PQ leader Lisée has reason to be jittery ahead of vote
PQ leader has reason to be apprehensive ahead of confidence vote
Here’s a small sign of the Parti Québécois’s slide toward irrelevance under the leadership of Jean-François Lisée:
Last week, Lisée spoke at a rally in favour of strengthening Bill 101. This was in Montreal, where French is supposedly in danger. Together, the nationalist and union organizations represented at the gathering have hundreds of thousands of members. And only about 100 people turned out. Here’s a more obvious danger sign for Lisée, who next week faces a convention of his party, including a confidence vote on his leadership:
The day before the rally, what are expected to be the last poll results PQ members see before the convention were published.
The results of the Aug. 21-24 Léger survey for Le Journal de Montréal, Le Devoir and the Globe and Mail suggest that under Lisée’s leadership, the PQ’s vote share is stagnating at a historic low.
The PQ was losing its competition with the Coalition Avenir Québec party for position in the next general election as the leading alternative to the Couillard government.
And of the three major party leaders, Lisée was the least popular among supporters of his own party, chosen for best premier by only 59 per cent of the remaining PQ loyalists.
Officially, Lisée needs the support of only a simple majority of the delegates voting at the convention to avoid the humiliating fate of Thomas Mulcair, voted out as leader by the federal New Democratic Party last year.
Even if Lisée exceeds that bare minimum, however, his score will be compared to the 93.1 per cent received by Pauline Marois in the last PQ leadership confidence vote six years ago.
And if Lisée falls short of 80 per cent, he may come under pressure to step down. Bernard Landry set a precedent by doing so after he got 76.2 per cent in the 2005 PQ vote.
Lisée’s position as leader has been weak from the start. He was the first choice of less than half the party members voting in last October’s leadership election. And he won with barely half the votes in the deciding second ballot count.
So, Lisée has reason to be apprehensive. That would explain his recent re-descent into the xenophobic demagogy that made the difference for him in the leadership election, most memorably in his offer to defend Quebecers against terrorists concealing AK-47s beneath Muslim burqas.
It’s revealing about the PQ convention delegates, or at least what their leader thinks will play well with them, that he would stand by his sneering description of Haitian asylum seekers as “Trudeau’s guests,” even against criticism from within his own caucus. Lisée implied that the Haitians are receiving public funds that should go toward giving Quebecers’ parents in seniors’ homes a second weekly bath.
In case Lisée’s dog-whistling wasn’t audible enough for the delegates, he added that he doesn’t believe in “political correctness,” a familiar defence of minority-baiting.
The confidence vote, however, won’t be the only test of Lisée’s leadership at the convention.
Language hawks want to amend his proposed policy program, to deny francophones and immigrants access to English-language college education.
This could put the PQ at odds with francophones, especially college-age ones who want to go to English-language CEGEPs to improve their English.
In a Léger poll July 10-13 for Le Devoir, 57 per cent of francophones opposed such a restriction.
Lisée said on Thursday he’s confident the convention will reject the hardliners’ proposed amendment. Still, dealing from a position of weakness because of the confidence vote, he offered to negotiate other concessions on language.
Even if Lisée’s leadership survives the convention, however, he may not be safe from a revolt before the next election among PQ members of the National Assembly afraid that he is leading them to personal defeat.
Projections by Philippe Fournier of the Qc125 blog suggest that a dozen of the party’s 28 MNAs are in danger of losing their seats, most of them to the CAQ.