Every weekend in the summer, the editorial team of Duty offers you a reflection on the social issues that will shape our world in the coming years. Individual and collective challenges will challenge us constantly on these issues, which we will approach from the angle of solutions as far as possible. Today: the third political way.
Its second mandate begun, the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) continues in what its strategists describe as the third way: neither sovereigntist like the Parti québécois and Québec solidaire, nor above all Canadian like the Liberal Party of Quebec. He practices an autonomist nationalism which translates into a strategy of gains, small steps in a way.
According to political scientist Éric Montigny, who relies on an extensive survey on the CAQ and Quebec nationalism, this third way is in line with what a clear majority of the population wants. After the failure of the separatists and that of the supporters of renewed federalism who advocated a constitutional reform guaranteeing a special status to this “province like the others”, the CAQ aims to extend the autonomy of Quebec “one gain at a time” and to assert national identity without asking permission.
With its progressive program, Justin Trudeau’s government has not hesitated to use the federal spending power, which, despite Quebec’s recriminations, is still not regulated. The Legault government prided itself on having made gains in terms of infrastructure, housing and childcare. However, what he obtained was simply that these encroachments in Quebec’s fields of jurisdiction were not accompanied by overly restrictive conditions. And with these agreements, the Legault government is only endorsing this spending power, especially since the other provinces are not reluctant to submit to Ottawa’s conditions. It is a vision of federalism where the constitutional powers of the provinces no longer really hold: the provinces are considered to be lower governments, performers, administrations.
It was Ottawa that decided that all Canadian provinces should set up, like Quebec, reduced-contribution child care centres. Spurred on by the New Democratic Party, the Trudeau government will soon set up a pan-Canadian dental insurance program that overlaps with the Quebec program. And the New Democrats and the Liberals were talking not so long ago about pharmacare.
Quebec and English Canada seem to evolve in parallel political universes. Ottawa has adopted a new “transformative” immigration policy without even caring about Quebec. Thus, Canada has become a post-national and multicultural laboratory, an unprecedented social and political experiment. The idea of a bi-national — or multinational, if you include First Nations — Canada that once shaped politics in the country is now obsolete, while millions of foreign-born Canadians don’t care about this outdated model.
The CAQ government did not have much success with its “new nationalist program” presented in 2015. Essentially, the demands it made of the federal government – powers in immigration and culture, the single tax declaration and the transfer of tax points, for example — have gone unheeded. There are a few minor gains in this balance sheet. A little more French is imposed on federally chartered businesses. Quebec is now consulted on the appointment of Quebec judges to the Supreme Court, but we are far from the initial request that it be on the proposal of the National Assembly that these judges be appointed.
On the other hand, the Legault government broke new ground by modifying, thanks to Bill 96, the internal constitution of Quebec, which was enshrined in the constitutional text of 1867. It is stated that Quebeckers form a nation and that French is the official language and municipality of Quebec. He passed Law 21 on secularism based on a different conception from that which prevails in the rest of the country. We will see what the federal judges will do with these two laws and the derogation provisions they contain.
François Legault seems to want to go down in history as the prime minister who allowed Quebecers to be as rich as Ontarians, or almost get there. One wonders if this will be enough to ensure his posterity.
Symbolically, but also politically, the Prime Minister still has two projects to carry out. First, the adoption of a constitution of Quebec and the inscription of its existence in the internal constitution of Quebec. Then, the adoption of a bill on interculturalism and civic integration.
We do not know if François Legault will go that far: his party is a coalition where federalism nourished by apoliticism weighs heavily. In this changing Canada and within which the place of Quebec and its political weight will never be the same, one can wonder if the third CAQ way will not be a siding towards confinement and marginalization. In this sense, the vision of the CAQ would hardly differ from the resigned but assumed federalism of the Quebec Liberal Party.