Its adversaries hammer it as soon as they have the opportunity: the CAQ is a party, a government, where communication and marketing are omnipresent.
This time, it comes from Émilie Foster, former member of François Legault’s party from 2018 to 2022. She was also vice-president of the party and research advisor in the opposition.
Political marketing, she knows. She wrote a doctoral thesis on it. And that has been the subject of her teaching and research since becoming an associate professor at Carleton University in Ontario after active politics.
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Powerful text
She published yesterday in the review “Political Option” a hard-hitting text on the way in which marketing harms democracy: “Parties must remember that they are doing politics, not marketing. Debates are healthy, necessary and should be encouraged, even if it means losing a few votes in the next election.”
The last conventions of the parties in power (CAQ in Quebec and the PLC) took place in a virtual absence of debate.
In his text, M.me Foster does not speak explicitly of the CAQ, since according to her the phenomenon encompasses all parties. The current media environment has induced an atmosphere of “permanent campaign” where the logic of marketing perpetually reigns. However, “marketing leads to excessive control of the image, so we are on a policy of constant control”, said Ms.me Foster when I reached her on the phone.
3e link
Example? The abandonment of the flagship promise of the 3e Quebec-Lévis highway link: “The deputies were notified at the very last minute, after the mayors! This reveals the logic of centralization at work.
Make dangle, during the campaign, the realization of the 3e lien was also part of the marketing approach: “To seduce the electorate […]make sure to win a certain number of counties and after that […] — we have the figures in hand — we know that it will have an impact on some counties, while on others it will be nil or even positive.
Message control for backbenchers of a governing party has never been tighter. Even behind closed caucus doors. In theory, elected officials are free. “And François Legault repeated it to us.” But cabinet staff now attend in huge numbers. “It’s intimidating for the elected officials”, who will prefer to keep quiet, for fear of being cataloged.
Mme Foster herself confides that she would have liked to express herself on “the multiple investigations concerning the ethics of Pierre Fitzgibbon”, which she says she also greatly appreciates. But the party line forced her to “vote against a report from the Ethics Commissioner,” she laments.
Solutions, to regenerate the partisan debate, there are:
• That political staff be absent from caucus;
• That a parliamentary reform be adopted to give a better role to elected officials;
• That the media stop treating any discordant note as an “incredible betrayal”.
She insists on this last point. His exit does not stem from any desire for revenge, but from a desire to improve things.