After observing an increase in voting intentions, the Parti Québécois (PQ) saw its efforts crowned by its recent victory in Jean-Talon. Who would have thought him capable of collecting 44.1% of the vote when he came in third place in the general elections barely a year ago? Despite the considerable distance that separates him from power, the tide seems for the moment to have turned in his favor.
The political situation also seems conducive to the sovereignist formation positioning itself as a “government in waiting”. To embody another option in the face of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) and take advantage of the agony of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) and the stasis of Québec solidaire (QS), the PQ would benefit from turning the page on its identity shift of the last fifteen years. It is time to reconnect with its progressive and inclusive heritage.
To be more competitive in the Quebec electoral game, the PQ must better stand out by adjusting its positioning on certain key issues. In The new Quebec voterpolitical scientists Éric Bélanger, Jean-François Daoust, Valérie-Anne Mahéo and Richard Nadeau rightly maintain that the three divisions which structure Quebec political life are now state interventionism, the constitutional question and the taking into account of ethnocultural and religious diversity.
The PQ still differs too little from the CAQ on these axes to garner more than a protest vote. It lacks a narrative of a collective project for the Quebec nation that is coherent, unifying, and bearer of hope. If the two parties do not share the same ideas regarding the constitutional status of Quebec, the PQ’s independence option remains the least popular with the electorate. To compensate, the PQ could change its approach to pluralism by unambiguously rejecting any provincialist governance based on withdrawal. On this issue, it can do better than the CAQ, while remaining resolutely nationalist.
The PQ would benefit from this turning point while QS has proven its inability to propose a strong national project and to please groups other than the educated urban class and young people from large centers. According to a Léger poll, 49% of the solidarity electorate would vote “no” in a referendum, but the party rarely puts this issue at the forefront. Influenced by its most radical elements, QS was unable to propose an inclusive nationalism, in addition to having come to reject the Bouchard-Taylor compromise on the question of reasonable accommodation.
The PQ must get out of the dead end into which it ventured by trying, without success, to win back the vote lost to the Action Démocratique du Québec on identity issues. A promising avenue would be to reconnect with the key principles of neonationalism which carried the project of the Quiet Revolution, such as progressivism, pluralism and political liberalism. The PQ then aimed to be the government of Quebecers of all origins and to work for the development of an egalitarian French-speaking political community, with scrupulous respect for individual freedoms and the rights of minorities.
Just as it did forcefully in its first policy of living together “So many ways of being Quebecers” (1981), the PQ could offer a new unifying and positive discourse on immigration and diversity more broadly. This is far from being the case when we attribute responsibility for the decline of French only to people born elsewhere (the majority of whom speak the common language), when it results primarily from the drop in the fertility rate of French speakers. This type of assertion and the debates on thresholds, which have no scientific basis, indirectly contribute to presenting immigration as a problem or a threat.
While remaining sensitive to the concerns of the majority, the PQ would benefit from rebalancing its discourse by recalling with more vigor the contribution of immigration to the democratic and economic vitality of Quebec. It could also mark the collective imagination by proposing a more ambitious and welcoming language policy. This pluralistic and promising project would aim to further establish the status of French as a common public language and would be carried out with and for the benefit of people from immigrant backgrounds. This would be an opportunity to plug the holes in Law 96, particularly in terms of access to pre-university education in English, and to reflect on the generosity and universality of francization allowances.
If it wishes to position itself as a government in waiting, the PQ will have to think outside the box. By presenting a demanding, progressive and inclusive nationalism that is in line with its heritage, the PQ can distance itself from the conservative provincialism of the CAQ and succeed where QS failed.