CAQ trying to appeal to anglos, nationalists

Legault’s party is trying to appeal to nationalists and anglos at the same time

“Une langue officielle, two official languages.” That’s how Claude Charron of the Parti Québécois described the position of the Union nationale party in the debate 40 years ago on the PQ government’s language legislation, Bill 101.

The now-defunct UN was enjoying a brief revival after managing to appeal in the general election the previous year to both conservative nationalists and anglophones estranged from the Liberal party.

Now another conservative nationalist party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, hopes to achieve something like the UN’s 1976 exploit.

Last week, the CAQ released a video containing an excerpt in English from a speech last November in which Coalition leader François Legault appealed to anglos “tired of being taken for granted” by the Liberals to “join us.”

The same day, capitalizing on a dispute, wellpublicized in the English-speaking community, between Liberal Health Minister Gaétan Barrette and the “English” McGill University Health Centre over funding, the Coalition came out in support of the hospital’s staff against budget cuts.

This was a week after results of a Mainstreet Research-Postmedia poll for the Montreal Gazette, conducted June 13-15, showed a sudden leap in support for Legault’s party among non-francophones. The support had more than doubled, from nine per cent of “decided” and “leaning” voters in May, to 23 per cent in June. Much of that 14-percentage-point gain could be due to the relatively large margin of error of 6.71 per cent for Mainstreet’s non-franco sample.

Mainstreet executive vice-president David Valentin told me, however, that the Liberal non-franco vote has been softening.

This could be part of the “Lisée effect” resulting from the election last October of Jean François Lisée as PQ leader.

When anglos voted against the Liberals in 1976 after the latter adopted Quebec’s first pro French language legislation, they inadvertently helped elect the first PQ government. After that, voting Liberal became a habit for Quebec non-francos motivated by “Pequophobia”: fear of the election of another Péquiste government.

Even in 1989, when anglos cast a protest vote for the short-lived, English-rights Equality Party against another Liberal language law, the polls had assured them that the Liberals would defeat the PQ anyway. But Lisée’s no-referendum pledge has made it more difficult for the Liberals to exploit fear of secession. And under Lisée’s leadership, the PQ has slid into third place behind the Coalition, making the election of a PQ government less likely.

Premier Philippe Couillard, in an attempt to shore up the Liberal base, has added an anglo liaison officer to his staff, and announced the creation of a government secretariat for anglo affairs, a proposal he had previously rejected.

And within hours of the CAQ posting its video and coming out against the MUHC cuts, Couillard’s senior anglo minister, Geoffrey Kelley, called a news conference to warn anglos not to trust the Coalition. Since this was in the political off-season, with the next election not due for another 15 months, the Liberals looked panicky.

The Coalition’s early efforts to appeal to nationalists and anglos at the same time make it look as politically schizophrenic as Claude Charron’s description of the Union nationale.

While the CAQ flashes the red Maple Leaf to anglos, it hides it from nationalists. The Canadian symbol is not on the party’s website; to see the English-language video containing it, you have to search for it on YouTube.

And the Coalition’s choice of MNA Nathalie Roy to represent it at the news conference with the MUHC staff betrays its ignorance of anglos, since she’s the spokesperson for the party’s minority-baiting identity politics.

Eventually, the Coalition may be forced to choose between competing with the Liberals for anglo votes, and with the PQ for nationalist ones. Since there are more of the latter, the choice seems obvious.

So anglos should enjoy the attention, and whatever political leverage comes with it, while it lasts. Because it may not last until the election.