The Quebec government wants to find new powers to boost its autonomy within Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, and Quebec Premier François Legault meet in Quebec City on June 10.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
It may come as a surprise to Premier François Legault, but Quebeckers are not the most discontented Canadians. Dissatisfaction with the way the federation is working is higher in Western Canada than in Quebec. Quebeckers are less likely than Albertans or Saskatchewanians to advocate for a more decentralized Canada. Chalk it up to nine years under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Historically, Quebeckers have been more favourable toward greater decentralization than Canadians outside the province,” according to the latest Confederation of Tomorrow survey from the Environics Institute, released last week. “But there is now much less of a gap between the preferences of Quebeckers and those of other Canadians on this question.”
Fully 49 per cent of Saskatchewanians and 45 per cent of Albertans think their province “should take charge of things the federal government does,” compared with 42 per cent of Quebeckers. A third of Ontarians want their province to assume more powers; an almost equal proportion (30 per cent) want the federal government to take over things Queen’s Park now does, according to the Environics survey.
For Mr. Legault – whose Coalition Avenir Québec has been losing voters to the Parti Québécois for months now – recapturing the support of a greater share of Quebeckers seeking a more decentralized Canadian federation remains the key to his own political survival. Among them are sovereigntists who voted for the CAQ in 2018 and 2022, but who have since returned to the PQ under Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. Without these voters, the CAQ has little hope of winning in 2026.
At the same time, Mr. Legault needs to hold on to the francophone federalists who still back his party. Indeed, they account for the bulk of the CAQ’s current supporters. A Léger poll released last week, which had the PQ leading the CAQ by 32 per cent to 25 per cent overall, also showed that 56 per cent of the CAQ’s current supporters would vote “No” in a referendum on sovereignty.
Recapturing sovereigntist voters who have returned to the PQ without repelling federalists who have remained loyal to the CAQ will be no easy task. Mr. Legault rode to power in 2018 and held on to it in 2022 by building such a coalition. He must now recreate it in time for the 2026 election.
That may explain why the committee of experts Mr. Legault struck last week to recommend ways for Quebec to seek more autonomy within the Canadian federation has been given only four months to table its report. Its mandate includes examining how to gain more power for the province over immigration, culture, language, international relations and judicial appointments, all without entering constitutional negotiations with Ottawa. That will require some creative thinking.
“The federal government has intensified a worrying tendency toward centralization and encroachment [on provincial turf]. It too often acts as if Canada were a unitary state and not a federation,” Mr. Legault told the National Assembly in announcing the creation of the Comité consultatif sur les enjeux constitutionnels du Quebec au sein de la fédération canadienne.
The panel is co-chaired by lawyer Sébastien Proulx, a former Liberal education minister, who began his political career with the defunct Action Démocratique du Québec (whose autonomiste credo was usurped by the CAQ), and Guillaume Rousseau, a University of Sherbrooke law professor and ex-PQ candidate who served as an adviser to the CAQ government during the drafting of Bill 21 in 2019.
Mr. Legault pointed to the secularism legislation, which bans some public employees from wearing religious symbols, as well as the CAQ’s language legislation as proof that his government has advanced Quebec’s autonomy. But Mr. Trudeau’s refusal to surrender full federal power to the province over immigration has hurt Mr. Legault politically. The PQ has made hay of the matter.
The immigration file is Mr. Legault’s Achilles’ heel. After a Monday meeting with Mr. Trudeau, at which the Prime Minister promised $750-million to help cover the cost of integrating asylum seekers in the province, Mr. Legault pressed Mr. Trudeau to cut in half the number of temporary immigrants who enter Quebec under federal programs. “One hundred per cent of the housing problem in Quebec comes from the increase in the number of temporary immigrants,” he insisted. Mr. Trudeau chafed at that claim and reminded Mr. Legault that half of all temporary workers enter Quebec through programs the province already directly or indirectly controls.
Still, Mr. Legault desperately needs to score a win on the immigration file. And he is counting on the Proulx-Rousseau committee to help point the way. It could recommend a referendum on reclaiming full power over immigration from Ottawa, an idea with which Mr. Legault has previously toyed.
The committee must table its report by Oct. 15. Mr. Legault can hardly wait.