Except for economic development, which was his hobby from the moment he entered politics, Premier François Legault is what one might call a man of late vocation. And often fleeting.
For years at the Parti Québécois, he never showed any concern for the language file, which was nevertheless of great interest to many of his colleagues whose mandate was quite different. It is true that his mentor, Lucien Bouchard, only got involved reluctantly.
When the reasonable accommodation crisis put secularism on the agenda, he remained indifferent. After founding the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), he only became interested in it because it was fashionable.
Once he became Prime Minister, when immigration appeared on his radar, it was simply a question of meeting the needs of the labor market. He discovered his identity dimension only recently.
By his own admission, the importance of the environment and the fight against climate change suddenly dawned on him during the 2018 election campaign. The CAQ had no program on this subject.
In reality, Mr. Legault only assesses the rightness of a cause based on its “social acceptability”. Moreover, this is as true for those he kisses as for those he abandons. He makes them his own or abandons them depending on whether they become popular or are no longer so. In French, this is called opportunism.
We come to wonder if his convictions were really sincere when he urged Bernard Landry to hold a referendum as soon as possible. Today, when it comes to independence, his response is invariably that Quebecers do not want it.
Same thing for pipelines. When he was in opposition, he was a supporter of the Energy East project, which seemed to him in no way linked to the “dirty energy” of the west, just as he defended that of GNL Quebec at the beginning of his mandate, before discovering that social acceptability was not there.
One could add to the list the reform of the voting system, of which he had made a formal commitment. In the latter case, he equated the relative indifference of the population with a lack of social acceptability.
The Prime Minister has had another enlightenment over the past few days and has been on a crash course in urban sprawl and densification. It is true that he had broached the subject in his book on the Saint-Laurent Project, but this marketing stunt had been a stab in the water and he had not thought about it again.
Clearly, the outcry in the municipal world came as a shock. What if what his Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, had described as a simple “fashion” was less temporary than he thought? In any case, it is not likely to pass by the election.
If all these mayors and all these mayors who, like the mayor of Quebec, find the government discourse “populist” and “misleading”, have been elected, there is a chance that voters will share their concerns. They may not accept to take the bladders for lanterns.
Attempting to portray opponents of sprawl as opponents of urban development was a bit gross. No one disputes the need to better link the regions to the major centres. It is rather a question of preventing them from extending ad infinitum.
At the convention of the Union of Quebec Municipalities, Mr. Legault turned into an eleventh-hour worker. It is undoubtedly better to understand late than never, but it is not certain that the Prime Minister has really realized the complexity of the phenomenon. Future land-use planning policy will certainly be full of good intentions, like all policies, but boots don’t always follow the chops.
To retain those who are invading the suburbs because they no longer have the means to stay in town, they will have to find what they are looking for. Densifying requires means that he refuses to municipalities, in the same way that ensuring the maintenance and development of health services requires an increase in the contribution of the federal government, which Justin Trudeau also refuses.
The day when Mr. Legault gives up the “third link”, we can begin to hope that he has understood. In the meantime, we can’t help but fear that the worker of the eleventh hour will desert for another job.