Is Legault’s re-election a sure thing? Not quite

Every new government gets a honeymoon with voters. Rarely does it get a second one. But that’s what the COVID -19 crisis has given the Legault government.

In fact, the Coalition Avenir Québec ministry was still enjoying a longer-than-usual first honeymoon when the second one began, a result of Premier François Legault’s decisive response to the coronavirus crisis.

In a Canada-wide Angus Reid Institute poll in February, a month before the virus arrived and more than a year after the CAQ came to power, 58 per cent of Quebecers approved of Legault. That tied him with Scott Moe of Saskatchewan for the highest approval rating among the premiers.

The crisis appears to have boosted the popularity of Canada’s governments in general. For example, in Reid’s pre-crisis survey, only 31 per cent of Ontarians approved of their premier, Doug Ford. But in another Reid poll late last month, 74 per cent said Ford’s government was doing a good job of handling the COVID -19 outbreak.

The Legault government’s coronavirus rating in Quebec, however, was by far the highest in the country, a near-unanimous 93 per cent. That was 15 percentage points above the next highest, a tie between the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined and the Atlantic provinces. When was the last time so many Quebecers agreed on anything?

So, based on the COVID-19 bounce in popularity for the Legault government, we might as well concede the CAQ’S re-election, right? Not so fast.

Six months is an eternity in politics, and the next general election isn’t due until several eternities from now, in October 2022.

Public opinion is fickle. The crisis is far from over, now expected to last months, not weeks. Already, media coverage and commentary on the government’s handling of the crisis have become more critical. And the political truce that has made the opposition parties all but invisible will end when the National Assembly resumes sitting, scheduled for April 21.

The official Opposition Liberals and the Parti Québécois have suspended their leadership campaigns during the crisis, but eventually, each will have a new leader, and an accompanying new sense of direction.

Until now, the government has had the luxury of not having to make difficult political choices, due to its rich financial inheritance from its Liberal predecessor. That may change because of the economic effect of the crisis on public finances, reducing the government’s revenues and increasing its expenses, and forcing it to choose between, say, stimulating the economy and protecting the environment.

And history shows that voters often have short memories when it comes time to reward an incumbent leader for successfully managing a crisis.

In the 1970 October Crisis, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had a level of public support similar to Legault’s now. But in the next general election two years later, Trudeau lost his parliamentary majority.

In the current crisis, Legault has been compared to former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard in the 1998 ice storm, and, by an aide, even to British prime minister Winston Churchill in the Second World War.

Legault is said to be following the manual for successful political management of a crisis in Quebec figuratively written by Bouchard during the ice storm. And Bouchard’s government did win the general election nine months later.

It was a narrow victory, however. Bouchard’s PQ received fewer votes than the Liberals, whose leader, Jean Charest, had been rushed unprepared into provincial politics from Ottawa only five months before the election.

That broke whatever momentum there was toward another referendum on secession to follow up on the indépendantistes’ near-victory in 1995. And three years after the ice storm, Bouchard left active politics.

The most surprising victim of the voters’ ingratitude, however, is Churchill.

Britons owed the very survival of their country to Churchill’s leadership during the war. But afterward, when life and politics returned to normal, they unceremoniously turfed him out of office.

That was in a general election only two months after the war ended.