WAITING FOR AUSSANT
Since the National Assembly has become bad political theatrics, the Parti Québécois might as well put on a play, figuratively speaking: an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
The PQ’s version is titled Waiting for Aussant, after the party’s latest hope of salvation. This week, the PQ confirmed what it showed in 2016 with its choice of Jean-François Lisée over Alexandre Cloutier as its leader: that it is incapable of modernizing itself.
Jean-Martin Aussant is an economist and single-term former MNA who quit the PQ seven years ago and founded Option nationale, a hardline indépendantiste mini-party now a “collective” within Québec solidaire.
It has been six years since Aussant’s only election at the head of a party, in which the PQ’s current hoped-for saviour led Option nationale to only 1.9 per cent of the vote. For the independence movement, which dictated the political agenda of Canada for much of the latter half of the last century, and that of Quebec until Lisée became PQ leader two years ago, it has come to this.
(Aussant may not be the PQ’s only option among mothballed politicians. With Lisée’s leadership weakened by the party’s historically low popularity, his predecessor as leader, Quebecor media baron, Pierre Karl Péladeau, has lately shown a revived interest in politics.)
When Lisée shelved independence as an issue in this year’s general election, Aussant criticized him for lacking conviction. Now Lisée counts on Aussant, Jacques Parizeau’s spiritual heir, to return from self-imposed political exile to reconcile to the PQ the dedicated indépendantistes alienated by Lisée.
Last week, La Presse reported that Lisée had offered Aussant, who has rejoined the PQ, the party’s nomination in the relatively safe Montreal riding of Pointe-aux-Trembles. And last Monday, the riding’s MNA, Nicole Léger, was one of three veteran PQ Assembly members who announced they will not seek re-election.
The resulting promise of three new faces to replace them was supposed to signal a rejuvenation of what looks increasingly like an aging generational party of baby boomers. Instead, the flurry of announcements backfired.
The obvious interpretation was that the MNAs had concluded over the holidays that they had little chance of again being members of a PQ government after this year’s election.
And on a day when Léger, 62 years old and first elected to the Assembly in 1996, and Agnès Maltais, 61 and an MNA since 1998, announced they would step aside for presumably younger candidates, the PQ actually looked older.
That’s because Léger’s and Maltais’s announcements were upstaged by that of the biggest name of the three, Cloutier.
Still only 40 years old, with a young, photogenic family, Cloutier was once touted as the sovereignist answer to Justin Trudeau, representing a new, more inclusive Quebec nationalism.
The PQ Establishment’s hopes for Cloutier were dashed, however, when Lisée, running on traditional cultural nationalism, outcampaigned him among voting party members for the leadership. In addition to the three PQ members who announced their intentions on Monday, other caucus veterans were reported to be considering not running again.
Lisée responded with not entirely convincing assurances that strong potential candidates were clamouring for PQ nominations, and he promised some announcements soon.
The first, however, evoked nostalgia for the past. On Tuesday, the PQ announced the candidacy, in a riding near Quebec City, of Nathalie Leclerc. Her strongest claim to recognition outside her riding, judging from headlines, is that she is “Félix Leclerc’s daughter.”
Félix Leclerc is the father of the Quebec folksinger-songwriters called chansonniers, and still an icon to boomer nationalists 29 years after his death.
His popularity, however, waned after the 1970s. So, it’s questionable how much influence his name will have on the generation X voters between 35 and 54 years of age who will decide this year’s election.
As for the saviour Lisée hopes to recruit, at the end of the week the PQ leader was still waiting for Aussant.
In Beckett’s play, Godot never arrives.
Cloutier was once touted as the sovereignist answer to Justin Trudeau.