Defining pride is a surprising undertaking. Anyone who, struck by its omnipresence in the speeches and ambitions of Prime Minister François Legault, would like to know what it means would be very surprised to discover the definitions given by dictionaries. There where Little Robert tells us that she is an “arrogant attitude”, the Larousse gives them as synonyms “superb, pride and vanity”. When our Prime Minister tells us that he wants to “make Quebecers proud”, is he telling us that he wants to make us arrogant, proud and vain?
No doubt Mr. Legault and his CAQ troops are rather aimed at giving Quebecers a certain self-esteem. By wanting to be “creators of pride”, they no doubt aim to straighten our backs in the face of the contempt, it is said, of English Canada. But it’s not clear that pride is something that, like the economic value Mr. Legault holds dear, is created so easily. You don’t become proud by shouting “pride!” “, just as we do not found a sustainable and fair economy by throwing money here and there, over the polls of the moment. To be proud, you still have to be proud of something.
Since we are on the eve of a decisive election, at the time of the balance sheets, let us ask ourselves what the CAQ has done that can, collectively, make us proud. It is certain that we will not find anything like it in the day-to-day political management of our nation, in these multiple small investments that our government prides itself on in its list of “104 changes that prove beyond any doubt that the CAQ keeps its promises”. (She is even satisfied, twice, with her boss!) No, pride and esteem seem to require something more important, more structuring, more lasting: something that we can say without cynicism that we will remember it and which, above all, will carry us forward.
When we ask Quebecers what they are proud of, it is precisely such things that come to mind: the creation of Hydro-Québec and its huge dams, the introduction of the defunct sun card, free access to public education, “Law 101”, the creation of the CPE network, and so many others. We are rightly proud of these achievements on which our future continues to be built. What does the CAQ offer us? Has she done anything to measure up to that, she who is so proud?
Some might be tempted to point to the recent update of Law 101. But this, in addition to being only a renovation, is still too weak to achieve the objectives it sets itself. If the ambition of the CAQ was to make Quebecers proud of the lifeblood of their language, it must be admitted that this ambition is feeble and that the resulting pride can only be anxious and fearful.
Still others might suggest the controversial “Law 21”, recently raised beyond independence, as top bonum Quebec nationalism. It is not certain that we will find many who, once the artificial fears aroused by the “crisis” of reasonable accommodation have calmed down and have looked at the progress made, are still capable of judging it as a reason for pride.
Can we really be proud of a principle for managing relations between religion and the state? The vein of identity, however, appears to pay off: let’s therefore play the election on the pride of talking about immigration!
In reality, when we observe what the CAQ offers us, our reasons for pride are reduced to a trickle. The only large-scale project that this government is suggesting to us is a financial and ecological debt called the third link, desired to satisfy a handful of motorists in the Capitale-Nationale region. A large massive cylinder at the bottom of our river, is that a cause for pride?
No, really, it is difficult to see the creative projects of pride and esteem carried by the CAQ of Mr. Legault. And yet, many, and the majority among Francophones, are Quebecers who today are sated with their government and who, in four short months, are preparing to renew for a second term this complacent pride of junk. What has happened to us that we can, in all lucidity, be proud of so little? Since when do we confuse pride with resignation?
And the audacity?
Perhaps it is there, the root of the evil that eats away at us: we are a people resigned to tirelessly repeating the same present. We have lost the taste for risk – no doubt we have become too rich, like those third generations of great bourgeois who, ignorant of the efforts of the first, squander and enjoy their inherited fortunes in all indolence. But we don’t even create: we only consume and repeat.
Finally, it is possible that this collective resignation explains why the only two parties which, in all objectivity, carry a real social project, the Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire, stagnate so low in our sad polls. As Bernard Drainville said of independence, Quebecers “are elsewhere”. But since when, in a vigorous nation turned towards the future, has politics been reduced to indolently following the lack of dreams of a majority sated with its presents?
Born barely three years after the failure of the 1995 referendum, like many members of my generation, I have only known a tired and morose Quebec. Admittedly, I was told at school about the Quiet Revolution, but I never experienced this great effervescence of possibilities and dreams which, it is said, was going on then. If a generation should be resigned, it should be mine. And yet!
But you who have lived and brought this place to the new magic, how do you justify satisfying yourselves en masse today with a resigned pride? Was the Great Darkness so comfortable that, dizzy before the magnitude of the task you had inaugurated, you would run to take refuge in the arms of a Prime Minister promising you, with garish checks, that everything will be fine? well if only you vote on the right side? Where is this audacity that would make you so proud?
On October 3, during a campaign that promises to be fierce, let us at least hope that Quebecers have a little bit of memory.