The anemia that characterizes the Quebec Liberal Party at the start of the campaign is not new. In 2016, the chairman of the Political Commission, Jérôme Turcotte, who found himself four years later in Dominique Anglade’s cabinet, presented a report to the party leadership which painted an alarming picture.
“Currently, many activists, including myself, have the feeling that the PLQ is increasingly becoming a trademark used to elect a parliamentary wing, which has abandoned activism and is less and less a real party rooted in active citizen participation,” he observed.
However, the leader of the party and Prime Minister at the time, Philippe Couillard, had claimed to restore the PLQ to its former vitality. He reproached his predecessor, Jean Charest, for having let him wither away and for having reduced him to a mere machine for collecting money and electing deputies.
In a policy document he presented to the party executive in 2013, when he was a candidate for leadership, he wrote: “The Liberal Party belongs to its members. The political personnel and the personnel of the party are not there to direct the members and the authorities of the party. They are there to serve them. He also intended to remake it into the instrument of reflection that had once inspired the Quiet Revolution.
The good resolutions of the future leader flew away quickly. Two years after Mr. Couillard became Prime Minister, Jérôme Turcotte noted instead a dramatic drop in the number of members, a disconnection of MPs from the militant base, excessive control of the Prime Minister’s office, and so on. Mr. Couillard’s personality and conception of power did not go well with the leadership of a political party.
Since the start of this campaign, we have noted the low participation in Dominique Anglade’s rallies, but this was already the case in 2018. We were very far from the demonstrations of force to which the Liberals had accustomed us in the past.
The tightening of the Act respecting the financing of political parties has eliminated the massive fundraising that had led to the abuses noted by the Charbonneau commission, but the rule is the same for everyone, and the PLQ is today the one whose members contribute the least, to the point where he had to mortgage two buildings belonging to him to be able to finance his campaign. After years of riding in Cadillacs, the Liberals have to make do with a minoune.
In January, when the PLQ launched a call for candidates on its website, Ms.me Anglade had defended himself well from having difficulty recruiting. “There are hundreds of people who have come forward,” she assured. Yet even in a riding with a Liberal past as glorious as Jean-Talon, she had to ask a member of her staff to volunteer. Where will it take those who are still missing or who are beginning to withdraw?
It is true that the polls are not likely to encourage candidacies, particularly in the French-speaking counties, where it becomes almost embarrassing to defend the liberal colors, but the projections are even more gloomy for the PQ, which nevertheless managed to fill the 125 constituencies.
The interim period that followed the departure of Philippe Couillard and the suspension of partisan activities imposed by the pandemic could only have aggravated the problems noted by Jérôme Turcotte, but the arrival of Mme Anglade, elected chief by default, did not improve things. In the spring of 2020, his team considered taking the party to court if the leadership race schedule was changed due to health constraints. Nothing to relax the atmosphere.
Two years later, she still suffers from a lack of notoriety. At the congress last November, we even thought it necessary to simulate an intimate interview hosted by Alexandra Diaz to make the leader known to her own activists.
If we are to believe the latest Léger poll, she is not making a better impression on the Liberal electorate. Of the four leaders of the opposition parties, she is the one whose voters are least likely to consider her the most suitable for the office of Prime Minister or Leader of the Official Opposition.
There is nothing more trying for a party leader in the campaign than having to answer daily, while keeping a smile, questions about organizational problems that obscure his message, but we can not harvest what we have neglected to sow.