For the four opposition parties, it’s a day after the election that looks like a day after a brush. Headache and nothing to celebrate.
Posted at 12:17 p.m.
As a poet from the Gaspé (“cancelled”) once sang:
My t-shirt smells of beer
My sambuca jeans
And a kind of cheap shooter
That I don’t even remember
These are the immortal verses that must be running through the minds of Dominique Anglade, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, Éric Duhaime and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois today.
Francois Legault?
He finally has happy wine, the day after renewing his vows with Quebecers.
I know, I know: our voting system is sick. The first-past-the-post system produces sometimes shocking democratic distortions. This was the case yesterday. But we understand why Mr. Legault (41% of the votes gave him 72% of the seats) reneged on his promise to reform it, this voting method…
And we understand better, too, why the Quebec Liberal Party has never loved the idea either: 14.3% of the votes give it 16.8% of the seats (21 seats)… A gain of seats far superior to those of the PQ (14.6%, 3 seats) and the QS (15.4%, 11 seats), they who however collected percentages of the popular vote similar to those of the Liberals.
It’s worse for the Conservatives: nearly 13% of the vote, zero seats.
But everyone knows how the system works, on the starting line.
Did I say, about the leaders of the oppositions, that they and she had nothing to celebrate in yesterday’s results?
I must be in the field: to hear them make their speeches, it was a for-me-for-miiii-daaaables evening, in the words of another poet. Yes, she and they had the smile of the children certain to find a participation medal in their box of Frosted Flakes, at breakfast: the important thing is to participate!
Looking at Anglade, Nadeau-Dubois, Saint-Pierre Plamondon and Duhaime, the title of another poet’s book (Leonard Cohen) came to mind: beautiful losers.
Translation: Magnificent losers…
For Québec solidaire, the barely veiled goal was to form the official opposition. Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois had decreed it, pompously: it’s a fight for two, now…
The awakening hurts: gaining a single seat, QS is the second-group-in-opposition…again. And yesterday, QS proved that it is primarily the party of the orange line of the Montreal metro…
And of those who would like a tramway, in Quebec.
But in the purest tradition of the left, what counts for QS is not to win, it is to be… right: I therefore have no doubt of the ovation that GND will receive at the next congress of QS. In this, the Solidaires are quietly becoming to Quebec politics what the NDP is to federal politics: the most magnificent of losers.
I also underline the symbolic defeat of a star of the party, MP Émilise Lessard-Therrien in Rouyn-Noranda–Témiscamingue, beaten by the CAQ. In this constituency, the election was a referendum on the Horne Foundry, brilliantly spurred on by the supportive MP…
Referendum result: Arsenic won.
The PQ has had a near-death experience in slow motion since 2018. Three seats is better than one. Life is better than death. The PQ were carried by an inspired leader, who occupied the niche of modesty and decency. Everyone loves to see the underdog win and PSPP was the Rocky Balboa of this campaign, winning his riding on his breath…
And thanks to a leaflet stolen by the solidarity candidate!
The PQ is not dead, but it is now the business of three well-isolated Amigos in the National Assembly.
I spoke of the “Quebec Liberal Party” above. It’s not to be mean, it’s just to take note of reality. The Liberals hit where there are critical masses of Anglophones. The divorce with the French-speaking majority has been consummated since yesterday, the bill for the Charest and Couillard years has just come in. Mme Anglade looks at said invoice and wonders: did I really order all those sambuca shooters?
Then there is the rout of the Conservative Party. Despite Radio X campaigning for him in Quebec, Mr. Duhaime was beaten in a Quebec riding by a non-minister caquist (Sylvain Lévesque) in Chauveau (by 6,500 votes).
For some fans who believed in a conservative sweep (no pranks), it’s an uncomfortable encounter with reality: no, the polls conducted by the firm Chambre d’Écho & Associés are not reliable, any more than political analyzes by Dominique Mrais, Jeff Fillion, Adrien Pouliot and the Twitter account of the late André Arthur.
I add, just for fun: LIBARTÉ.
Yes, Mr. Duhaime has achieved a feat, that of putting the Conservative Party on the map. But four years without setting foot in the National Assembly and without being able to ride the pandemic anger, it could be long years for him. However, this gives him time to ensure that there are fewer cuckoo clocks per square foot in his team of candidates in 2026 than in that of 2022.
And then there is François Legault…
The head of the CAQ has said that he will govern for all Quebecers: we will believe him when we see him, the past often being the guarantor of the future. The Caquistes were unbearably arrogant at 76 deputies, it will be spectacular at 90 deputies. Faced with a divided opposition, many ministers will be tempted to believe themselves winners of the Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine, economics AND literature.
Despite a negative, grumpy and small campaign, made on the backs of Montrealers, intellectuals, immigrants and the environment, François Legault won regularly, according to the rules of the system.
To quote another poet, Jacques Mercier, former head coach of the Quebec National:
Win, Lambert, win!
It’s all that matters !
The CAQ may be gloomy in victory, but it knows that it is the winners who shape reality.
Not the losers, however magnificent they are.