François Legault begins the electoral campaign when pollsters and commentators draw him more than a majority: a “supermajority”. The Coalition avenir Québec could even elect some 100 deputies, according to the statistical model of electoral projection Qc125, and this, for better or for worse.
Monday, October 29, 1973. The Liberal Party of Quebec wins a landslide election victory, taking no less than 102 of the 110 seats in the National Assembly. This did not prevent the federal prime minister at the time, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, from reducing his Quebec counterpart, Robert Bourassa, to a “hot-dog eater”, refusing to help him pay the expenses of the Olympic Games. of Montreal in 1976 and threatening to unilaterally patriate the Constitution of Canada.
Sunday August 28, 2022. Prime Minister François Legault will politely ask the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, Michel Doyon, to proclaim the dissolution of the National Assembly. Then, the 65-year-old politician will board the CAQ campaign bus, which he hopes will take him to a parliamentary supermajority.
According to François Legault, the more the “mandate” that Quebec voters will give him on October 3 will be “strong”, the more he will be able to wrest concessions from the federal government, such as new powers in immigration. “I am asking, in the next election, for a strong mandate to go and negotiate this with the federal government. […] From the moment we have the support of a majority of Quebecers, it is hard for the federal political parties to refuse this request, ”he argued at the CAQ national convention last May. .
Federal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly dismissed out of hand the Quebec government’s request to select tens of thousands of immigration candidates registered in the family reunification program.
Enjoying the confidence of the elected Liberals and New Democrats in the House of Commons, Justin Trudeau has also hardened his tone over the past few months with regard to the Act respecting the secularism of the Quebec state (“Bill 21”) and the Act Respecting the Official and Common Language of Quebec, French (“Bill 96”), both of which have been partly shielded from legal challenges through the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by Parliament Quebec.
Moreover, the head of the federal government assured the To have to that the rights and freedoms protected by the Canadian Charter will not bend under the weight of the majority of the next Quebec government. “The Charter exists to counter, to ensure that, despite popular or populist majorities, we manage to guarantee the protection of all. […] That’s why a [telle] charter, within a democracy where the majority leads, it has its value”, he argued in an interview on June 30. With the approach of the kickoff of the Quebec election campaign, Justin Trudeau did not, however, go so far as to describe the chief caquiste as a hot dog eater.
Is the influence of a Quebec Premier on Ottawa based on the size of his parliamentary group?
The partial victory of the Parti Québécois in 1998 (42.87% of the vote against 43.55% for the PLQ) had “cut off the momentum” of PQ Premier Lucien Bouchard in his quest for independence from Ottawa, recalls the Professor in the Department of Political Science at Université Laval Eric Montigny.
If, despite a possible supermajority, the federal government prevented him from deploying his immigration plan or made it difficult to complete his third road link between Quebec and Lévis, what more could François Legault accomplish at the head of a parliamentary group of 95, 100 or 105 deputies?
In good standing
“In some parliaments, there are majorities necessary, for example to remove blocking mechanisms from the opposition, but this is not the case in our Parliament”, explains Eric Montigny.
In Quebec, only a few laws require a qualified majority, in particular those relating to the appointment or dismissal of persons designated by the National Assembly, i.e. the ethics and professional conduct commissioner, the Lobbyists Commissioner, the Chief Electoral Officer, the Public Protector, the Auditor General. Specifically, candidates for these public offices must have the support of at least two-thirds of the members of the National Assembly, or 84 deputies out of 125.
The CAQ does not want to select these public office holders alone, assures a CAQ source.
In practice
So why does François Legault aim to fill up on new deputies? And if it were only to have eyes and ears in all regions of Quebec, starting with those of Gaspésie and the Côte-Nord, where the CAQ has no elected officials, and get rid of elected officials of the annoying opposition of the caliber of solidarity Christine Labrie (Sherbrooke), whom the Prime Minister has decked out with the nickname of “Mother Teresa”, advances a CAQ strategist.
“In a parliamentary democratic world, it is not advantageous to have a supermajority”, points out the full professor of social communication at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (UQTR) Mireille Lalancette less than 40 days before the vote. “It’s good to have some form of opposition, to have people talking, to find themselves in the middle, to have a variety of perspectives around the table. If they just have like-minded people, it gets a little dangerous,” she adds.
The election of the twenty additional Caquiste deputies projected by Qc125 (97 deputies compared to 76 deputies at the time of the dissolution) would instil a false sense of security on Parliament Hill. It would complicate the life of the CAQ leader, François Legault, who would necessarily have to say no to contenders for the Council of Ministers, then who would be called upon to maintain the cohesion of his coalition of separatists and federalists. “There will be a lot of angry people,” predicts Mireille Lalancette.
Four years after the “2018 realignment election”, the nationalist political formation of François Legault continues its institutionalization in order to be sustainable. “There may be disappointments, but at the same time, that’s institutionalization,” notes Professor Eric Montigny, eager to see if the election of October 3 will be a confirmation election for that of 2018. or a reinstatement election.
The CAQ will begin on Sunday the road which could lead it to a hundred ridings, where it has a good chance of winning on October 3. First stop: the riding of Jonquière, which has been represented in the National Assembly by the PQ for 15 years, but on which the party of François Legault will “probably” put the grab, according to Qc125.
Attention, says the leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet. According to him, the balance of power of the Quebec government, regardless of its color, within Canada depends on the presence of separatists in the Quebec Parliament. “Without a contingent of sovereignists in the National Assembly—sovereignists who are not prepared to compromise on this on a day-to-day basis—there would be no balance of power in Quebec when there is no of possible prospect of sovereignty behind. That’s Quebec’s negotiating lever, ”he argues in an exchange with Le Devoir.
With Marie Vastel