Parti Quebecois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon questions the government during question period on Feb. 8 at the legislature in Quebec City.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
As Quebec’s National Assembly rose in December, Premier François Legault quipped that he had asked Santa to bring him a compass for Christmas. He was only half joking.
During the fall session of the legislature, Mr. Legault seemed to have lost his sense of direction. The Coalition Avenir Québec Premier’s once-reliable political intuition had failed him as he took one misstep after another. After a November poll showed the previously left-for-dead Parti Québécois suddenly overtaking the CAQ in popular support, a visibly dejected Mr. Legault declared: “Quebeckers are mad at me.”
They still are. Two polls in the past two weeks showed the PQ widening its lead over the CAQ, to seven and 11 percentage points, respectively. The sovereigntist PQ’s unfailingly upbeat leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has eclipsed an increasingly morose Mr. Legault as Quebeckers’ preferred choice to lead the province.
There are lots of reasons for that, beginning with the Premier’s spectacular flip-flops on building a multi-billion-dollar “third link” between Quebec City and the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. The CAQ campaigned in 2022 on a promise to build a tunnel between the capital and Lévis, Que., only to scrap the plan in early 2023. Mr. Legault then revived the idea after the CAQ lost a fall Quebec City by-election to the PQ.
The CAQ government subsequently announced it would give up to $7-million to the Los Angeles Kings to play an exhibition game in Quebec City later this year. The move was an attempt to placate voters in the capital, who have longed for the return of a National Hockey League franchise to the city. But it backfired badly on Mr. Legault. Inflation-ravaged voters were outraged by what they saw as a wasteful bribe.
Next came revelations that five CAQ backbench MNAs had invited local mayors to rub shoulders with prominent cabinet ministers at $100-a-ticket fundraisers, putting Mr. Legault on the defensive. The Premier last week announced that the CAQ would immediately stop accepting private donations entirely and rely exclusively on public financing. The move was panned as a huge overreaction. Private party funding is an important tenet of democracy and a legitimate avenue for citizen participation in politics. Mr. Legault’s impulsive decision to ban it is sure to come back to haunt him.
Meanwhile, Mr. Plamondon’s polling numbers have been surging amid largely uncritical media coverage. But he must now address the elephant in the room – the PQ’s promise to hold another referendum on sovereignty – as his party’s prospects of winning the next election enter the realm of the possible.
The R-word had been largely banished from the political lexicon in Quebec in recent years. Mr. Legault, who left the PQ to found the CAQ, owed his electoral success in 2018 to his vow to end the PQ-Quebec Liberal Party duopoly that had split Quebeckers along federalist-sovereigntist lines for decades. His promise never to hold a referendum was music to the ears of even nationalist Quebeckers.
This week’s Leger poll revealed that only 35 per cent of Quebeckers would say “Yes” to sovereignty, compared to 56 per cent who would reject the province’s separation from Canada. Almost a quarter of PQ voters would vote “No” in a future referendum.
Those figures suggest Mr. Plamondon may need to play down his party’s sovereigntist platform to maintain his lead in the polls. Mr. Legault’s best hope for reviving his own political fortunes may lie in trying to prevent him from getting away with it.
That is, unless the Liberals beat him to it. Former federal MP and ex-Montreal mayor Denis Coderre’s recent revelation that he is considering a leadership bid for the party has generated more media buzz than the Liberals have seen in years. Mr. Coderre remains one of Quebec’s best-known and most colourful politicians. Despite suffering a stroke last year, he has not lost his knack for the vernacular. He is already positioning himself as “Captain Canada” in the face of a resurgent PQ.
The Leger poll showed that, with Mr. Coderre as leader, the Liberals would reap 21-per-cent support, compared to 15 per cent under interim leader Marc Tanguay. While not entirely a vindication for Mr. Coderre, the survey did suggest the Liberals may still have a pulse after all, and that, with the right leader, they could be a contender again.
Whether that person is Mr. Coderre remains to be seen. Leger did not ask Quebeckers how they would vote if François-Philippe Champagne became the Quebec Liberal leader, even though the energetic federal Innovation Minister is being heavily courted to run for the job.
Since becoming Premier in 2018, Mr. Legault has faced weak opposition in the National Assembly. There are signs this is changing. He will need much more than a compass to find his way forward.