Without fanfare, but with the little embarrassment that is appropriate when abandoning an electoral promise, the Legault government has let it be known that it is giving up on reforming the voting system. Not only will Bill 39 die on the order paper, but electoral reform will no longer be part of the Coalition d’avenir Québec (CAQ) program.
The idea of proportional voting is dead, killed – as usual! – by backbench deputies of the ruling party who are still scared to death of changing the voting system that won them. Imagine, a few could lose their seats in favor of a “list” MP chosen to restore some balance between the popular vote and the number of seats. “Not even a real deputy,” we hear them whisper …
In defense of Mr. Legault, he is not the first to abandon this idea. Almost every province in Canada has juggled reform in one form or another and then rejected it, sometimes even by referendum.
In Quebec, René Levesque had promised it. His minister Robert Burns had given birth to an excellent green paper on the issue. Then the idea of reform was abandoned in the face of the lack of enthusiasm of the PQ caucus.
In Ottawa, Justin Trudeau was also elected by promising a reform of the voting system, but it was to his advantage and rather pernicious: he proposed the preferential ballot, in which voters note their preference (first, second, etc. .) for each party. This is ideal for a center party, like the federal Liberals, who have opponents on both the right and the left.
The Legault government is not wrong to say that with the pandemic, it would have seemed out of touch to present such a reform at this time. But nothing prevented him from putting it off until later, from keeping it in his program, without abandoning it completely. In doing so, he proves that he just doesn’t want it.
The most cynical will say: why would he want it when the current polls, nine months before the election, allow him to hope to obtain nearly 100 deputies out of 125 in the next election?
Except that the recent history of Quebec shows that obtaining nearly a hundred seats in the National Assembly can be a very bad thing for a political party. Let’s call it the “strong second term curse”.
Since the Quiet Revolution, this has happened twice – and to the same prime minister. In 1973, Robert Bourassa won with 102 seats out of 110 to win his second term. In 1989, still under Robert Bourassa, the Liberals won 99 seats in a National Assembly of 122 deputies.
PHOTO JACQUES BOISSINOT, ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Robert Bourassa
And what happened then? Both times, not only did the Liberals fail to secure a third term (in 1993, Mr. Bourassa left politics for health reasons to be replaced by Daniel Johnson Jr.) but they suffered a major defeat in the following elections.
In 1976, to everyone’s surprise, René Lévesque beat the Liberals decisively, his caucus going from a meager 6 members to 71. In 1994, Jacques Parizeau won with 77 seats while the Liberals had only 47, or 46 less than in the previous elections.
But let’s come back to the “strong second term”. After a resounding victory, it is human nature, we believe ourselves invincible and installed in power for a long time. Quickly, it is almost inevitable, a certain relaxation sets in: a little more partisan appointments, less rigorous subsidy policies especially if friends are involved, inordinate efforts to fund the party, etc.
But above all, when you have a hundred deputies, it is inevitable that this will cause discontent with so much competition for nominations. Not just for ministerial posts. Often, the biggest grudges are for less prestigious positions that come with a salary bonus: chair of a parliamentary committee, etc.
A disgruntled member may start to speak ill of his colleagues, of the chief’s advisers, and inevitably will find a sympathetic ear somewhere in the parliamentary press gallery.
Over time, the opposition parties recover from their defeat and begin to be more and more able to make themselves heard by the population. A sometimes benign prank can be inflated to become a great scandal.
Thus, the small team of six members of the Parti Québécois between 1973 and 1976 did its work of opposition so well that at the end of his second term, Robert Bourassa was seen as a weak and corrupt politician – for things that we no longer remember today. Above all, they did not prevent him from becoming Prime Minister again less than a decade later.
But Mr. Bourassa, and twice rather than once, tasted the ambiguous pleasures of managing a caucus of a hundred deputies. Too bad he is no longer there, he could have spoken to François Legault about it.