He had promised autonomy. Here he is playing the Canadian card.
To the leader of the Parti Québécois who is asking him for a commission on the future of Quebec, he is reduced to replying that Quebeckers have put aside the debate on sovereignty for 50 years.
Certainly, but that does not change the fact that against Ottawa, François Legault drew a blank.
The irony is that he is now trying the federalism card to succeed where his flashy nationalism has failed.
Vague memory
Indeed, the 21 demands of his New Project for Quebec Nationalists seem far away.
The single tax declaration, so urgent in 2018, is only a vague memory. The last word on environmental projects resurfaces from time to time, but nothing more.
What about the framework for the federal spending power?
We cling, in extremis, to the hope of a form of compromise on Bill 101 for federal companies.
Even full powers in immigration, yet essential to the survival of the nation, said François Legault last spring, seem to have become taboo.
However, it is precisely on the immigration front that the strategic shift is obvious.
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What alliances?
The common front tactic in health will have proved futile, worse, humiliating. It was misunderstanding his counterparts to imagine that they would resist for long.
But they remain politicians. To shovel the problem of Roxham Road for them was very cunning.
Talk to the mayors of Niagara and Cornwall who say they are overwhelmed with barely 3,000 asylum seekers.
Suddenly, Canada can no longer reduce the debate to the alleged xenophobia of Quebecers. It has become a national debate.
François Legault used Ontario to defend the interests of Quebecers. Who would have thought he would exploit the Canadian map so skillfully.
But where he surprised the most was certainly when he was in Newfoundland. Not only did he make an act of contrition for the injustice felt by Newfoundlanders for the Churchill Falls contract, but he went where none of his predecessors had dared.
François Legault has tacitly buried the hatchet on one of the most symbolic disputes in the common history of the two provinces. By designating the province as Newfoundland and Labrador, he essentially conceded the annexation in 1927 of the vast territory that had once belonged to Quebec.
It is purely symbolic. But it is also indicative of the ideological concessions that François Legault is ready to make to advance the interests of Quebec.
The “win-win” contract on Churchill Falls, he wants it. This electricity, Quebec needs it.
Horizon
What matters at the start of 2023 is to move forward. Not so much towards autonomy, but towards real gains. A strategic source of electricity for the energy transition, a solution to the almost insoluble problem of Roxham Road.
François Legault suddenly seems ready to dance the Canadian tango to achieve his ends.
The sovereignists will tell you that he is wasting his time, that the crisis will break out around secularism and French.
Perhaps, but in the meantime the stubborn autonomism of yesterday has given way to a sudden elasticity.