During an election campaign, speculation concerning the “ballot box question” is an exercise in which many analysts engage. This expression, which is a layer of the English the nerd questionserves to identify the question that will be decisive on election day.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
Lower taxes, suspension of the QST and checks for the less fortunate are all solutions that the political parties are trying to provide to counter the effects of inflation, which seems to be one of the determining issues of this election campaign.
But these various promises are not exceptional. The management of public funds is discussed in one way or another every day during parliamentary sessions. We know the song: the opposition criticizes the government for its mismanagement and blames it for the lack of money in education, health and in the pockets of Quebecers.
It all comes down to business as usualwhereas the general elections should precisely be an unusual moment when we are able to ask ourselves fundamental questions that are rarely debated.
One question in particular would serve to mark the important fault lines, it is that of knowing what Quebec the party leaders aspire to by the year 2100.
There is of course something absurd in the idea of asking politicians to think on an 80-year scale. The advantage, however, is to force the parties to position themselves on issues that may not be experienced on a daily basis, but which are of considerable importance in the history of a people.
Statistics Canada’s 2021 census figures show that Quebec’s weight in Canada continues to decline. Eighty years ago, Quebec formed 29% of the Canadian population. Today it is 23%. What can we imagine for 2100? Nothing indicates that the trend will be reversed, especially when we know that Canada aspires to greatly increase its population mainly due to increased immigration. Some, like the Century Initiative group, are campaigning for there to be 100 million Canadians by the end of the century.
What if Quebec decides to increase its immigration thresholds? According to a May 2022 Léger poll1, Quebecers are mostly resistant to an increase in the thresholds. We understand them, moreover, when we know that Quebec has a low immigration retention rate and that an increase in the thresholds is accompanied by challenges related to francization, the housing shortage, and so on.
The 2100 horizon therefore makes it possible to pose a clear question to politicians: do you consent to Quebec becoming a minority in Canada and consequently becoming increasingly insignificant?
Whether we agree with him or not, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the leader of the Parti Québécois, has the advantage of having a clear answer to this question: by being sovereign, the Québec country will be 100% itself, not 23% of Canada as it is now.
But what about the leaders of other parties? This question receives no clear answer from them and it is not enough to proclaim that Quebec forms a nation as François Legault did at the beginning of the week to close the debate.
More broadly, the issue of Quebec’s weight in Canada also raises the issue of the relationship between them. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the patriation of the Constitution by Ottawa. Quebec has still not signed this document which is, it should be remembered, the supreme standard in legal matters, because it sets rules that are above the laws passed by elected officials.
The issue will not be settled tomorrow morning, but on the horizon of 2100, do our politicians hope to see Quebec enter the Canadian constitutional rank? And under what conditions?
Quebecers put these questions on the back burner by electing the CAQ, because it does not intend to question Canadian federalism while stupidly refusing to comply with it. It is fashionable today to say that the debate on the Quebec-Canada relationship is an “old quibble”. We like to use the expression, as Bernard Drainville once did when announcing his candidacy, that “Quebecers are elsewhere”. We can think that this posture can be held over four years. But this posture, between the tree and the bark, cannot be held for 80 years.
It is even far from certain that it can be held over eight years. While Law 21 on secularism and Law 96 on French will likely undergo the test of the federal courts in the next mandate, it seems that the caquistes and Quebecers will realize that the chicane of yesterday is in reality the chicane of today. today and tomorrow.
The question of Quebec’s place in Canada has arisen in different ways in our history, but it has always arisen. It seems that Quebecers have the right to vote on this issue, but the parties still have to debate it. The question of the ballot box must be that of the horizon 2100. Dear political parties, we are listening to your proposals.