Yahoo Finance William Watson: Quebec moves to the right. But which right?
MONTREAL — As I write this, with 95 per cent of polls reporting in Quebec’s provincial election, the Marxist-Leninists are comfortably ahead of the Libertarians: 644 votes to 111, which is a pretty decisive win for communism. If you include the 20 other parties that ran candidates, however, the right side of the political spectrum is doing better than the left — even if left and right are relative in North America’s highest-taxed jurisdiction.
The election’s big winner is Premier François Legault and his Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), who are running at a little over 41 per cent of the vote and have won or are leading in 90 of the legislature’s 125 ridings. Most of the rest of the vote is split pretty much equally among four parties, each with between 13 and 15 per cent of the popular vote and, such are the vagaries of first-past-the-post, between zero seats (the Conservatives) and 21 seats (the Liberals). A four-way split among his political rivals marks Legault as something of a political genius. For decades the federal Liberals have lived off two-way and three-splits among their rivals. To crack the diamond into four equal parts shows unparalleled political craftsmanship.
The Liberals are the second biggest winner. They lost both popular vote and seats, which mutes their joy, but they get to stay on as official opposition, which had been in doubt, and their new leader, Dominique Anglade, a smart, personable campaigner who trained as an engineer, gets to keep her job — even if she may see that as a mixed blessing, given that her party lost strength outside its stronghold among the English-speakers of western Montreal.
Eric Duhaime and his Quebec Conservative Party, who at this writing are running at about 13 per cent in the popular vote, up from just 1.5 per cent in 2018 — though with no seats.
Together the CAQ and the Conservatives look like they will be getting over 50 per cent of the vote, which most commentators argue constitutes a rightward shift for Quebec. But which kind of rightward exactly? That’s the same question federal conservatives confront.
The CAQ is a centre-right to middle-of-the-road party with populist leanings, while the Conservatives ran on the slogan “Libres chez nous,” a clever take on the Quiet Revolution’s “Maîtres chez nous.” They want lower taxes, more choice in health care and education and a reversal of Bill 96, which restricts English-language rights by means of the notwithstanding clause. So they’re more of a small-government, libertarian group and have played footsie with anti-vaxxers (though they also favour Bill 21, which keeps some public employees from wearing religious symbols).
Though both lean rightward, the CAQ and the Conservatives would take different forks in the rightward road, with the CAQ going more populist and the Conservatives favouring less intervention. The Conservatives look like they will finish second in perhaps a dozen seats around Quebec City — which is ironic since it’s a government town. On the other hand, maybe those who live closest to government know what’s really going on. In any case, having their rivals in close pursuit in that many ridings will likely concentrate the CAQ’s mind. In the 1990s the federal Reform party pulled Jean Chrétien’s Liberals in their direction. Maybe the Conservatives will do the same for the CAQ.
Two things you can expect to hear more about in the next few months are proportional representation and immigration. In fact, the CAQ promised electoral reform last time round but didn’t get to it. Funny how that happens when a party wins a majority government! But with the Liberals forming the official opposition despite possibly coming fourth in the popular vote, and the Conservatives and Parti Québécois having almost 30 per cent of the popular vote yet just three seats between them (with the Conservatives at zero), the imbalance of representation will strike many people as egregious.
That doesn’t mean the existing system won’t respond to the variety of Quebecers’ political opinions, however. An election is always coming. Even a party with 70 per cent of the seats understands its vulnerabilities. Being in its second mandate, with dozens of caucus members not in cabinet but looking for ways to exercise their ambition, and a leader who seemed during the campaign to be bored and weary, may make the CAQ vulnerable. And when people tire of a government they usually find a vehicle for replacing it. In 2026 Quebecers likely will have four plausible replacements for Team Legault. If they’re unhappy enough, they’ll coalesce around one. After all, the federal Conservatives won only two seats in the 1993 election but in a little more than a decade were back in power.
Ben Woodfinden: François Legault is now the most powerful politician in Canada
Quebec election results: François Legault’s CAQ to form another majority government
An area where there was a clear difference between the CAQ and most of the other parties was immigration. The CAQ wants to reduce it to 50,000 or so per year. Shades of Donald Trump’s 2015 election announcement, the now-former immigration minister said during the campaign that immigrants don’t like work, do like crime and don’t speak French enough. The premier apologized for that statement but his party wants to reduce annual numbers precisely because of concern about immigrants not assimilating into the French sector quickly enough.
Yet again are the simultaneous power and powerlessness of English Quebecers displayed. Such is our power that a less than one percentage point increase in the share of Quebecers who speak English at home — at home! — from 9.7 per cent in 2016 to 10.4 per cent in 2021 — barely one in 10 — sparked a political stampede to expand laws requiring French. With Ottawa’s acquiescence, they now will apply even in federally regulated workplaces — this in what is still supposed to be an officially bilingual federation. During the leaders’ debates all five agreed French was in danger in Quebec. None dared say otherwise.
But our powerlessness is that as the Liberal and Conservative leaders plan their strategies to double their popular votes and challenge to win the next election, respecting the rights of English-speakers is bound to fade as a priority.
Financial Post
