Lisée asks anglophones to take a chance on him
Jean-François Lisée is in the political fight of his life.
With just days to go before the Oct. 1 election, the Parti Québécois leader has to close a nearly double-digit polling gap if he hopes to become the next premier. And he must do so while fending off a challenge from a sovereignist party on his left flank.
But perhaps the party’s biggest obstacle isn’t the front-running Coalition Avenir Québec, their archrival Liberals or Québec solidaire’s insurgent campaign.
In a way, Lisée is running against his own past. The PQ brand took a pounding in the 2014 election — a campaign that saw the party open with a huge lead in the polls and end with its worst defeat in 25 years.
“We ran the worst campaign in history,” Lisée said during a meeting with the Montreal Gazette’s editorial board on Friday. “I dunno about the senatorial campaigns in ancient Rome but certainly in the history of the PQ.”
In his reckoning, it wasn’t so much the Charter of Values or Pierre Karl Péladeau’s infamous fist pump for sovereignty. Lisée says the PQ failed because it couldn’t give Quebecers a straight answer on the party ’s raison d’être: making Quebec an independent country.
“The reality is, Quebecers couldn’t follow us on whether or not we would have a referendum,” Lisée said. “With a referendum ... this door must be open or closed.
“The only thing we can do is close it for the first mandate and say we’ll come back in 2022. This is a very hard thing to do but it clearly works because we do not have any debate now about whether or not there will be a referendum in the first mandate.”
What does the PQ’s vision of Quebec mean for its 600,000 anglophones?
“If you’re not for independence, it won’t happen in the first four years,” said Lisée. “Give us a try. We will try to convince you to come along with us in 2022 but it will be your choice.”
Lisée says his vision for Quebec is a more progressive, greener, more egalitarian society than the ones proposed by the Liberals and CAQ.
He isn’t promising tax cuts but Lisée won’t raise taxes, either. He wants to fight a pay raise to Quebec’s 20,000 specialist doctors and use those billions to invest in childcare, education and hospitals.
“We want to make sure that this is a place where every young child — boy or girl — whatever economic situation they come from, whatever their last name is, this is the place where their dreams can come true.”
But Lisée’s more egalitarian society is also one that appears to be at odds with at least some aspects of religious liberty.
His government would put forward policies that would exclude swaths of Muslims, Sikhs and Jewish people from becoming police officers, judges, prison guards, daycare workers and teachers.
To Lisée, a woman wearing a hijab or a man wearing a kippa while working for the government would be the same as if they wore a “PQ hat” or a “Justin Trudeau T-shirt.”
“When you are in a position of authority, you are there to represent the state and not your convictions,” Lisée said.
If these policies were challenged and defeated in court, Lisée would consider using the notwithstanding clause to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On the topic of language rights, Lisée says the crisis facing the anglophone community is that the school system doesn’t teach children a good enough level of French to succeed in the Quebec workplace.
The PQ would create an enriched French program in English CEGEPs where — for the first three semesters — students take intensive French courses. By their final semester, they would transfer to a French CEGEP.
“For many of them, we’re giving them a diploma from Dawson (College) with a one-way ticket to Toronto,” he said. “I want to break that cycle. I want them to live and thrive here.”