Eric Duhaime

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Well, that was…something. The 2022 Quebec Election is over and the results are in, and, for the most part, have been in since early Tuesday. In was ready for some of them…or was I. Let’s break them down:

Sad But Predictable: CAQ Majority

I was prepared for another Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) Government. I fully expected the evening would end with Premier François Legault winning a second Majority Government, possibly even a larger one.

I wasn’t expecting it at the beginning of the evening, though. Seriously, I had just figured out where to stream the results and the first thing I saw, even before I got the volume turned I knew it was that it was a CAQ Majority.

Another four years of Legault, for many, is a horrific prospect. My colleague Samantha Gold will speak about what it means for those most directly affected in a post to be published later. For me, this result is primarily a sad one.

It’s sad that there are enough people spread out across enough ridings who not only tolerate Legault’s xenophobia, pro-privatization stance and general right-wing bs, but actually support at least one, if not all, of the three. It’s also sad that, once again, Montreal voters don’t seem to count in the big picture.

Once again, all but two ridings on the island went for anyone but the CAQ and yet a CAQ Government we have. Legault can keep passing laws targeted at Montreal without having to answer to the people who live here.

The second-largest city in Canada, the largest city in Quebec and a world-class multicultural and largely progressive metropolis doesn’t have a say in some of the laws that affect it. Instead we are at the whim of people who are so antithetical to progress that they actually find a joke like François Legault electable.

But I digress. I was expecting that outcome. Most people who kept an eye on Quebec politics and the polls did.

Glad we got that out of the way right away, now we can look forward to good news from Montreal…or not.

Unexpected and Disappointing: No Great Change in Montreal Status-Quo

It looked, early on in this campaign, like the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) was in for a bit of a routing. Maybe not a complete one like the Parti Québécois (PQ) suffered last time, but a significant one rooted in Liberal bastions on the Island of Montreal, including Saint-Henri-Saint-Anne, Leader Dominique Anglade’s home riding (and my riding).

It also looked like Québec solidaire (QS) could be positioning itself as a strong primary opposition to the CAQ. This would herald a new dichotomy in Quebec politics with progressive QS policies on one hand and Legault’s right wing (or “centre-right” as he’ claims) on the other.

This would be a welcome change from the old Federalist/Sovereigntist split that had dominated the political scene here for over half a century and really seemed on its way out. Also, if some of the smaller parties like the Green Party of Quebec (PVQ) or even upstart parties like Bloc Montréal made some inroads in PLQ strongholds in Montreal, it would prove that the Libs can’t take our support for granted and not fight for our interests as they try to win votes in CAQ regions.

Unfortunately, while the Liberals lost ten seats since the last election, it was mostly to the CAQ and not in Montreal. They firmly remain the Official Opposition.

QS, meanwhile, did pick up a seat, going from ten to eleven, and it was from the Liberals and on the Island of Montreal, Verdun in particular. This was nice, but it would have been great if the trend continued and especially of QS’s Guillaume Cliche-Rivard had unseated Anglade.

Instead, the Libs hold pretty much the west of the island and QS has, for the most part, the old PQ ridings (from back when the PQ at least pretended to be progressive and not just nationalist). This would be fine if Montreal had the same influence it had when the PQ and PLQ traded victories. Now, though, when you leave the island, you are hit with a sea of CAQ.

Also, the smaller progressive parties barely made a dent. Bloc leader Balarama Holness and Green Leader Alex Tyrrell personally finished fifth and seventh respectively in the same riding (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce).

The best way to beat Legault next time is with a strong, progressive opposition clearly defined this time. And that opposition needs strong roots or at least support in Montreal.

The only way that opposition can be the Liberals is if they actually change their political DNA and stop being the party that sort-of campaigns to the left and then shifts rightward when in power, and that would take a serious loss to progressive ideas, if it’s possible at all. Probably not, to be honest.

For it to be QS, two things would have to happen:

  1. QS would have to stop trying to appease people in Legault’s base the way co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois did when the PQ leader pressured him during the debate and realize that they won’t vote for them anyways. Instead, they should focus on their own base and growing it and try to appeal more to staunch progressives, Montrealers and Anglos.
  2. Anglos would have to not be afraid of voting for a party with sovereignty on their platform. It’s not the xenophobic separatism you are used to and it’s not their top priority (plus, remember that at this point, we’re going for a strong opposition)

So there wasn’t a great victory for progressives (and for me) in the race for second. Was there any silver lining in these election results?

Some Good News: Conservatives Don’t Win a Single Seat & PQ Reduced to Three

One thing I was afraid of was that Éric Duhaime’s Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) would somehow squeak through a win or two on the West Island, NDG or Westmount due to the party’s opposition to Bill 96. That didn’t happen.

In fact, Duhaime’s late-in-the-game pivot to trying to woo Anglos didn’t work and neither did his earlier attempt to outflank Legault on the right by playing to the trucker convoy/anti-vax crowd. While performing decently in some ridings, the party didn’t win a single seat in the National Assembly and Duhaime even lost his.

It goes to show that trying to out-Legault Legault doesn’t work. Same thing for the PQ, the once-great, frequently in power PQ has now been reduced to just three seats, including one for its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, who was in a real fight.

While I like the idea of splitting the bigot vote and/or the right-wing vote, as it could damage Legault, the fact that it didn’t work is ultimately a good thing. At least now, the CAQ is isolated, despite being more powerful than ever.

An abundance of parties on the right just moves the progressive ones further from their base. The fewer xenophobic voices in our political sphere the better.

So this was a small victory, but I’ll take it.

About That Electoral System We Have

One thing that could have been said during any broadcast covering this election would have been “These results are brought to you by the First-Past-The-Post-System”, because without it, things could have turned out much differently. Sure, the CAQ still would have won, but not by such a striking majority. Also, Montreal voters like me wouldn’t have felt that we were voting for second place.

Nadeau-Dubois, Duhaime and St-Pierre Plamondon all mentioned our electoral system, how it affected the results and the need for a change in their victory speeches. The latter spent a few minutes on the topic and appealed to Premier Legault to keep his promise of electoral reform from the 2018 campaign.

Now while St-Pierre Plamondon was correct in his assessment of this particular topic, I found it funny and hypocritical that the head of a party that benefited greatly from FPTP pretty much every other election for over 50 years was now railing against the process. The other two leaders, though, were perfectly justified in their opposition.

While it’s, um, unlikely, that Legault will revisit electoral reform this mandate, we really do need change. It seems like the one thing that could give us a result that isn’t as cringe-worthy and disheartening as this one was.

FTB WeekendsNewsOpinionPolitics

Jason C. McLean and Dawn McSweeney welcome Samantha Gold to talk about the 2022 Quebec Election: Legault’s bigotry, youth voter turnout, QS and smaller leftist parties, a relevance for Bloc Pot and more!

Find out where and when you can vote at electionsquebec.qc.ca

For Samantha Gold’s election caricatures and more art:
@samiamart on Facebook & @samiamartistmtl on Instagram

Follow Dawn McSweeney @mcmoxy on Twitter and Instagram

Follow Jason C. McLean @jasoncmclean on Twitter and Instagram

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Quebeckers are heading to the polls on October 3, 2022 and this election is a controversial one. The campaigns have been characterized by a high number of threats of violence against candidates, xenophobic remarks by Quebec’s premier, and missed opportunities.

The incumbent, Premier François Legault of the Coalition Avenir du Québec (CAQ) is facing controversy after controversy as he repeatedly makes xenophobic comments in an attempt to fire up his base, largely consisting of voters outside Montreal. Such remarks include:

  • The accusation on Radio-Canada on September 4th that Montrealers look down on the people of Quebec City and Levis, when people who have lived in both cities can confirm that the animosity is often the other way around due to Legault voters’ fear of Montreal’s ethnic diversity.
  • In the same Radio-Canada interview, Legault complained about Montreal getting so many bridges when the city’s geography as an island requires them.
  • Claims in early September that Quebec needs to curb immigration in order to prevent violent extremism, quickly followed by a half-assed apology on September 7th.
  • On September 11, 2022, the anniversary of 9/11, an event that led to a barrage of Islamophobia, Legault said non-French speaking immigrants are a threat to Quebec cohesion.

In addition to the barrage of xenophobia, the Coalition Avenir du Quebec seems determined to undermine the rights of Canada’s First Nations. Their election platform on climate change presents a plan to add new mega-dams for producing clean hydro-electric power, a plan presented without consulting Quebec’s Indigenous leaders who are rightfully concerned about the effect the dams will have on their lands.

Gaining ground against the Coalition Avenir du Québec is the Quebec Conservative Party, led by right-wing columnist Eric Duhaime, whose solutions to the province’s ongoing problems include more privatization of Quebec healthcare, and the elimination of vaccine mandates that have thus far kept province from a new pandemic wave.

Since last year, Duhaime’s Conservatives have been gaining ground in typical CAQ strongholds such as Quebec City.

Though both the Conservatives and the CAQ have tried to present themselves as fiscally responsible, the Conservatives have been plagued by their leader’s unpaid tax bills and that both their and the CAQ’s approaches to immigration are to the detriment of Quebec business owners. For years business owners in Quebec City and Montreal have been demanding increases to immigration to fill labor shortages particularly in the manufacturing and export sectors, in spite of this, here are the two parties’ platforms:

  • The Conservatives plan to reduce immigration from the current seventy-thousand a year threshold to thirty-five thousand a year.
  • The CAQ plans to reduce immigration from seventy-thousand to fifty-thousand a year

Meanwhile, Québec solidaire (QS) is the only party seemingly committed to global human rights and a carrot and stick approach to climate change:

  • QS proposes to increase immigration from seventy thousand to eighty thousand a year.
  • On climate change, QS proposes an increase in protected areas, as well as a fifteen percent tax on the purchase of SUVs and other heavily polluting vehicles with exceptions for large families and rural Quebeckers.
  • Québec solidaire’s plan is the only one being praised by climate change experts.

Meanwhile, the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) is floundering in the polls. Once a political powerhouse that led Quebec on and off for decades, the party under Dominique Anglade is losing ground to other parties.

With sovereignty off the table for the CAQ and Conservatives, the Liberals can no longer present themselves as the federalist party in Quebec, and swearing to protect English speakers is not enough to win an election. This election was a missed opportunity for the Liberals, who could have easily won the votes of the young, ethnic minorities, and the impoverished in Quebec had they shifted their policies further to the left.

Quebec is starved for a non-separatist leftist party and given that the leftist sovereigntist Quebec Solidaire came in second in provincial Liberal strongholds such as NDG and Westmount, this election campaign is a good example of self-sabotage. Here is what we know so far:

  • Anglade’s waffling on French language protections and religious freedom and the controversial Bills 96 and 21 since taking leadership of the PLQ has alienated many of its core voters in Montreal.
  • On September 5, 2022 the PLQ announced a forty-one billion dollar spending plan which includes twelve billion in income tax cuts.
  • The PLQ’s proposal to address the labor shortage includes keeping the current seventy thousand annual immigration quota and encouraging older workers to stay on the job.
  • This year the PLQ’s campaign fundraising is falling far behind that of its rivals.
  • There are rumors that PLQ leader Dominique Anglade is in danger of losing her seat in the National Assembly.

Whether the PLQ can rise from the ashes remains to be seen, but it looks like Quebec Solidaire will be their primary challenger as the representative of class and minority rights in Quebec.

Featured Image: Drawings by Samantha Gold