The word of the year in Quebec politics: disconnected
Inspired by the Brexit and Trump campaigns, the Oxford Dictionaries chose the adjective “posttruth” as their word of the year.
They defined it as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
My personal, much less authoritative favourite is an expression related to “post-truth” that we also heard a lot this year: “confirmation bias,” which the Oxfords define as “the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.” As Paul Simon wrote in the song The Boxer, “a man hears what he wants to hear/And disregards the rest.”
Such wilful ignorance may explain poll results suggesting that most non-francophones, habitual Liberal supporters, refuse to accept the fact that the Quebec Liberal Party, under former premier Jean Charest, received more in illegal contributions than any other party.
But my choice for word of the year in Quebec politics goes to “disconnected,” which applies to the political class in general and, in particular, to the Couillard government and the premier.
Again in the past year, politicians and we in the media often appeared to be disconnected from reality. We devoted too much attention to politics as theatre — and usually bad theatre — and to hypothetical questions such as candidates in chadors.
(What should we do in the unlikely event that a Muslim woman wearing a chador, a long shawl that covers the body and the head except for the face, is elected to the Assembly? Respect her constituents’ choice of their representative and swear her in, like any other MNA. Next case.)
Politicians and the public appeared to be disconnected from each other.
Voter apathy was the real overall winner in last Monday’s provincial byelections, with less than 50 per cent of the eligible voters in any of the four ridings bothering to turn out to choose their representative in the Assembly.
In three of the four ridings, the turnout rate was below 35 per cent. In two, it was only slightly above 25 per cent.
The governing Liberal party appeared to be especially disconnected from the voters who did vote, especially the Frenchspeaking ones.
In Saint-Jérôme and MarieVictorin ridings, the Liberal vote percentages barely made it into double digits. The Liberals finished third in Saint-Jérôme and fourth in Marie-Victorin.
And Premier Philippe Couillard, whose solitary nature appears ill-suited to political leadership, appeared to be disconnected from everybody, even his own party, which under his leadership is no longer the disciplined organizational machine it once was.
Liberal backbenchers complained repeatedly about poor communications between them and the premier’s staff. And an internal report described a demoralized Liberal party that lost nearly 30 per cent of its membership between fall 2014 and the end of 2015, and whose remaining members felt ignored by their leadership.
In Couillard’s response to the byelections, he himself acknowledged his disconnection from the people. He said his government “literally saved Quebec” by balancing its annual budget, but voters didn’t appreciate its austerity program as much as the credit-rating agencies did. His implication that he is a misunderstood saviour invited ridicule, and he will not soon live it down.
(Have you heard that the premier has changed places in the Assembly? He’s now on the cross on the wall above the speaker’s chair.)
Couillard may not be the only saviour in his party.
Cabinet minister Pierre Moreau has been called “the Carey Price of the government,” because the Liberals missed his political skills during his long absence for health reasons, as the Montreal Canadiens missed their injured goaltender last season.
He was also runner-up to Couillard at the 2013 Liberal leadership convention, making him the heir apparent. And he is due to return to full duty next month, so will be close at hand if Liberals start to look for a saviour to replace the one they have now.