Quebec premier spoils PM’S day
Justin Trudeau should have been feeling pretty good on the morning after the night before, about his strong performance in the second French leaders’ debate, and confident about his prospects for the upcoming evening’s one in English.
And then François Legault went and spoiled his morning by tacitly endorsing Conservative Leader Erin O’toole.
As third party endorsements go, it doesn’t get any better in Quebec than that.
Legault isn’t just the sitting premier of la belle province. He’s a highly popular leader, perhaps uniquely influential among francophone voters off the Island of Montreal. He represents a voter profile that is nationalist but not sovereignist.
Moreover, Legault’s moral leadership has been enhanced by his government’s strong performance in managing Quebec’s response to the pandemic, from lockdowns and restrictions to the supply management of vaccines and inoculation of Quebec residents. Legault’s approval ratings are off the charts among “influenceable” francophone voters in dozens of battleground ridings outside the Liberal stronghold of Montreal area code 514.
It wasn’t just what Legault said on Thursday, it was the way he said it on his way into a meeting of his Coalition Avenir Québec caucus in Quebec City.
Legault went out of his way to warn voters against voting for the Liberals or the NDP, or the Greens for that matter.
“I think it’s dangerous to support those three parties,” he declared, warning voters to be wary of them as representing the centralizing forces of orthodox federalism. For example, he said: “They think they are better than Quebec at managing the health care system.”
And writ large, he added, “the Quebec nation wants more autonomy, not less.”
By the process of elimination, that left him with O’toole, as a leader who is essentially amenable to Legault’s agenda. “It will be easier,” he said, “for Quebec to negotiate more powers with Mr. O’toole than Mr. Trudeau.”
Among other things, O’toole has said the Conservatives are not opposed to Quebec’s Bill 21, Legault’s signature legislation imposing a non-sectarian dress code on public employees; “For the Quebec nation, this is a good approach, Mr. O’toole’s approach,” Legault said.
Moreover, O’toole supports the construction of le
troisième lien, Legault’s pet project of a two-level tunnel under the St. Lawrence River, linking Quebec with suburban Lévis. It’s estimated to cost anywhere between $6 and $10 billion. Legault has demanded Ottawa pay 40 per cent of the cost, somewhere between $2.4 billion and $4 billion. Trudeau has been noncommittal but O’toole went out of his way to endorse the megaproject during last week’s first French debate on TVA. Environmentalists are understandably concerned about putting that many more cars on the road, and the carbon emissions that go with them, hardly in line with addressing climate change. But that’s a story for another day.
Legault has a couple of sticking points with O’toole, notably the cost of the Conservative platform released only hours before Wednesday’s debate that would see the cancellation of $6 billion of unconditional transfers a year to Quebec for its universally lauded day care program, which has served as the model for Trudeau’s recent announcement of $10 a day child care across Canada. The Conservatives would instead offer refunds by tax credits to parents, apparently payable several times a year. Legault made it clear he wants to have a conversation with O’toole about that. He may also want to discuss O’toole’s timeline for his promised $60 billion in new health-care funding to the provinces, all but $3 billion of it back-end loaded to the second half of this decade.
The news of Legault’s clear preference for O’toole, was a setback for Trudeau after he’d put Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-françois Blanchet in his place Wednesday for accusing him of “imposing” his views on Quebecers.
It was the unforced error of the campaign, a gift outright to Trudeau.
“I’m a Quebecer,” Trudeau retorted. “You have no right to consider me as not a Quebecer.”
It was the sound bite of the night, of Trudeau invoking his standing as a favourite son of Quebec, and ridiculing the pretentious Blanchet. And rightly so.