The Gazette’s view: The Couillard Liberals deserve a majority government.

At this late point in what has been a dispiriting Quebec election campaign, the best that can be said of it is that it will mercifully soon be over.

It is an election that a majority of Quebecers deemed unnecessary, considering the minority Parti Québécois government had been elected a mere 16 months before the call for this one was issued. The call early last month also contravened the spirit of the new government’s fixed-date elections law, which says elections are to be held on the first Monday of October every four years.

The plan was to ride the apparent rising popularity of the government’s values charter among francophones through a short campaign, while seeking to capitalize on Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard’s inconsistency on the issue. But that strategy went off the rails early, with the coming out of marquee PQ recruit Pierre Karl Péladeau and his fistpumping call for a renewed push for Quebec independence from Canada.

Suddenly the prospect of another referendum under a majority PQ government became the central issue of the campaign. With close to two-thirds of Quebecers telling pollsters they do not want another referendum, PQ support began to trail off as the Liberals vigorously worked the issue to their advantage.

As it progressed, mudslinging emerged as the dominant feature of the campaign, to the detriment of serious discussion on such matters as education, the economy and health care. The reigning consensus among veteran observers, as the campaign entered its home stretch, was that this was the dirtiest one in living memory.

But unsavoury as this exercise has been, it will have to produce a government, and in this respect there are only two viable choices, not only between two parties, but also two approaches to governance.

Coalition Avenir Québec and Québec solidaire have both run strong campaigns, but neither shapes up as a realistic alternative to the established governing parties, the Liberals and the PQ.

CAQ Leader François Legault has put forth an impressive pile of voter-friendly campaign promises. But the province’s fiscal straits and his weak team of candidates, all devoid of experience in government, cast serious doubt on his ability to deliver. Meanwhile, Québec solidaire’s far-left and Marxist-inspired policies would inevitably produce a more impoverished Quebec and a more authoritarian form of government.

A PQ government would continue to play the politics of division that it has pushed while in office, and in this campaign, by proceeding with its discriminatory values charter and repressive language legislation. And, if granted a majority, it would surely try to pick fights with Ottawa to manufacture “winning conditions” for another referendum. All this would be to the further detriment of a sagging provincial economy and fragile social fabric.

That reviving this economy would be the principal focus of a Liberal government, a government also dedicated to harmonious interculturalism and the playing of a constructive role in the Canadian federation, makes the election of a majority Liberal government the optimal outcome of Monday’s election.