Among the 90 elected or re-elected members of the CAQ who were sworn in on Tuesday, there will inevitably be disappointments when Premier Legault unveils his new cabinet.
However, they will have to contain their frustration. Mr. Legault has warned them that he will not tolerate any dissent. “In private, in caucus, we can tell each other anything, but when we go out, we are a united block, impossible to cross,” he said.
He may have had in mind the sulking of the former deputy for Iberville, Claire Samson, who could never digest her exclusion from the Council of Ministers after the 2018 election and who finally joined to the Conservative Party of Éric Duhaime.
Mme Samson had upset many by comparing the backbenchers to “green plants” who didn’t kill themselves with the task. “Of all the jobs I’ve had, and I include when I was a clerk at Miracle Mart at 17, or when I was a waitress at Da Giovanni, the job here at the National Assembly is is here job where I have worked the least in my life,” she explained.
While constituency work can be rewarding for all elected officials, being a backbench member of the ruling party can certainly be mortifying. While his opposition colleagues are having a blast in question period or in the parliamentary committee, he is condemned to applaud the spectacle offered by those who were lucky enough to get a limousine.
This can be all the more infuriating as they are not necessarily awarded on merit and as the imperatives of regional representation or gender parity can create real injustices, with political interest often outweighing competence. .
Of course, no one is forced to go into politics, but many give up prestigious, often more lucrative, positions to do so. Having the feeling of having sacrificed oneself for nothing and of gradually transforming into a green plant can become unbearable.
The parliamentary system allows the party in power to distribute numerous sinecures, accompanied by bonuses, which help to sweeten the pill, but nothing beats a seat, even a modest one, in the Council of Ministers.
It is easier to make the newly elected members wait, whom the pleasure of discovering the job of parliamentarian can satisfy for a while, without losing hope that an upcoming reshuffle will open the doors to the holy of holies for them.
Those who have already spent several years in the back seats waiting for their turn or, even worse, who have to go back, are more likely to cause problems, knowing that back and forths are rather rare.
It is not impossible that patience will end up being rewarded, as was the case for Pierre Paradis. After having been one of Robert Bourassa’s star ministers, he lived through a long purgatory under the reign of Jean Charest, before being rehabilitated by Philippe Couillard, but this remains the exception.
Mr. Legault is obviously not the first to have to deal with a bloated deputation. Mr. Bourassa had this fortunate problem on several occasions, and defections due to frustration were rather rare.
Caucus oversight, however, was a full-time job for some of his deputies, and it had taken some imagination to find occupations for MPs who might become sullen due to idleness.
For decades we have been debating without much result on the revalorization of the role of the deputy. One may even have the impression that there has been a regression. “The MP is no longer always the busy and prestigious man he once was. In my opinion, the deputy is not useless, he is misused, ”said Marcel Masse, freshly elected under the colors of the National Union, in 1966.
Fifty years later, the former Liberal MP for Fabre, Gilles Ouimet, who resigned in August 2015, barely 16 months after his re-election, called himself a “green plant”. Former President of the Bar, he could legitimately aspire to the Ministry of Justice, but Mr. Couillard had left him on the bench. “The government deputies have a role of extras […] It is clear to me that the influence of the executive over the legislature must be changed,” he said.
In February 2020, the Minister responsible for Parliamentary Reform, Simon Jolin-Barrette, presented a series of proposals aimed in particular at “a clearer separation” between the executive and the legislature in the parliamentary committees, where the detailed study of the projects legislation would be left to MPs, without the oversight of sponsoring ministers.
Mr. Legault indicated the day after the October 3 election that he intended to continue the work in order to “improve the role of each of the 125 deputies”, but that will not prevent them from thinking that they deserve sitting around the Cabinet table.