The Quebec citizen who wants to establish his ideological profile must ask himself several questions. The first is unavoidable in all developed societies: economically speaking, am I more right-wing — more market, less state — or left-wing — high taxes, universal public services?
At this stage, on the right, depending on the intensity of our convictions, we will be tempted by the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), by the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) or by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ). Very to the left, we will be tempted by Québec solidaire (QS) and, moderately to the left, by the Parti québécois (PQ).
The economic issue, however, does not solve everything. Hence the second question, typically Quebecois: am I federalist or sovereignist? In either case, the solution seems to be obvious since the right-wing parties call themselves federalists and the left-wing parties, sovereignists. However, there are left-wing federalists and right-wing sovereignists. Where can they go to nest?
The answer lies in trade-offs. Among left-wing federalists, those who attach more importance to the first element of the combination go to the PLQ and those who attach more importance to the second element go to QS. The right-wing sovereignists, for their part, following the same logic, find themselves either in the PQ or in the CAQ, whose displayed nationalism reassures them a little.
For a long time, these two political divisions summarized Quebec’s political options. In recent years, however, a third divide, called identity, has been added to the other two and pits, according to different names, conservatives against progressives or nationalists against pluralists. This divide mainly concerns questions of language, secularism and immigration.
In terms of immigration, for example, we see that supporters of tighter control of thresholds are found as much among the PQ sovereignist left as among the CAQ nationalist right, while those in favor of greater opening of borders are hear their voices in the ranks of pro-independence solidarity and in those of federalist liberals.
The Quebec citizen must therefore make three ideological choices – right or left, federalism or sovereignism, progressivism or conservatism – and make an arbitration between his three answers before making a political connection. It is not surprising that a certain hesitation sets in.
According to the young essayist Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard, things would however be simpler since the third divide, that which opposes the progressives to the conservatives or, according to an old denomination dating from the 19the Quebec century, the Reds to the Blues, would be by far the most decisive.
In The return of the Blues (Liber, 2024, 192 pages), Beauregard affirms that Quebec has shifted, since the reasonable accommodation affair of 2006-2007, into the “identity era”. Since then, it is the opposition between the Reds and the Blues, born from the confrontation between Lord Durham and the historian François-Xavier Garneau after the abortive rebellion of the patriots, which could best shed light on our public debates.
Supporters of individual freedom, the Reds equate nationalism with regression, advocate for a culturally neutral state which does not intervene in matters of language or secularism, wish to depoliticize immigration thresholds by putting them in the hands of experts or of the market and fear the tyranny of the national majority, which they seek to contain by imposing charters of rights and freedoms. The Reds, yesterday or today, can be left-wing (Trudeau father and son, QS) or right-wing (Denis Coderre), but are always multiculturalist and anti-nationalist.
The Blues, explains Beauregard, believe rather that the State has the duty to protect national culture “in the face of multiculturalist fragmentation”, hence their support for laws protecting French, the Law on Secularism and thresholds lower immigration rates. They are keen to preserve a substantial collective identity, although open in that it includes, in a republican spirit, all those who want to join it. The Blues can be left-wing (René Lévesque, many PQ members) or right-wing (Duplessis, Legault), but are always nationalist.
Beauregard, in this noted essay, delivers a thorough criticism of the Reds and a solid plea for the thinking of the Blues, which he finds especially among the Caquists. A moderate disciple of Bock-Côté, Beauregard is a center-right nationalist Blue.
I would rather be, in his logic, a sovereignist Blue of the social-democrat left. I don’t understand, moreover, how a Quebec nationalist like him can still believe his project is possible in today’s Canada.
Columnist (Presence Info, Game), essayist and poet, Louis Cornellier teaches literature at college.