CAQ’s majority brings with it pros and cons

Prospect of stability is welcome, petty and myopic immigration plans are not

First, the good news. By electing a majority government, Quebecers have bought themselves four years of political stability. We are not, as the polls suggested throughout the campaign, stuck with the inherent clash of egos and ideology inherent in a minority government. The Coalition Avenir Québec will have its share of missteps, screw-ups and faux pas. And yet the government won’t face imminent collapse as a result of its growing pains. It deserves that slack, on account of the strong support shown by voters.

Second, this election marked the first time in just under half a century in which the issue of Quebec sovereignty was neither a dominant nor even looming threat woven into the campaign narrative.

Let’s be clear: whether Quebec would stay or go was long a legitimate question that electrified provincial and federal politics and brought about massive change in Quebec society — mostly for the better.

Yet in latter years, as the movement petered out, it devolved into a series of clichés and empty slogans. The issue became Kryptonite to the Parti Québécois, the very party espousing it. It was painfully obvious to even diehard sovereignists that the dream was dead. And yet it lived on, zombie-like, in the PQ’s platform and in the fevered dreams of its leaders.

The constant threat of a referendum has robbed Quebec of effective opposition, artificially propping up successive Liberal governments in the process. In François Legault, we have the personification of the voters who elected him: he’s an erstwhile sovereignist who realizes the folly of sovereignty’s continued pursuit. Better still, Quebec’s place in Canada is enshrined in the CAQ constitution. It is a federalist party in all but name.

Sadly, though, in a ploy to tug the heartstrings and stoke the collective fears of Quebecers, Legault swapped the issue of sovereignty for immigration. Legault spent much of the campaign equating immigration with the purported regression of French and the erosion of Quebec’s values. He promised to decrease immigration levels by 20 per cent. He said his government would deport anyone who didn’t pass French and values tests — and then said he wouldn’t. Legault’s gambit was successful. Immigration was by far the most talked-about issue during the campaign, according to media analyst at Influence Communication.

It is difficult to put into words the extent to which Legault’s immigration rhetoric is petty, myopic and wrong-headed. Let’s first do away with the cheapest of his conceits: that immigration hurts French. Last year, no less an authority than the Office québécois de la langue française released a report on the use of French in the workplace, noting the “use of French at work has progressed amongst allophone and anglophone workers” since 2010. “This, despite factors that would seem to favour the use of English.”

Second, though Legault often speaks of immigration in the abstract, the roughly 50,000 immigrants arriving here annually play a very real role in the demographic and economic renewal of the province he will now govern.

Nearly 20 per cent of the province is age 65 or over — Canada’s highest percentage outside the Atlantic Provinces. We are in the midst of what Montreal Board of Trade president Michel Leblanc recently called “beyond full employment.”

Nationalist parties in Quebec have pressed the need for immigration in the recent past. “In the context of labour shortages that are more frequent and persistent, Quebec should bring in more immigrants,” read the platform of the Action démocratique du Québec, the CAQ’s ideological forebear, in 2003.

Of course, the ADQ drastically changed course in the years following, instead highlighting the purported (and wholly exaggerated) dangers of immigration to Quebec society in the 2008 election. Though the ADQ has since collapsed, Legault has begun where it left off: by scapegoating immigration for political gain. Let’s hope he starts backpedalling. twitter.com/martinpatriquin