A house divided: Montreal versus the regions

Quebec society is a house divided against itself, not only in its politics, but between its people. And the divisions, along lines of geography, culture and values, were starkly exposed in this week’s general election.

In the seat distribution, you can see the divisions between culturally diverse Montreal and French Quebec, non-francophones and francophones, and inclusiveness and cultural nationalism. And it’s Montreal, non-francophones and inclusiveness that have ended up on the losing side.

Of the 74 members of the Coalition Avenir Québec government caucus, only two will be from Montreal Island. And only three will represent ridings where at least 25 per cent of the population most often speaks languages other than French at home.

The other 25 members of the National Assembly from the Island will be in the opposition. So will the other 30 MNAs representing constituencies that are at least 25 per cent nonfrancophone.

In the 32-member Liberal caucus, 19 districts on the Island will be represented, and 27 that are at least 25 per cent non-francophone. But even in a caucus those MNAs dominate numerically, their constituents may have little influence.

As Liberal Pierre Arcand acknowledged after the election, political reality dictates that the party needs to reconnect with francophones in “the regions” outside Montreal.

Of the 125 ridings across the province, 92 are more than 75 per cent francophone. The Liberals won only five of those seats, and only three outside metropolitan Montreal.

In his election-night victory speech, CAQ premier-designate François Legault promised to govern for all Quebecers, and, in English, appealed to anglophones in particular.

The greeting-card sentiments sound nice, but — political reality again — Smiling Frank owes nothing to the non-francophones and Montrealers who didn’t vote for him. He needs to satisfy the francophones in the regions who did.

During the campaign, La Presse editorialist François Cardinal wrote that Legault not only seemed to ignore Montreal but “sometimes even seems to be playing off the heart of the Island … against the rest of Quebec.”

The head of the CROP polling firm, Alain Giguère, may have an explanation for why Legault would run against the province’s metropolis, just as Ontario Premier Doug Ford successfully campaigned against Toronto’s “downtown elites.”

Citing CROP’s research, Giguère wrote that to CAQ supporters, the party stood for “opposition to ‘elitism’ and Montreal’s political correctness.”

It was “the antithesis of the Plateau,” the Montreal neighbourhood identified with the province’s cultural elite. And among CAQ supporters in the almost exclusively French-speaking regions, “ethnic intolerance reigns.”

This brings us to the division between inclusiveness and cultural nationalism.

In the election, the cultural-nationalist parties, the CAQ and the Parti Québécois, received a majority of the vote, a total of 54 per cent. The inclusive Liberal and Québec solidaire parties got 41 per cent.

Legault, in particular, had depicted immigrants as a threat to the language and values of the French-speaking majority.

He had made his immigrant-expulsion plan his decisive “ballot question,” saying the election of a CAQ government would be a mandate for the plan that Ottawa, which would have to do the actual expelling, could not ignore.

Also, the send-them-back plan was the most publicized plank in the CAQ’s platform. So, voters who chose the Coalition knew what they were voting for.

Others know, too. The day after the CAQ’s victory, Quebec was welcomed into the international anti-immigrant movement by one of its leaders, French politician Marine Le Pen.

The same day, Legault said his majority will keep another campaign promise, to pass the Coalition’s version of the Marois PQ minority government’s proposed “charter of values.” It would, for example, force a hijab-wearing Muslim teacher to choose between her religious beliefs and her profession.

And to override the protection of minority freedoms in the Canadian constitutional Charter of Rights, Quebec’s populist premier-designate would invoke the Charter’s rarely used “notwithstanding ” clause, because the “vast majority” of Quebecers wanted it that way.

Legault knows who voted for him, and what they voted against. And it wasn’t just the old parties.