International relations (IR) is not François Legault’s strong subject.
For two main reasons:
- While he was learning to become prime minister, the pandemic… confined him to Quebec. Let’s say that it was not an ideal period to immerse oneself in the merits and possibilities of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine (what is within our jurisdiction, in Quebec, is within our jurisdiction everywhere).
- IR never interested him much. For good reasons, some will say. Legault, as he repeats, likes “results”. However, the fruits of diplomacy are often intangible or reaped in the medium or even long term; and sometimes, the fruit is downright… non-existent. The 2018 CAQ program included only two promises in international matters (out of 251): promotion of Quebec through agritourism and defense of the forestry industry.
Moreover, in the middle of the 2018 electoral campaign, François Legault had initially announced that he would not participate in the Francophonie Summit in Yerevan, Armenia, since it took place in the days after the elections. Faced with the outcry, he changed his mind. And shortly after his election, it was as prime minister-designate that he flew to the country of Aznavour, on Justin Trudeau’s plane!
The two prime ministers will then have their first direct conversations. One of the main topics covered? Immigration!
It was necessary, Mr. Legault opined, to urgently establish “a new immigration model”. Economic immigrants, they insisted, should only be admitted after passing two tests: one on French and another on “Quebec values.”
Monomania
Six years later, a new immigration model is in place… but it is in no way the result of any Ottawa-Quebec agreement. Dysfunctional, it is rather the product of a) the panicked improvisation of our governments in the face of post-pandemic labor shortages. And b) Ottawa’s immigrationist ideology of the “Century Initiative” type.
And here is François Legault, in the middle of his second mandate, who still finds himself, on the sidelines of a Francophonie Summit, seeking more power, more gestures from Ottawa, and above all results, etc. So much so that he seems to have developed, in the face of phenomena linked to immigration, a sort of obsession, a monomania.
UNESCO
The Prime Minister should have waited to better understand certain aspects of the file before speaking publicly. Strong incentives, put in place by federal states in order to better distribute AD across a territory, exist: in Switzerland, in Germany.
Mr. Legault also clumsily suggested falsehoods, for 24 hours, about the tram rolling stock contract signed by the city of Quebec with Alstom.
Did he absolutely want to obscure Quebec’s messages and objectives? For example, at UNESCO, the need to fight against the imperial domination of web giants; link linguistic pluralism and cultural diversity? It looks good.