The National Assembly resumes its work today with a new cohort of deputies from the elections of October 3rd. A very short two-week stint at the Blue Room, before the holiday break, where we will have more chance of seeing who will form the real opposition than of being able to judge the performance of the new ministers.
Basically, there are few major changes to the Blue Room. The Legault government was re-elected with a super-majority without having been really flayed despite a rather ordinary electoral campaign with recycled promises and old attitudes on the environment and immigration.
The major concern of the majority of voters is inflation and the cost of living, and the government’s very electioneering response is ready, which is to send a check to the majority of voters. Sums which will be quickly spent and which, according to many economists, will have an inflationary effect.
But a final word on the elections: the CAQ’s result may be spectacular in terms of number of seats, but much less in terms of popular vote, just over 40%, which is the threshold of a majority government since the end of bipartisanship in Quebec.
But the Legault government can take comfort in seeing the poor state in which the opposition parties find themselves.
Since October 3, the Liberals have sent every bad message possible. Instead of looking outward, they turned to their internal quibbles. They quickly showed Dominique Anglade the door.
His successor, interim, at least for now, Marc Tanguay has quickly shown that he is not necessarily ready to become the permanent leader – even if the regulations allow him to do so. One thing is certain, the leadership race will keep the Liberal MNAs busy over the next few months, perhaps more than the work of the National Assembly.
The Marie-Claude Nichols-Frantz Benjamin saga for a ceremonial position (and the salary extension that comes with it) was in the purest and most deplorable tradition of people who are in politics to serve themselves rather than to serve.
The party will form the official opposition because of the concentration of votes in the west of Montreal, but it is by no means certain that it will be the real opposition in this National Assembly.
Québec solidaire had a less interesting result than the party expected. Having just one more deputy shows a certain rootedness, but also that the party is standing still.
That said, he can take comfort in thinking that he is the only opposition party not to have backed down and to have been able to consolidate its gains, which, given the imbalance of our electoral system, is not nothing.
But Québec solidaire still has to find its niche. Its chief spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, said a few days ago that inflation would be its hobbyhorse. But there will be a lot of people on this field and QS will have to find an innovative angle to show that it has original solutions. While reconciling with the “millionaires” of the middle class, who have still not digested his tax proposals from the last campaign.
In the Parti Québécois, leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon won his seat almost miraculously. Since then, it looks like he’s been living in one of those “you’re the hero books.”
He is, sometimes, the super-patriot who will not soil himself by taking the oath to the British Crown, unlike Louis-Joseph Papineau, René Lévesque and Jacques Parizeau who perjured themselves by agreeing to do so.
This gives it a certain popularity with the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, but certainly not with the voters who deserted the PQ and gave it the weakest support in its history last October.
This weekend, he said that the budget and the number of questions granted to the PQ show that François Legault “fears the rise of the PQ”. Even if it’s to boost the morale of the troops, there is a limit to seeing yourself as more important than you really are.
It would be normal for all party leaders to have the right to interpellate the government every session day. But these things are negotiated according to the regulations, and therefore the number of deputies. Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon had no power relationship and it is not because he scares anyone.
Finally, there is the Conservative Party of Quebec, which was unable to elect any MPs despite an honorable score. But it’s time for Éric Duhaime to stop begging for privileges and make the most of what he can do. He will not have access to the Hôtel du Parlement, where the National Assembly sits, but he does have access to the Parliamentary Press Gallery. We will quickly get tired of seeing him always complaining about his fate.