Opposition parties must piece together a winning alternative vs. a populist government. Defaced CAQ poster, above, reflects views of some in Montreal.
Volatile. Yes, that’s politics in Quebec. Parties rise and fall, leaders come and go. Political movements look dynamic, even unbeatable, then get levelled.
Remember the Union Nationale? The ADQ? The NDP’s run as a top federal party here?
–Poof, all gone.
Consolidation likely
Which brings us to this year’s CAQ landslide. The decades-old Liberal/PQ duopoly has vanished. The 2022 election produced a solid, second-term majority government. There is now a splintered opposition in the National Assembly, with three parties trying to piece Humpty Dumpty back together again and produce a credible challenger to the CAQ majority. That is an urgent task for the opposition parties, since Quebec governments are often humbled after their second term, either by outright defeat or steep losses.
With the opposition so divided in Quebec City, party consolidation is attractive.
Ottawa in the 1990s saw a similar situation: the dominant Liberals of Jean Chretien faced four parties in opposition, ranging from the western Reform party to the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP and the shrunken Progressive Conservatives. National TV debates featured five party leaders (oddly, viewers outside Quebec could listen intently to leaders of the Bloc Québécois, for whom they could not even vote).
For these smaller parties to defeat the majority, consolidation was crucial. They did that, and the result was the Conservative Party reign of Stephen Harper.
–Could that happen again? Today, we look at the prospects for the three Quebec opposition parties.
Liberals: it gets worse
Yes, parties just disappear sometimes.
Despite appearances – the Liberal Party is again the Official Opposition — the provincial Liberals were devastated across most of Quebec. In 46 ridings their candidate got less than 5 per cent of the vote. The party finished in fifth place across the board among francophone voters, winning just 7 per cent support, and in fourth place among parties, trailing both the PQ and QS in total votes cast, and barely edging the upstart Conservatives.
Poll analyst Philippe J. Fournier of the 338Canada site said that Quebec Libs are “close to an abyss. The data is dire”. The next few years are a watershed for the Liberals’ continuity as a party.
That decline certainly showed in the Townships in 2022.
Sherbrooke today is largely a university and college town, so perhaps it’s not shocking that left-leaning Quebec Solidaire’s candidate finished first again, holding out against the CAQ wave. Sherbrooke joins the central ridings of Montreal and Quebec City as a QS beacon.
But as recently as 2008 a fellow named Charest had won Sherbrooke riding four straight times. The Liberals won there again in 2014, meaning they had won five out of six times before their 2018 defeat by QS.
This year, the Liberal candidate plunged to a dismal fifth place, trailing even the upstart Conservatives, with just 5.8 per cent of the votes. Things were just as bad in neighbouring St. Francois riding, where Liberals also finished fifth, with 7.9 per cent of the vote.
In Orford riding, the former mayor of Magog, a strong Liberal candidate and the type of Establishment figure who once worked for the Liberals, got trampled — 15 per cent of the vote and third place, albeit close enough behind second-place QS to appear somewhat competitive.
These results were typical of the Liberals’ results across Quebec. In a crowded field the Liberals are headed backwards. Only their solid support in Montreal keeps them in the race.
The Liberals will have to “optimize” their Montreal base to stay in the political mix and lure new partners. But leadership was also an issue in 2022. The QLP was seen as moving away from the centre-right, pro-business and middle-class brand that historically guaranteed its electoral success.
Even traditional Anglo Liberal voters in Montreal might listen to other parties, as the Conservatives showed this year. The Liberals might become a smallish but influential third party, like the Liberal Democrats in the U.K., a potential coalition partner with a suitable ally, but with little chance of ever governing itself.
But first, the other two opposition parties have to settle their affairs.
Strange bedfellows
One natural couple for merger in Quebec today would be the Parti Québécois and Québec Solidaire; they share much in common. QS won virtually all the east-central Montreal ridings that the young PQ had won in the early 1970s.They are the two most left-wing parties in the National Assembly and, at least on paper, are both pro-sovereignty. QS is less committed to that option, however, and many of its Montreal activists and voters are neutral or even federalist.
The two parties tried to work out a non-aggression pact in 2018, but it fell apart. And on key issues they are at loggerheads, for example on immigration, where the PQ undercut even Premier Legault with its low proposed immigration flows (35,000 maximum a year). QS’s proposed targets (70,000+) come closer to Justin Trudeau’s immigration levels. Common ground on this may be hard to find.
To hasten their reconciliation, Le Devoir recently noted the 1936 electoral pact uniting conservatives and dissident Liberals, the Duplessis-Gouin accord. This led to the founding of the Union Nationale, which then governed Quebec for two decades.
So the wedding may be on hold, but some form of co-habitation between the PQ and QS seems possible, given the tempting vista of a new, 30-per-cent voter bloc in Quebec City.
And if a Left vs. Right faceoff does reappear in Quebec – should QS and the PQ join forces — who says the centre-right Liberals and right-of-centre CAQ might not also find some common ground? Stay tuned.
My Nov. 19th Weekend column addressed the the prospects for Francois Legault and the CAQ in a second term and beyond.
Legault: how long at the top?
Few Quebec governments get a third term, history shows
Two terms and out. An electoral majority in Quebec isn’t eternal. Two government mandates is the average for any party before their endgame approaches.
Twice in recent decades Quebec voters gave super-majorities – 54 and 49 per cent of the vote (in 1973 and 1981, respectively) – to a single party. Just three years after these massive victories, Robert Bourassa and René Lévesque were in serious trouble. Their majorities were undermined by economic crises, strikes, party squabbling and ethnic divides. Voters responded by kicking them out.
The PQ and the Liberals again won solid majorities in 1998 and 2008, respectively, winning 40-plus per cent of the vote. At the next election, following a sharp decline in popularity, each party was shown the door.
A conservative choice
Francois Legault in 2022 won an impressive, second-term 90-seat majority. He was respected by many voters, specifically for his Covid-era performance, but he is not beloved. His support base is strongly regional and older. Younger, urban voters may get impatient in a second term.
The CAQ fulfils the old Quebec political instinct to be “bleu à Quebec, rouge à Ottawa”, both to provide political balance and to maximize the province’s leverage. So just as Pierre Trudeau balanced René Lévesque in the 1970s, Justin Trudeau got a nationalist counterweight in Francois Legault.
Legault founded and rules a party that is centred on a single person. There is no clear set of principles or ideological framework. It is the vehicle for the small-town, chamber of commerce conservatism of a French-speaking middle class. Legault is old-fashioned, and seems to have problems with strong women. A Gazette writer who rode in the CAQ campaign bus in 2012 recalls him declining a potato-peeling demonstration as “women’s work”; the writer described him as a “1950s patriarch”. These shortcomings may creep into the CAQ’s image more in a second term, and feed dissatisfaction.
Could unexpected social conflicts disrupt the Premier’s second-term plans? (Quick, check with Jean Charest! Just don’t mention the Maple Spring.) More likely, simple voter fatigue will feed the traditional urge to throw the rascals out (and vote new rascals in).
Suburban reach grows
The CAQ’s majority is not, however, built on thin air. Many voters like Legault and his party’s general platform. The Montreal English media’s favourite election narrative — the “urban vs. regional split” – has shortcomings. The notion that the CAQ won only in the regions is popular, but superficial.
I would propose an alternative headline to describe some recent voter trends:
“CAQ Makes Gains in Montreal Suburbs
Several candidates elected from non-traditional ethnicities, immigrant groups”
Winning results in both Laval and the suburban South Shore, as well as in the east end of the island of Montreal (Anjou, Pointe aux Trembles) showed its steady urban gains. In Quebec’s third-largest city, Laval, a growing centre of half a million people, the CAQ took four out of six seats. On the South Shore, a sprawling semi-urban stretch of municipalities and exurbs, the core 4-5 ridings all went for the CAQ.
Like the federal Conservatives, who are always told by political analysts that they must win the multi-ethnic suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver – as Stephen Harper did – in order to rule, Legault needs to gain ground in the Montreal and its suburbs. But isn’t the CAQ doing that already? And despite its image as being unconnected with, or even hostile to, urban voters and ethnic minorities?
The winning CAQ candidates in Montreal-area ridings often had unlikely profiles, including new MNAs with origins in Haiti and Lebanon. Two Black Quebecers were elected as CAQ MNAs in South Shore ridings, Taillon and Marie-Victorin, , while the surprise winner in Laval’s Fabre riding, Alice Abou-Khalil, scarcely matches the “old stock” stereotype with her four languages, including Arabic and Serbian.
A winning party naturally attracts such diverse candidates and widens its base. The CAQ has proven versatile, and it is unwise to dismiss its potential for growth.
Politics full of symbolism
In a more fanciful vein, it is often remarked that Quebec politics is like Canadiens hockey: dramatic and heavy on symbolism.
A political writer once noted the parallels over the decades between Canadiens stars and Quebec Premiers: the brooding Maurice Richard mirrored the dark, paternal 1950s of Maurice Duplessis. Jean Béliveau evoked the bright modern Jean Lesage, with both suspected of being a bit too close to the English bosses. And in the rocking 1970s, both René Lévesque and Guy Lafleur were mercurial and electrifying, and could bring an arena crowd to its feet.
Since the 1980s, the hockey parallel has worn thin (Robert Bourassa and Patrick Roy? –Hardly.)
Still, you have to wonder what Legault symbolizes: a sturdy but uninspiring coach or manager, like a Michel Therrien or Claude Julien, soon to be elbowed aside? Or does he just represent something more permanent in the Quebec psyche –a desire for greater security?
Whatever Quebecers want for the future will be resolved to a great degree through Francois Legault. The personality and tone of the CAQ come from its leader. Legault’s new Cabinet choices suggest he now feels confident enough to reach out to minorities. He may even accept as inevitable the court defeats and political setbacks that his cultural policies will engender. Perennial issues, like the bottlenecks in emergency rooms, may reassert themselves as the front-and centre-concerns. If so, the CAQ’s second term quite different from what we expect.
A second term need not be a downward slide. As voters and citizens, let’s hope the CAQ’s is productive and generous.
Originally published in the Sherbrooke Record, in November 2022.
