Political parties do not like doomsayers. In October 2003, political scientist Jean-Herman Guay created a real commotion among the delegates to the national council of the Parti Québécois (PQ) when he told them that the formation had perhaps been that of a single generation and that his obsession referendum risked being fatal to him.
Bernard Landry had not digested it. Furious, he grabbed the microphone to denounce this unspeakable defeatism. “This dream of René Lévesque, to give us a complete and recognized country, it will never leave me,” he said.
PQ militants tried to ward off bad luck by electing the youngest leader in their history, André Boisclair, two years later, with the results that we know. Twenty years after Mr. Guay’s warning, the PQ is still struggling to find the younger generation.
Last week, it was the former president of the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) political commission, Jérôme Turcotte, who played the Cassandres, in an open letter published in The Press on the eve of the general council of the PLQ.
By dint of seeing itself as a champion of Canadian unity, the party of Jean Lesage and Robert Bourassa ended up losing its Quebecness, he notes. He finds it hard to see how the PLQ, confined to ridings where Francophones are generally in the minority, can now emerge from marginality.
Liberal mores are different from those of the PQ. Mr. Turcotte was able to repeat his plea to the general council meeting in Victoriaville without causing a scandal, simply a certain annoyance, but his message was turned a deaf ear. The disconnection from the French-speaking majority is such that one even wonders if we have understood it. It is as if the Liberals are now living on another planet.
The co-chair of the committee on the revival of the PLQ, André Pratte, believes that the party does not have to examine its conscience, explaining that “it’s something you do when you’ve done something wrong”.
This is precisely the case. To please its Anglophone base, the QLP made the mistake of developing a conception of rights and freedoms that former minister Benoît Pelletier described as “absolutist” to the detriment of the collective rights of Francophones.
If the PQ had not been there to pass Bill 101, which the Liberals categorically opposed, seeing it as a “separatist” law, the “Louisianization” of Quebec that the Prime Minister Legault would be done.
At the PLQ, we are still of the opinion that we should not impose the use of French, but rather encourage it, as if the limits of the incentive measures, in an environment where everything favors the precedence of English, n had not been demonstrated for a long time. The red planet would be inhospitable, even toxic for the French.
One delegate wanted to see in his party “the provincial version of the Macdonald-Cartier alliance”, which allowed the creation of the Canadian federation, but the weight of Francophones in the Canada of 1867 was disproportionate to that of today. today. While all the indicators confirm its decline in Quebec, it was fascinating to hear that the PLQ had a duty to promote it in the other provinces.
The other person who shares the presidency of the PLQ’s relaunch committee, the MNA for Bourassa-Sauvé, Madwa-Nika Cadet, explained that the objective was to update what it means to be a Liberal in 2023, but it was difficult to perceive a real desire for change in the General Council.
Jérôme Turcotte is not the first to try to awaken the Quebec fiber of the Liberals. In March 2001, Benoît Pelletier had made a well-felt exit at the General Council, imploring the delegates not to leave the PQ the monopoly of nationalism. The reaction had been lukewarm to say the least. It’s just if Jean Charest had not rebuffed him.
In all fairness, it must be recognized that liberals no longer automatically cringe when they hear the word “nation”, even if they themselves hardly ever pronounce it, preferring the word “fatherland”.
They still see themselves as “Canadians first and foremost”, as Daniel Johnson Jr. said, and seem unable to conceive of Quebec other than within Canada.
In his letter, Mr. Turcotte was worried about this “Canadianizing nationalism”, saying that he could no longer bear to be simply “an audible minority when it comes time to talk about affirming Quebec”. At the end of the week, in the liberal universe, it was rather him who gave the impression of coming from another planet.