A Quebec Special
I'm teaming up with Christopher Curtis from The Rover to provide English-language Quebec election coverage like you've never seen before.
Twice per week, Christopher Curtis and I will host a Twitter space — a modern call-in radio show — and invite guests who will help us dive deep into issues. We are going to share each others’ analysis about the election. To check out The Rover, you can visit www.therover.substack.com.
The first space can be listened to here:
Again?
By Nora Loreto
The one thing I’ll say is this: there is a lot more blue in my neighbourhood.
When an election feels like a foregone conclusion, that’s what I’m focusing on. The colours on the poteaux. Blue foncé. Blue pale. Blue foncé-ish. Orange.
Noticeable lack of red.
In 2018, the election was one of change. It was in the air. My riding was about to go from Parti Québécois to Québec Solidaire for the first time ever. The CAQ was about to win. We were recovering from more than a decade of Liberal austerity. The CLSC sans rendez-vous that I took my kids to was closed.
The CAQ won. They promised very little. I remember these things: full-day pre-kindergarten, fixing long-term care centres and the response that rang throughout the land Pas Tellement. But they weren’t the Liberals and so, fine. It was fine. All we could expect. Besides, QS broke through outside of Montreal and, even better, in my own riding.
Yeah, I’m a member of QS.
The CAQ quickly got to work. They attacked a Venn diagram of immigrants, anglophones, taxi drivers and religious-symbol wearers. They didn’t really give us full-day pre-kindergarten. CHSLDs became morgues. The CLSC sans rendez-vous never re-opened.
Things got worse and worse and worse. I counted the deaths every night, adding ones, twos, tens, a few times 30s to my list of deaths. I tried to remind myself that every new number was someone’s beloved. Every new number was someone who died, drowning in their own lungs, crying out for water, cursing the premier (did they vote for him?)
A province scathed, except for one man. François Legault, le bon père de famille.
I just covered Ontario’s election. It feels like it just happened. Doug Ford was set to win in a landslide and he did exactly as it was foretold. Nothing ever changes in Ontario, not like Quebec, my body says to itself. Quebec is dynamic. Things can change here on a dime. Maybe our polls will be wrong.
But, there is no justice in elections. They happen so that governments may be formed and that’s it. Time is the bigger enemy of government than scandal. And besides, most of Quebec’s problems go back before the CAQ. The Liberals are to blame. Lucien Bouchard is to blame.
Déficit zéro is to blame.
This election isn’t going to be a horse race. It won't be a dogfight. It won't be like herding kittens. It will simply go through the motions. But the issues don’t go away, regardless of who wins, so we should focus on that. Issues. Ambulance shortages. La fonderie Horne. Le 3e lien. Where do parents go when they’re scared out of their minds, it’s 3:30 and their feverish baby won't stop coughing?
We’ll follow along, name and blame and bring you with us. And watch the biggest questions:
Will the CAQ win more seats?
Will QS win more seats?
Will the Liberals become the party of Anglo Montreal?
Will the PQ survive beyond the Winter solstice?
Will Éric Duhaime have to build a snow fort outside of the National Assembly to give himself a seat?
By Christopher Curtis
Does François Legault believe in anything?
The thought hit me midway through a high stakes game of cards on Saturday. Or was it dice? What do people play in the laneways of Ville-Émard on the eve of a provincial election campaign? I’m still parsing through bank statements to piece that night together. Was it bocce?
In any case, as I stared down at $312 worth of American bills, Canadian twenties and someone’s silver necklace, it occurred to me this government might have a credibility problem. Sometimes, you need to chase a gambler’s high to understand the Coalition Avenir Québec’s ethos.
Does the CAQ’s governing philosophy make sense? Shut up and roll the dice. You got a $400 cheque and the biggest tax break in a generation! Would you like to play again? Oh dang, your town’s emergency room had to close because our healthcare system is in a death spiral. Better luck next time!
Did you know that for $400, you can rent a 20-passenger limousine for two hours and still have enough left over to buy two Big Breakfast Burgers at McDonald’s? Please ignore the legions of unhoused Montrealers camping under highways this summer. They haven’t gotten with The Program yet.
Of course, the CAQ didn’t invent their brand of political nihilism so much as refine the dead-eyed Liberal version of it.
If you want to talk about moral bankruptcy, look no further than former health minister Gaétan Barrette — a man so politically craven he’s rumoured to have voted “Yes” in the ‘95 referendum before running for the CAQ in 2012 and finally jumping ship to the Liberals in 2014. As Health Minister with the Liberal government, he oversaw one of the most disastrous healthcare reforms in Quebec history.
The Gazette headline, “‘Diarrhea-like’ sewage water floods birthing centre at MUHC” is an apt metaphor for the minister’s time in office.
But I digress.
After 42 years of the Parti Québécois and Liberals alternating power, Quebec is moving toward one-party rule. The CAQ has a stranglehold on 40 per cent of the electorate with the rest split between the Liberals, PQ, Québec Solidaire and the Quebec Conservative Party — which is less a political movement and more a fever-induced hallucination.
Legault was already sitting pretty in 2018 when he won a majority government with virtually no support in seat-rich Montreal. It turns out an armistice on la Question nationale paired with the promise of low taxes is a winning message. Throw in an all-out assault on the Charter and you have the makings of a political dynasty.
This was before COVID-19 gave Legault nearly two years of glowing press coverage and inept opposition. Now the CAQ is en route to win an even bigger majority.
Yes, it’s bad that Quebec wasn’t able to hire enough teachers to staff our classrooms when summer break ended Monday. Yes, the air on a crowded Montreal metro car is cleaner than what children breathe inside our classrooms. And yes, there aren’t enough school bus drivers to get all our kids to class but I’m sure they can just hitchhike or get jobs driving school buses.
At this point you might be wondering what the CAQ did to deserve such an easy ride. Perhaps it’s less about their cunning than the lack of a serious alternative. I mean, who else is there? The Liberal leader whose name Legault forgot on Sunday or the Conservative chief whose followers believe horse dewormer cures coronavirus?
The Rover is a reader-supported publication. Please give us your money and we promise not to blow it all on Kraft Dinner and Labatt 50.
Legault could spend the rest of his campaign riding shotgun in Pierre Fitzgibbon’s Mercedes as they cruise up and down Grande Allée with a baseball bat, smashing mailboxes and laughing hysterically as voters marvel at their political genius.
“There goes Papa Frank and uncle Fitz, sticking it to Canada Post like we knew they would!”
Where were we?
Ah yes, politicians who believe in nothing. Well, that’s inaccurate. They believe in power. They’ve tasted it, they like the way it feels to wield it, they’d like some more. And the CAQ knows a thing or two about wielding it.
It’s contagious, this lust for power.
How many of the CAQ’s old enemies compromised themselves for a seat at the buffet? Former PQ-cabinet-minister-turned radio host Bernard Drainville left a three-year, $1 million gig at Cogeco to run for his old rivals. Let that sink in. He left behind a fortune, the dream of a sovereign Quebec and one of the highest-rated radio shows in Canada to join the government that crushed his party.
But Drainville is a most cunning political animal and he sees the writing on the wall. Why bother with sovereignty when you can just play Justin Trudeau like a rube and get everything you want? Why fight on the margins of relevance when you can be part of a political dynasty that’ll rebuild Quebec in its image? Speaking of wagers, how much would you bet that Drainville becomes premier of Quebec after Legault retires? I’d put cash down at 3:1 if anyone wants to cover those odds.
Another upwardly-mobile journalist, Martine Biron, used to be a critic of the CAQ’s $6.5 billion infrastructure boondoggle: le 3e lien. But now that she’s a star candidate for the CAQ, Biron is an ardent believer in the project. I wonder what cabinet posting she was promised? If I were a gambling man — and I am, whenever possible — I’d put money on Parliamentary Reform or Minister for Canadian Relations.
They want power and not the kind that can be reined in by the courts of the Charter. They’ve already used the Notwithstanding Clause twice, most egregiously to pass Bill 21 — a piece of legislation the Superior Court called “morally repugnant” and one that prevents Muslims from fully participating in Quebec society.
But that’s sort of the point. You think they’re mean? Fuck you, they never liked you anyway.
On an unrelated note, did you know the CAQ has a minister in charge of getting the Nordiques to return to Quebec? Time to roll the dice again! Tough luck, an NHL team wasn't in the cards. Roll again? Ouf, you've been renovicted. Sure, the CAQ won’t admit we’re in the midst of a housing crisis that’s literally putting families on the street but what are they supposed to do? Build social housing and impose existing rent control?
Have I told you you’re getting a $400 cheque after the election?
Since there’s virtually no chance the CAQ loses on Oct. 3, I can’t help but think of what comes next. My fear isn’t so much the collapse of our institutions (I’m certain this would have happened under a Liberal or PQ government) so much as this government’s penchant for scapegoating.
In the rare moments Legault has found himself in hot water, he’s shown a knack for using identity politics to squirm his was out of the pot. Think of the case of Joyce Echaquan, the Indigenous woman who filmed herself enduring racist taunts from nurses as she lay dying in a Joliette hospital. It forced a rare moment of introspection for the premier’s “BUT-I-CAN’T-BE-RACIST-BECAUSE-I-DON’T-SEE-RACE” columnist friends.
That moment was short-lived since, a few weeks later, the premier jumped on a news item about an Ontario university teacher being suspended for using the n-word in class. Suddenly, it no longer mattered that our Indigenous neighbours experience systemic discrimination in Quebec’s institutions. No, the real problem is woke students (in Ontario) who dare ask a teacher to show a little more sensitivity when using a racial slur.
On the strength of that one news item, Legault vowed to protect academic freedom by… legislating how universities get to deal with their own professors. Ironically, the academic freedom law his government championed doesn’t protect profs who speak out against their bosses.
Another great piece of misdirection from the CAQ: remember when the government’s handling of the Herron long-term care centre came under scrutiny? You know, when the CAQ’s own ministers couldn’t say when or how they found out seniors at Herron were left to die in soiled diapers during the first wave of COVID-19? Right about the time it looked like Legault might wear some of that stink, his government tabled Bill 96.
Suddenly, no one was talking about elderly people dying alone anymore. Now, the focus was squarely on putting Quebec anglophones in their place. Any serious analysis of Bill 96 will conclude it’s not going to reverse the slow decline of French in North America. To accomplish that, you need a school system that doesn't produce the highest drop out rate in Canada. Or you need to inject hundreds of millions into Francisation programs. To accomplish that, you need people outside your voter base to buy in, which — in fairness — is a massive undertaking.
Surely, Legault knows Bill 96 won’t do much beyond piss off a few anglos and force a constitutional fight with Ottawa (always a popular move). It’s just good politics.
Which brings me back to my initial question: does François Legault believe in anything? I think back to the 2018 election, when Legault vowed to make Quebec “as rich as Ontario.” I think that’s his endgame here. Language sorcery and scapegoating Muslims aren’t core ideals for Legault. They’re a means to an end — money, power and legacy.
So on the eve of the election, I stood over a pile of money and playing cards, wondering what any of this means.
“Your turn!” someone yelled, imploring me to lay down my cash on the pavement.
So I rolled the dice and lost. The house always wins.