After the failures of 1992 and 1995, Quebecers continued to live within the bosom of their welfare state, functional enough to accompany them from early childhood to the morgue. However, where the rub was the collective dimension of existence which became, from the evening when Jacques Parizeau dropped his unfortunate little sentence on money and the ethnic vote to which he attributed the defeat in the referendum, a taboo question. , an unfortunate subject, an embarrassing bone of contention.
Much has been said about the meaning and impact of this sentence, the importance of which has been exaggerated; nevertheless, it catalyzed a fundamental movement that was already taking shape. In truth, there was then a desire for relaxation mixed with weariness, a desire to withdraw into oneself in a warm cocoon, sheltered from the vagaries of politics, an aspiration for tranquility that no longer links individual happiness to any aim of completion. collective, as well as a growing sense of shame or embarrassment, faced with the powerlessness to project oneself into a politically assumed future. […]
An “all-inclusive” party
This is how the CAQ, the Coalition avenir Québec, was born, a rainbow coalition that brought together the disillusioned, the dropouts, the resigned, the defectors, the twisters, the penitents and the recycled he post-1995 collective collapse has spawned and precipitated new marketable electoral horizons. […] The CAQ has become a catch-all jellyfish, a caravanserai of the universal center, which mixes former PQ, Bloc, Liberal, Conservative, who officiated in Ottawa or Quebec, or who made the leap into politics leaving behind , sometimes with difficulty, lucrative businesses.
The CAQ is to politics what polyamory is to affairs of the heart. It is the party of “ex” of all kinds who have grasped that while waiting for the return of big politics, if ever such a return were to materialize, it was better to fall back on the best vehicle available. […] In short, the CAQ is the Air Transat of politics, a turnkey formula that leads you, nonstop, to power. […].
Rule by average opinion
In The line of risk, an essay published in 1963, Pierre Vadeboncoeur attacked the “semi-conformism” of his people who, barely out of the Duplessis era, fed themselves, in his words, “average ideas”, a trait of typical spirit of the American people. Hence a kind of communication that favors “slow and roundabout explanation” instead of the truth, and which seems to be aimed at rentiers and clerks. This prudent discourse, which avoids frank thoughts and spares susceptibilities, “continues to maintain in public opinion thoughts which only dispose us to continue to quietly undergo the acquired historical fact, the acquired economic fact”.
All survey resources have provided the CAQ with the opportunity to adjust to the “average opinions” of the Quebec population, in order to closely match its preferences and correct the situation, if a worrying gap emerges between the decisions government and what the average opinion seems to want. The result has been a way of governing which aims in all things for the “golden mean”, passable tinkering, comfort solutions, moderation of ambitions and expectations, pragmatic realism, rather than […] “the clear party line”, as Vadeboncoeur wrote. Good old Norman caution probably teaches sparing the goat and the cabbage, but is that the best policy when a bear threatens to eat both? […]
What is the CAQ compared to?
More than one has compared François Legault to Maurice Duplessis, and his party to the Union Nationale. The comparison has a certain plausibility, but also at the risk of establishing false equivalences. […] Ideologically, the CAQ is not a conservative party, which aims to restore tradition and muzzle the state. The CAQ proved to be conservative only in the sense that it wanted to preserve the achievements of the Quiet Revolution; it spared the therapeutic and bureaucratized State which manages the socio-economic welfare, established on the moral progressivism where a large part of Quebec is located. […]
We cannot, however, understand the CAQ without comparing it to its little brother, which moreover, little by little, has established itself as the real opposition, despite its reduced deputation. The CAQ and Québec solidaire form the tandem of penitential policy in the “Belle Province”. Despite everything that divides them by style and ideology, the two parties are nevertheless united in their relationship to the national question, experienced in the mode of pain, embarrassment, even shame. […] How much longer will Quebec wear the hair shirt? Very clever who could know. Everything will depend on the majority feeling, which maintains among the caquistes and the solidarity the impression of durability.
Comments or suggestions for Ideas in Review? write to [email protected].