Smaller parties like the Quebec nationalist Bloc Québécois and the Green Party of Canada can exert their own influence over the political process.

The Bloc Québécois agreed to support the proposed coalition on confidence matters for 18 months.

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe scheduled a similar motion in the House of Commons for November 23, 2006, that would have recognized " Quebecers as a nation ".

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper tabled the Québécois nation motion the day before the Bloc Québécois resolution came to a vote.

The English version changed the word Quebecer to Québécois and added " within a united Canada " at the end of the Bloc motion.

The Liberal Party of Canada is the only genuine national political party that remains while the regionally based parties such as the Quebec-based Bloc Québécois and the almost entirely Western Canada-based Reform Party of Canada rise from political insignificance to being major political parties.

Media covering the convention quickly pointed out that if one added the word " Party " to the end of the party's name, the resulting initials were " CCRAP " ( humorously pronounced " see-crap " or just " crap ") even though it, like the Bloc Québécois, didn't actually have the word party in its name.

He has since been followed by other gay and lesbian politicians in Parliament: Bloc Québécois MPs Réal Ménard and Raymond Gravel, fellow New Democrats Libby Davies and Bill Siksay, and Liberal Party of Canada MPs Scott Brison and Mario Silva, as well as Senators Laurier LaPierre and Nancy Ruth.

Only some Members of Parliament belonging to these parties and the leaders of the Bloc Québécois have made any statements suggesting abolition of the monarchy.

In the 2008 federal election she attended a rally for the Bloc Québécois, a Quebec separatist party, because of her support for their position on the arts, and stated that she would vote for the party if she lived in Quebec.

As with its provincial counterpart, the Bloc Québécois has been supported by a wide range of voters in Quebec, from large sections of organised labour to more conservative rural voters.

The Bloc Québécois formed in 1990 as an informal coalition of Progressive Conservative and Liberal Members of Parliament from Quebec, who left their original parties around the time of the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord.

A " tripartite agreement " mapping out the plan for accession to independence was written and signed by the leaders of the Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois and the Action démocratique du Québec on 12 June 1995.

In the 1997 federal election, the Bloc Québécois dropped to 44 seats, losing official opposition status to the Reform Party.

In a speech in front of his supporters following the election, BQ leader Gilles Duceppe claimed to have achieved his objectives, adding: " without the Bloc Québécois tonight, Mr. Harper would have formed a majority government ".

On 26 March 2011, Bloc Québécois leader Duceppe stated that Conservative leader Stephen Harper had in 2004 tried to form a coalition government with the Bloc and NDP in response to Harper's allegations that the Liberals intended to form a coalition with the Bloc and the NDP.

In the 2011 federal election, in the wake of a surge of support for the New Democratic Party, the Bloc received less than a quarter of the popular vote in Quebec ( less than 6 % of all the total votes in the elections ), lost 44 of the 47 seats it held at parliament's dissolution, and only added one seat, which had been vacated by a Bloc Québécois member six months prior to the election.

The Bloc Québécois leadership election campaign to choose a permanent successor to Duceppe began 17 September 2011 and concluded on 11 December with the election of former MP Daniel Paillé as party leader.

The nomenklatura (, ) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries ' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the communist party of each country or region.

Gush Emunim (, Bloc the faithful ) was an Israeli messianic and political movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.

Flag of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (, Sovet ekonomicheskoy vsaymopomoshchi,, SEV, English abbreviation,, or ), 1949 – 1991, was an economic organization under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of socialist states elsewhere in the world.

Left Bloc (, ), sometimes translated as Leftist Bloc or Left-wing Bloc, is a Portuguese left-wing political party founded in 1999.

He also helped found another nationalist organization, the Freedom Bloc (, Bama-htwet-yat Gaing ), by forming an alliance between the Dobama, the ABSU, politically active monks and Dr Ba Maw's Sinyètha ( Poor Man's ) Party, and became its general secretary.

The Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (, ; abbreviated BBWR ) was a " non-political " organization that existed in 1928 – 35, closely affiliated with Józef Piłsudski and his Sanation movement.

In the 1993 federal election, the Bloc won 54 seats ( out of 75 ) in Quebec, sweeping nearly all of the francophone ridings there.

The Bloc continued to slide in most of the 2003 opinion polls following the 2003 Quebec election which was won by the federalist Quebec Liberal Party led by Jean Charest.

For the 2004 election the Bloc adopted the slogan Un parti propre au Québec, a play on words that can be translated either as " A party of Quebec's own " (" a party proper to Quebec ") or as " A clean party in Quebec ".

However, the unexpected surge of the new Conservative Party of Canada in parts of Quebec, particularly in and around Quebec City, led to the Bloc losing eight seats to the Tories.

Duceppe, whose leadership was confirmed after the election, maintained that the Bloc would continue to co-operate with other opposition parties or with the government when this advantaged Quebec, but would not participate in a federal government.

On 2 May 2006, a poll revealed that for the first time, the Conservatives were ahead of the Bloc among Quebec voters ( 34 % against 31 %).

By October polls showed that the Bloc was up to mid forties whereas the Conservatives fell into the teens behind Liberals in their poll numbers in Quebec.

The Parti Québécois has close ties to the Bloc and shares its principal objective of independence for Quebec.

Gilles Duceppe, a former Bloc leader, is also the son of Jean Duceppe, a Quebec actor who helped found the PQ.

This was most opposed by the Bloc Québécois, who usually had the lowest popular vote but nonetheless won many seats because their support was concentrated in Quebec.

The NDP surge began in Quebec, with the NDP surprising many observers by surpassing the previously front-running Bloc in Quebec.

* 1971 – The All India Forward Bloc holds an emergency central committee meeting after its chairman, Hemantha Kumar Bose, is killed 3 days earlier.

It holds 14 of the 128 seats in the Parliament of Lebanon and is a member of the Resistance and Development Bloc.

The Lada is widely available in many Central and South American countries as well as in Africa, the Middle East and in all of the former Soviet Union and Communist Bloc nations.

Mozambique is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and ranks among the moderate members of the African Bloc in the United Nations and other international organizations.

* 1939 – The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

Although, Poland is a member of the Visegrád Group, which although is not Pan-Slavic as it includes one non-Slavic nation, but promotes co-operations among former Eastern Bloc Central European countries.

The economic systems of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc are further classified as command economies, which are defined as systems where economic coordination is undertaken by commands, directives and production targets.

** The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

* May 14 – Eight Communist Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign a mutual defence treaty in Warsaw, Poland, that is called the Warsaw Pact.

He is trying to accept the real situation in Europe, which has lasted for 25 years, but he is also trying to bring about a new reality in his bold approach to the Soviet Union and the East Bloc.

(" Fortunately, the Bloc is here !").

However, on an organizational level the parties are separate entities – the Bloc is not simply the federal wing of the Parti Québécois, nor the PQ simply the provincial wing of the Bloc.

Reg is a committed socialist, and during the late 1980s, having finally having had his fill of Thatcher's Britain he defected to the Soviet Bloc.

In response, the Soviet Union, along with the other Eastern Bloc nations, initiated what is known as the Molotov Plan.

Dulles ' rollback policy was later implemented by the Reagan Administration during the 1980s and it is sometimes credited with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the Communist Bloc in eastern Europe as well as the Soviet Union itself.

What is sometimes overlooked in the context of how the Eastern Bloc was formed, however, is the political climate of the time in regards to the political orientation of many of those who fought and died to resist fascism on the local and regional levels, as well as the national ones.

It is known to be the longest as well as the first anti-communist armed resistance in the Eastern Bloc.

The Bloc Québécois ( BQ ) is a federal political party founded in 1990 by future PQ leader Lucien Bouchard.