Quebecers will now have to learn to “live with the virus” of COVID-19, explained Premier Françoiss Legault, announcing the gradual lifting of health measures.
Despite the blessing of Public Health, based on scholarly epidemiological analyses, one cannot help but think that beyond considerations of mental health, the economy or social peace, the haste to lift restrictions and to store the vaccine passport is explained above all by the progression of another virus, conservative this one, which is beginning to spread in a worrying way.
Mr. Legault knows from experience that a nascent party should not be underestimated, provided the situation is favorable to it. Barely a few weeks after the CAQ had swallowed the ADQ, in the fall of 2011, a CROP poll suggested a sweep of the new formation. Its leader himself already saw himself as prime minister.
The results of the 2012 election were a great disappointment, but the CAQ still won 27% of the votes and elected 19 deputies. Éric Duhaime’s PCQ is still a long way off, but it is clear that he has the wind in his sails.
His newfound popularity may wane as dissatisfaction with the restrictions wanes, but it would be unwise to assume a flash in the pan. Even if life resumes a more normal course, the pandemic will inevitably leave its mark. At the start, who would have thought that the crisis of reasonable accommodation would poison Quebec politics for years?
The pandemic has taught us that viruses have an unfortunate propensity to mutate and that variants can be more contagious. Already, the conservative virus has begun to infect new clienteles, whose allergy to sanitary measures is undoubtedly the symptom of a deeper evil.
The reform of the health system will certainly be an important theme of the next election. The “refoundation plan” that Minister Christian Dubé will present shortly will be resolutely part of a public and universal system, but more and more of them believe that the solution lies in giving more space to the private sector. This is also what Éric Duhaime believes.
In 2003, Jean Charest hit the mark by denouncing the “two-speed medicine” proposed by the ADQ and he was able to promise without provoking a huge burst of laughter that he would put things right in a year. Once in power, François Legault gave up the pilot projects of private medicine that he had believed necessary to concede to the survivors of the ADQ. In either case, the promised improvements never came.
Today, there are more skeptics than ever. The search for a family doctor looks like an impossible mission and the load shedding caused by the pandemic has further lengthened waiting lists on which tens of thousands of patients risk vegetating for years. The apostles of privatization can only find attentive ears.
To varying degrees, all the other parties have made the fight against climate change a top priority and set targets that seem more unrealistic than each other. Here again, Mr. Duhaime says aloud what many prefer to think quietly when he asks: “Which factories are they going to close? Are they going to ban snowmobiles? Are four wheels one of the things they want to eliminate in Quebec? All those “they” who always find new ways to poison the lives of good people.
It is not surprising that a number of QS voters are switching to the PCQ. Everywhere and at all times, we have been able to observe more or less significant transfers from one extreme of the political spectrum to the other. In the eyes of many, QS appeared to be the only tool for contesting a system of which they consider themselves to be the victims, but they feel left out by “wokism”.
Caquiste voters are nevertheless the most likely to contract the Conservative virus, as evidenced by its progression in the greater Quebec City region. Even where the ground is less fertile for PCQ, the risk of collateral damage is real.
With 30% undecided or discreet, the poll conducted at the beginning of the month in Marie-Victorin should probably be taken with a grain of salt, but if the fight with the PQ is as close as it suggests, the 8% of which the PCQ is credited could be sorely lacking in the CAQ.
Mr. Legault is much less in a hurry to call a by-election there than he seemed to be before the holidays. He obviously hopes that the virus will have reached its “peak” before being forced into it.