Posted September 25
This question is indeed complex and whole books are written on the subject.
The concepts of left and right come to us from the French Revolution. During the debates that preceded the fall of the monarchy, the king’s supporters sat on his right, while those who demanded that his powers be limited were on the left.
Since then, the left has been associated with social progress and the right with respect for tradition.
Broadly speaking, the left can be said to advocate a strong state that intervenes in the economy to redistribute wealth, while the right favors liberalism and laissez-faire economics.
But these descriptions are general and vary according to the times, places and issues studied.
“You shouldn’t look for a universal definition,” warns Éric Montigny, scientific director of the Research Chair on Democracy and Parliamentary Institutions at Université Laval. “It must be adapted to each of the partisan systems, in particular because the center is not the same everywhere. »
So let’s focus on Quebec. If the concepts of left and right are less familiar to us, it is because the issue has long been eclipsed by another: that of opposing independence and federalism.
This split being less pronounced lately, other political axes have been able to emerge.
According to Professor Montigny, what defines the left and the right in Quebec is simple: the place of the state. On the left, we want more government – and generally more taxes and levies to fund spending.
On the right, we want less government, leaving more money in the pockets of citizens so that they can spend it as they please.
By following this definition, it is easy to place the Conservative Party of Quebec to the right of the others. The party is the one that advocates the largest tax cuts and that plans to reduce government spending the most compared to the reference scenario (- $10.6 billion per year, according to the Research Chair in Taxation and Public Finance of the University of Sherbrooke1).
To the left of the spectrum, we find Québec solidaire. The formation wants to create new state companies, establish public dental insurance and drug insurance plans, invest massively in the energy transition. Result: an increase in spending of 10.3 billion per year.
The other three parties are found between the two. Of the trio, the Parti Québécois is the most on the left if we look at the magnitude of the increase in spending (+ 7 billion). This is followed by the Liberal Party of Quebec (+5.5 billion) and the Coalition avenir Québec (+2.6 billion).
There are several points to make.
First, we can say without being mistaken that the center is more to the left in Quebec than in many Western democracies.
In the United States, for example, a party that advocates the development of a public network of child care centres, as the CAQ does, would be portrayed on the left, while François Legault’s party is on the right of all the other Quebec parties on the except for the PCQ if we rely on the magnitude of the promised expenditures.
It is then interesting to note a certain shift of the PLQ to the left. Under Philippe Couillard, the party had adopted a budgetary rigor described as “austerity” by its opponents. Under Dominique Anglade, the party does not hesitate to create deficits.
Social right and immigration
This strictly economic analysis is obviously far from encompassing all the issues.
Professor Éric Montigny affirms that there is no “social right” in Quebec, in the sense that no major political formation questions gay marriage or the right to abortion. It’s true.
But a cleavage occupies more and more space: that of the famous “identity” issues. It opposes the vision of a plural society, open to immigration and cosmopolitan to that of a Quebec where integration and common values are put forward.
The CAQ plays a lot on this table. Its vision of integration collides with that, pluralist, of Québec solidaire and the Liberal Party.
Can we position these visions on a left-right axis? Éric Montigny does not think so. But other researchers, notably Éric Bélanger, of McGill University, and Jean-François Godbout, of the Université de Montréal, do not hesitate to associate the “pluralism” pole with the left and the “integration” pole with the right.
The environmental question, generally associated more with the left than with the right, causes another split. Éric Montigny points out, however, that the former British Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, made a large place for the environment even if he represented the Conservative Party, nestled on the right.
In short, the left and the right have not finished opposing their visions. And so much the better for the public debate.