginal perspective on the campaign through an interview with Matthew Coon-Come, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, and the Gazette covered an election rally staged by Montreal's black community.

If the 2000 federal election campaign was uninspiring, it didn't mean election coverage had to follow suit. Quebec journalists offered proof of that.

Mike Gasher is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at Concordia University in Montréal.