CAQ win good for Quebec, Canada
Four years ago, as the Parti Quebecois government was defeated, I wrote: “In the 1960s, Quebec bought into the notion that secularism and sovereignty were the keys to prosperity... secularism emptied Quebec’s maternity wards... and sovereignty began to take on an ever more national-socialist motif... (Quebec has) negative birth rates, protest marches, and awful traffic laws. But Quebec can be great again.”
It appears that moment has finally arrived.
That night, the Quebec Liberals took over from the Parti Quebecois and began to trim the fat of sovereigntist government. Premier Phillipe Coulliard is a medical doctor by trainin, and having diagnosed the province as on its way to financial death by cancerous public programs, he began to surgically remove the worst of it as best he could.
For that service, and his party’s various scandals over the years, he was awarded second place in this election.
La Belle Province has now turned over to the Coalition Avenir du Quebec, the first party to break through the PQ/Liberal dualism in 50 years. The CAQ is a center-right party, but in the rest of Canada it would appear to be francophone nationalists with Paul Martin’s economics. The leader, Francois Legault, a former sovereigntist and airline developer, has promised to end referendums and to get Quebec’s economy moving by reducing government red-tape.
This is welcome news for the rest of Canada, as one of the single greatest brakes on our potential has been an underdeveloped Quebec, with cradle-to-grave socialism clogging all of the arteries of creativity.
And while Quebec was still helping itself to billions in equalization even when posting a surplus under Couillard, it is possible that the Quebecois are interested in recapturing their heritage as brave voyageurs instead of a legacy of sclerotic Marxist voyeurism.
There’s one more twist to this story, in light of the recent deal to replace NAFTA with the USMCA; the government in Ottawa is now surrounded by hostile or indifferent provincial ones, and the new deal has increased competition for Canadian dairy farmers who reside largely within Quebec. Add the Alberta election as well as the fact that B.C.’s governing coalition could fall at any time and it’s possible that right-leaning parties could rule from coast to coast.
That’s going to be hard to explain at election time. Doubly so if the CAQ and other ruling parties start discussing infrastructure or pipelines in a positive fashion. And if all those staffers take leave to help the Tories win in 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s future is uncertain.
Obviously, that is all speculation, but one thing is clear: Quebec is changing, and that is good news for the whole country.
Whatever Legault’s faults, which critics have cited throughout the campaign, he has led a 10 year old party to power on promises of growth in a province that hasn’t had many good ideas since the Quiet Revolution ruined all.
It is my hope that his fellow premiers embrace and encourage him – for there is no Canadian future without Quebec’s help.