Will you allow me to defend Jean Charest? His opponent’s victory is overwhelming. Pierre Poilievre humiliated him across Canada, in Quebec, and even in his region of origin, Estrie. In fact, Charest did less well (16%) than Maxime Bernier on the first lap of the race 2017 leadership (29%). Treacherous even in his victory speech, Poilievre hailed the loser for his exploits of the last century — his role in the 1995 referendum — but could not find a single recent contribution to the Conservative cause.
Jean Charest’s dream of chatting with the greats of this world at the G7 meetings is in tatters. He must return, sheepishly, to his lifestyle as a millionaire lawyer, and, a misfortune that never comes alone, the position of CN’s only French-speaking administrator at $400,000 a year which he had given up has just been filled. . It would be tempting to say that he got what he deserved and that he should have known it was going to end like this. With all the power of my keyboard, I say no.
On the contrary, Jean Charest’s bet was perfectly valid. It relied primarily on the power of the tides. What is called, in politics, alternation. Jean Charest is well placed to know the implacable rule. After eight years of Mulroney government, he saw in 1993 how the desire for change would propel Jean Chrétien’s Liberals to power. There was nothing to do against this wave.
Having become a Liberal leader in Quebec, he knows he owes his accession to power to the rising tide. In 2003, a majority of voters were satisfied with the PQ government. But after nine years, the passages of Parizeau, Bouchard, Landry, a referendum, the PQ seemed to govern for an eternity. The spectators wanted another troupe to take the stage. It was Mr. Charest’s. He himself tried with all his might to row against the current of alternation in the 2012 elections. He posted a respectable score, but was swept away by the current, of course.
So it was with his eyes riveted on the federal tide calendar that Charest launched his skiff into the turbulent conservative waters. The next federal elections would be those of an irrepressible will to send the Liberals, after three mandates, to the benches of the opposition. Provided voters are offered a reasonable alternative. Last year’s election could (should?) have been the right one. There was a moment when the Conservative leader, Erin O’Toole, seemed to be surfing on the will for change. But among centrist voters, the fear that he was hostage to an overly radical party prevailed.
For Charest, only a truly refocused Conservative party would channel the change with enough force to obtain a majority. By spring, Poilievre was already ahead, but it looked possible to muster, in a second and third ballot, enough second-round picks to make a snatch victory a possibility. The attitude of the other candidates towards the point guard in the early debates seemed to indicate that Poilievre would not be picked second by any of them.
In my opinion, Charest’s trajectory provided for two possible points of fall. In the event of victory, it would have been necessary to subdue the party and provoke a purge of the figureheads of the radicalization of the party: the Poilievres, Andrew Scheer, Candice Bergen and other supporters of the insurrectionist convoys. A painful moment, but necessary, because their departure, as much as Charest’s victory, was going to showcase the extent of the refocusing. Then, the recruitment of respectable figures, clones of Peter Mackay, Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney, would have completed the maneuver.
The other downfall, perhaps more likely than the first, was for Charest to finish second in the race, but with a result big enough to clearly show two wings of equal but incompatible strength. A skirmish would follow where Charest would succeed in being expelled from the party by a Poilievre seen as intransigent.
The Quebecer would have been legitimized to use the organization he had formed in the race to form a new party, taking on board with him the bulk of the caucus of Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. He would then have been in a hurry to get elected to the Commons – a Quebec MP would have had to sacrifice himself – where his media presence would have been formidable.
The financiers of Bay Street and Saint-Jacques Street would have been at the meeting of the financing of the new party. His chances of success in the federal election would then have rested on his ability to recruit strong candidates. He could have quite easily, better than the Poilievre team, presented a credible replacement government.
The conservative reality of 2022 refused to bend to Jean Charest’s will for three reasons. First, he counted on the Ontarian Patrick Brown to weaken Poilievre in Ontario and give him his votes in the second or third round. Brown was ejected from the race due to irregularities. Second, the polls have never shown that a Conservative party led by Charest would get more votes than with Poilievre at its head. These results have obliterated the main (only?) argument of the Quebecois: with Poilievre, we lose; with me, we win.
Above all, no one could have foreseen that Poilievre would, despite his blunders, not step out of the political margin, but widen the margin by becoming the most attractive political personality of the year. Huge halls full to bursting. A historic membership card sale. Poilievre’s radical conservatism seems more in tune with the desire for change than one might have thought. Or maybe it is he who imprints his vision on the desire for change.
This does not guarantee his victory, and certainly not a majority victory. But it sinks for the foreseeable future the frail boat of the centrist conservatives and swallows up, in Jean Charest, the political dream of a lifetime.
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