The return to Parliament, the day after an election where the winner won hands down, is a harsh reality check for the losers. While everyone theoretically found themselves on an equal footing during the campaign, we fully understand that the winner will rule the roost for the next four years.
The Legault government not only has free rein to impose its legislative program, but it has also been able to ensure that the visibility and resources made available to the opposition parties are distributed to its advantage.
He was delighted to agree to all the demands of an official opposition formed by a party which was expelled from French-speaking Quebec and which is led by an interim leader who is already in trouble. For him, the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) is the ideal stooge.
We can understand the frustration of Paul St-Pierre-Plamondon, also seeing all the requests of Québec solidaire (QS) approved, but should we be surprised to see those who have a common enemy get along at his expense? Neither the Coalition avenir Québec nor QS have any interest in seeing the Parti Québécois (PQ) recover.
Misfortune is good for something, says the proverb. Those who could still cherish the hope that François Legault still has a secret penchant for independence will perhaps lose their last illusions.
The PQ can at least congratulate itself on being still alive, when it was thought to be dying. Failing to have obtained the “bare subsistence minimum” that he asked for, he can offer his militants an antidote against discouragement: the anger that can be provoked by the impression that their party is being treated unfairly because people are trying to muzzle.
Since the 1995 referendum, they have often railed less against the other parties than against their own leaders, whom they reproached for muting the discourse on independence to appease voters and for invoking “winning conditions” which did not never meet. For once sovereignty was at the heart of the PQ campaign, now we are making sure to give it as little echo as possible in the National Assembly.
Now that electoral system reform has been shelved, negotiations over the sharing of resources and speaking time offered parties a great opportunity to “think outside the box”, laying the groundwork for parliamentary reform. which would soften its distortions. Rather, they have been accentuated.
At the PQ as elsewhere, nothing beats the feeling of being the victim of an injustice to whip up militancy. The party will have no trouble getting its members to make up the difference between the envelope that the National Assembly will grant it and what it considers it needs to fulfill its parliamentary obligations.
Despite its electoral setbacks and the decline in partisan commitment almost everywhere in the West, the PQ has always retained a hard core of very dedicated militants, whose unrewarding situation did not, however, facilitate recruitment. It is when you have rage in your heart that the massive mobilization required by a project as ambitious as independence becomes possible.
Necessity having the effect of stimulating the imagination, the PQ leader announced that former candidates with expertise in a particular field will be called in as reinforcements and will occasionally act as co-spokespersons.
In addition to relieving the three MNAs of part of their burden, this will allow these ex-candidates who would like to become so again in four years to obtain visibility that could be very useful to them. The PQ got a reprieve on October 3, but it’s not too early to start thinking about 2026.
The saga of the oath to the king has done nothing to dispel the impression that the opponents of the PQ were delighted to see him put himself out of play. Above all, one should not assume the speed with which the project could be adopted of law which will make this oath optional.
With only two weeks of parliamentary work before adjourning for the holiday period, however, it is hard to see how the PQ MPs could now change their minds without giving the impression of deflating.
Anyway, all the media space of this short session will be monopolized by the inaugural speech and the economic update. All in all, the PQ will have more visibility to be denied access to the Blue Room than to sit silently in a corner. There will always be time to re-examine the situation for the start of the school year on January 31.