The Liberals have become to Quebec politics what the Toronto Maple Leafs are to hockey: no matter who they play against, we are happy to see them lose.
But failing to be liked, the Queen City club can at least count on its star players to command respect, while the Liberal Party of Quebec can no longer even attract a minimum of consideration.
Over the years, Quebecers have witnessed with a mixture of sadness and anger the decline of the party of Jean Lesage and Robert Bourassa, which had brought them into modernity. Since the failure of the attempts at constitutional reconciliation, it is as if it had ceased to regress. Under the reign of Jean Charest, the PLQ presided over a veritable perversion of political mores. Then Philippe Couillard made him lose the little interest in asserting the Quebec difference that he could still have; he had practically come to apologize for it.
The thaw suffered at the hands of Québec solidaire in what was a fortified castle, a riding where French speakers represent barely half (53%) of the voters, gives the measure of the distress of the PLQ. Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois was the first to be surprised at the extent of his party’s victory.
There is no reason to wonder about the failures of the party’s organization in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne. If Liberal supporters did not vote, it is simply because they did not want to vote. Admittedly, the result of the by-election could have no effect on the balance of power in the National Assembly, but the PLQ is anything but inspiring.
Of course, voters did not vote against social justice or the need for a strong economy, which Marc Tanguay associates with “liberal values”. Rather, they judged that others could defend them just as well, if not better. Even Anglophones did not want to vote for the “Party of the English”.
Last November, former senator André Pratte, who volunteered to revive the PLQ, wrote in The duty that “the work of reconstruction will be even more difficult if it begins on the ruins of a battlefield”. This is indeed the case. Even the furniture he said he wanted to save was swept away in the storm.
The victory in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne is obviously a balm for QS after the disappointing results of October 3rd. There is no doubt that Guillaume Cliche-Rivard constitutes a quality addition to the solidarity representation in the National Assembly. His victory eloquently testifies to the mobilization capacity of Québec solidaire in Montreal, but its problem of attractiveness in the regions and in the suburbs remains unresolved.
It is easier to run one hare than two at a time. In recent weeks, QS has been able to adapt its speech to the taste of the voters of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne without worrying too much about the others, insisting much more on the irritants of law 96 on the language that a united government would correct. than on the reasons why its members supported it.
The day after the election, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois presented the new deputy as a true independentist, but QS was careful not to raise the question of the political future of Quebec during the campaign. Advocating the integration of immigrants and distributing a pamphlet written only in English seemed inconsequential to say the least.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was not wrong to say that Québec solidaire had led “a more liberal campaign than the PLQ”. Unless we resign ourselves to remaining a strictly Montreal party, this cannot be the case in the next general election.
The Parti Québécois’ advance of three points compared to its result of October 3 corresponds exactly to the increase in its voting intentions throughout Quebec recorded by the polls. This is undoubtedly encouraging, but we are very far from the 30% or more that it once collected in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne.
If QS remains an enemy brother, it is however in relation to the Coalition avenir Québec, which woos the same electorate, that the PQ can best measure its progress. In the last general elections, the gap approached 10 points in favor of the CAQ; Monday, it was 2 points to the advantage of the PQ.
It is true that the young CAQ candidate found himself very much alone. The manifest lack of interest displayed by his party gave him the appearance of a sacrificial lamb. Premier Legault did not set foot once in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne during the campaign to support the president of his party’s youth wing.
Mr. Legault probably had no reason to associate himself by his presence with a lost cause, but the fourth place of the CAQ can only reinforce the impression of a government as foreign to the metropolis as the official opposition can be to the rest of Quebec.