Liberals taking risk on MUHC: poll

Barrette’s handling of issue panned by more than half of respondents

Non-francophones are not impressed by how Health Minister Gaétan Barrette is handling the crisis at the McGill University Health Centre and it may hurt the Liberals in the next election, a new Montreal Gazette poll shows.

A majority of non-francophones surveyed last week said:

They are following MUHC developments closely (64 per cent).

The quality of care at the MUHC has got worse over the past three years (67 per cent).

Barrette has not handled the situation well (55 per cent).

Budget cuts are to blame for the hospital network’s woes (54 per cent), not poor management (18 per cent).

Even among the general population, more than half of those polled in the Montreal area said they disapprove of Barrette’s handling of the MUHC file.

“These are all numbers that should be deeply troubling for the Liberals,” said Mainstreet vicepresident David Valentin.

“The MUHC issue is really breeding a lot of discontent. Clearly, the (government) narrative that this is about fixing the management (at the MUHC) hasn’t worked,” even among francophone voters, he added. Last week, 10 independent members of the MUHC board of directors resigned en masse, saying they were hamstrung by Barrette. The minister has repeatedly tangled with the MUHC, insisting it is not underfunded and blaming problems there on its leadership’s chronic inability to rein in its deficits. Premier Philippe Couillard has made similar comments.

Questions about the MUHC were included in a telephone survey of 1,601 Quebec residents, conducted from July 13-15 by Mainstreet Research for the Montreal Gazette and Postmedia.

For the latest poll, Mainstreet surveyed 313 non-francophones, up from 213 in the June survey.

The margin of error for the overall survey results is plus or minus 2.45 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

For non-francophone results, the margin is plus or minus 5.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The next Quebec election is scheduled for October 2018.

Overall, party support did not budge much in the new poll:

33 per cent would support Couillard’s Liberals (no change).

28 per cent backed François Legault’s CAQ (up one percentage point).

21 per cent planned to vote for Jean-François Lisée’s Parti Québécois (down one percentage point).

19 per cent said they would support Québec solidaire, whose cospokespeople are Manon Massé and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois (up one percentage point).

Among francophones, who make up the majority in most ridings, the Liberals and CAQ are tied at 28 per cent, followed by the PQ (24 per cent) and QS (20 per cent).

Among non-francophones, 67 per cent said they would back the Liberals, with 24 per cent supporting the opposition Coalition Avenir Québec.

That indicates a poll last month that found a surge in support among non-francophones for the CAQ was not a statistical blip, Valentin said. In May, only nine per cent of non-francophones planned to vote CAQ. A month later, it was 23 per cent. Fewer than 10 per cent of non-francophones are thought to have voted CAQ in the last election, in 2014.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that this developing MUHC story has fed into these voter-intention numbers,” Valentin said. “Usually, you’d expect the Liberals to be in the 90s.”

In an election, would the shift simply cut into big Liberal majorities in anglophone-heavy ridings in the West Island, or could the displeasure put Liberal seats in jeopardy?

“This is the big conundrum for the Liberals — how much nonfrancophone vote can they afford to give up before some of their former strongholds turn into real fights in the next election?” Valentin said.

The Liberals must mull how to gain back votes from this key constituency, he added.

“Do they want to put a different face on the health file? Do they want to invest more money in the MUHC? Do they want to climb down from some of the things they’ve been doing and saying?” Some other poll findings: The CAQ was tops at hanging on to people who voted for the party in 2014, with 93 per cent saying they’d do so again. However, 20 per cent of people who voted Liberal last time said they plan to vote for the CAQ next time. And 21 per cent of those who cast ballots for the PQ in 2014 would opt for Québec solidaire now.

QS is the favourite among voters ages 18 to 34 (28 per cent), followed by the CAQ (27 per cent), the Liberals (26 per cent) and the PQ (19 per cent).

The Liberals are preferred by women (37 per cent), while the CAQ wins among men (34 per cent).

Valentin said the party in the most difficulty is the PQ, which does not lead in any demographic group. Quebec solidaire is not in contention to win seats outside Montreal, but it’s doing so well that it may hurt the PQ in other parts of Quebec by splitting the sovereignist vote.

The next election is far off, and hot-button issues — identity politics, referendums, separation — might surface in the coming months, leading voters to gravitate back to their comfort zones, he added.

“But when you look at the last seven months, there really does seem to be a tidal shift in Quebec politics and we’re seeing numbers that we never expected to see,” he said.

“I don’t think in January we expected to see Québec solidaire almost tying the PQ, or the Liberals (losing so much support among non-francophones), or a poll (in May) where the CAQ was leading.”