The many firsts of new Liberal leader Dominique Anglade

Alot of “firsts” are being tagged on Dominique Anglade, like Girl Guide badges. This is fitting, perhaps, because if there is one dominant characteristic to describe the new leader of the Quebec Liberal Party (QLP) it might be “achiever.” Some might call her a keener, always première de classe, always striving to lead, make things happen.

“I’m a bit of an overachiever, a bit,” she says in an attempt at self-effacement, during an interview in February, in what now seems an age of innocence just prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that engulfed Quebec and put the QLP leadership race on pause.

As inappropriate as it may be at this time to mention this, considering Quebecers are still dying of COVID-19 at a disturbing rate, the pandemic could well have significant political repercussions. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government, seemingly invincible prior to the outbreak, is under attack for its handling of the crisis.

Whether that grumbling manifests itself in a dangerous erosion of CAQ support come election time in 2022 remains to be seen, but it could position Anglade to be a serious contender for premier of Quebec sooner rather than later. Even prior to the pandemic, she refused to concede she was playing the long game in her bid to lead the province’s longest enduring party.

With her official acclamation as leader last week, Anglade becomes the first woman leader of the QLP, and the first visible minority leader ever of any political party in Quebec. She is not the first QLP leader to be acclaimed; Jean Charest, then federal Progressive Conservative leader, was handed the job in 1998.

She is, for the record, the sixth black MNA to be elected to the National Assembly, and the second woman, after Yolande James, in 2004. The first ever black deputé was Jean Alfred of the Parti Québecois, who served one term after the 1976 election.

So those are the obvious firsts for Anglade. She has a small parade of pioneering women in front of her, however, in her quest to become a premier in Canada. She would join a current list of 12 women to lead a Canadian province or territory dating back to 1991, when Rita Johnson became, as interim leader of the Social Credit Party, premier of B.C..

Catherine Callbeck of P.E.I. became the first elected female premier in 1993 and served nearly four years. The longest-serving woman premier is B.C.’S Christy Clark who held office for six years and won a majority government in 2013.

The only woman first minister in Canada at the moment is Caroline Cochrane in N.W.T.. For about a one-year period beginning in 2013, there were five women leading provinces, including Pauline Marois in Quebec.

Back to Anglade’s ground-breaking achievements. As far as we can tell, she is the first professional engineer - she also has an MBA - to lead a major party in Quebec, although Antonio Barrette of the Union Nationale is described as a “chief mechanical engineer” at the Acme Glove Works in Joliette, but he earned no degree and went on to become an insurance salesman.

She is the first elected leader of the

QLP to not be of French-canadian ancestry, her parents Georges and Mireille Neptune, being immigrants from Haiti. If we must add this tragic distinction, Anglade is the first party leader whose parents were killed in an earthquake, as they were when visiting Haiti in January, 2010.

In another singular act for a future politician, Anglade subsequently co-founded, with Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne, KANPE - meaning “rise up” in Creole, a foundation dedicated to fighting poverty in Haiti.

Anglade would almost certainly be the first former president of and candidate for a major party to become leader of a rival party. In 2012, she ran unsuccessfully for the CAQ, following which she served as party president, until a year or so later she became head of Montreal International, an agency dedicated to promoting the city to foreign investors.

Lastly, another first would be, in the event she does beat François Legault in the next election, she would be the first former party president to beat her former party’s leader.

Anglade would be the first to admit she’s facing a challenge, particularly loosening the CAQ’S grip on the regions, but what more to motivate an “overachiever”?