THE LEGAULT EFFECT
Question is: What bargaining power will Legault have after the federal election? Analysis by
In the battle for Quebec this federal election, the premier stepped right in and took centre stage with his nationalist agenda. Will the gamble pay off?
It started as the election about nothing until the premier of Quebec waded in hip deep.
If in the 2019 federal election François Legault took a few wellplaced jabs at Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau over Quebec's secularism law, Bill 21, in this campaign a Scud missile was his weapon of choice for the attack.
As a result, the uneasy truce between Legault and Trudeau on display in the early part of the federal election campaign went down in flames as Legault, donning his father-to-the-nation cap, offered free advice to Quebecers on how they might want to vote Monday.
His suggestion was that the vote not be Liberal, New Democratic Party or Green. Voting Conservative is fine and in the interests of the Quebec nation but not so Conservative that Erin O'toole can form a majority government, Legault argued. He did not even mention the Bloc Québécois alternative in the French part of his speech, saying later in English that he recognizes it cannot form a government.
Analysts are still trying to decode what effect Legault's shot across the bow — 10 days ahead of the vote — will have on the outcome but, for a moment in time, the election battle for Quebec was indeed all about him and his nationalist agenda.
The immediate response of political parties not on Legault's “nice list” was to mock the statement and describe it as meddling.
“People don't like to be told what to think and how to vote,” said Trudeau's campaign co-chairperson Mélanie Joly.
“For my part, I come from generations of women who fought to get the right to vote and during the Quiet Revolution, to get the right to think, and in that sense we don't like to be told by anybody how to behave in this important election.”
Quebec Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade also piped up in a heated exchange with Legault in the legislature this past week.
“We don't need a premier playing the role of a priest from 1950 telling people what to think and for whom they should vote,” she fired across the floor of the house.
But is that enough to counter the Legault effect?
“Legault's statements are certainly a major source of concern for the Liberals,” said Daniel Béland, director of the Mcgill Institute for the Study of Canada.
“Both the Bloc and Conservatives will try and surf on the Legault wave but the Bloc is in a better position to articulate the nationalist discourse in Quebec despite Legault's quasi-endorsement.”
Critics agree there is a level of risk in Legault's gambit.
While one theory is that Legault wants to catch the Conservative train as it leaves the station — national polls show the Conservative party neck-and-neck with the Liberals — what happens if O'toole does not win? What bargaining power will Legault have as a result?
Ever the deal-maker, Legault a day later was hedging his bets, delivering a thundering theatrical response to the biased and questionably worded opening question to Bloc Québécois Leader Yvesfrançois Blanchet in the English leader's debate.
The moderator's question was nothing short of an “attack” on the Quebec nation, Legault responded, leaving it up to the media to speculate whether he was rushing to Blanchet's defence on the off chance it is he who winds up with the balance of power Monday.
On Tuesday, the National Assembly adopted two motions — one condemning the question as “Quebec bashing,” the other calling for an apology from the media consortium. Both were supported by Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec government.
But on Wednesday, with polls showing the election too close to call, Legault downplayed his voting suggestion, insisted he was just urging Quebecers to not vote Liberal, NDP or Green.
“What I said, in answering questions from journalists, is that the Conservative party was less a centralizer than the Liberals,” Legault said at a news conference. “That's all that I said.”
Quebecers, however, appear to have taken offence at the tone of the debate and agree with Legault's comments that Quebec was being unfairly portrayed. The anger is palpable in many ridings.
A snap Léger poll taken a few days after the debate shows a sharp increase in voter support for the Bloc, which may dash the hopes of the Liberals and Conservatives at making gains in Quebec. Instead they are trying to hold the fort and keep what they have.
At dissolution, the Liberals held 35 seats in Quebec, the Bloc 32, Conservatives 10 and the NDP one.
Université Laval political scientist Eric Montigny said the incident was a pivotal moment in what had until then been a lacklustre campaign for Quebec's 78 seats in the House of Commons.
“People talk about two solitudes but this was really incomprehension,” Montigny said in an interview. “It's not because the Yes-no cleavage is gone that nationalism has disappeared. On the contrary, it is just expressed differently.
“It is based more on popular will, which is a powerful force. It means the result of the vote is very hard to predict.”
Ironically, Blanchet emerged as the winner of the English debate in Quebec because the incident allowed him to impose the Quebec identity theme he had been unable to ignite at the start of the race, Montigny said.
“All he did was show up, get insulted and his campaign took off,” Montigny said.
Of course, the results at the ballot box are what really matter. In this campaign, as with others, all the parties have struggled to solve the mystery of the fickle Quebec voters who are not particularly faithful to one party or another.
Quebecers leaned NDP in 2011, Liberal in 2015 and Bloc in 2019.
There's another wild card lurking in the CAQ base. Pollsters note 31 per cent of CAQ voters support the Liberals federally, 24 per cent the Bloc, and 23 per cent the Conservatives. Legault may be the most popular politician in Quebec but will his troops follow him?
The leaders, nevertheless, dove in with gusto. O'toole made repeated stops in Quebec, where he poured on the charm. He seemed anxious to correct the mistakes made by his predecessor, Andrew Scheer, in the 2019 campaign.
He rolled into the Quebec City airport, offering Quebecers an election contract in which he pledged to not contest Bill 21, give Quebec more power over immigration and apply Bill 101 to federally chartered companies.
He announced, repeatedly, that he was pro-choice, a theme Scheer tripped over in 2019. Not a flashy politician, O'toole strived to sound non-threatening to Quebecers who have doubts about other aspects of the party's vision on items like oil development and gun control.
He hit the most turbulence on the daycare issue, preferring his own formula, which is to give tax credits directly to families instead of the $6 billion federal subsidy to Quebec's existing public daycare network announced by Trudeau and Legault Aug. 4.
Trudeau had other problems. In his zeal to earn votes in the rest of Canada, he announced he is in favour of national standards for senior residences given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. He would hire more doctors and would not rule out aid for groups wishing to challenge Bill 21.
All of this got him in hot water in Quebec — and with Legault, who saw it as meddling.
Legault ripped into the NDP for the same reasons, even though party leader Jagmeet Singh managed to earn the affection of Quebecers by being himself. But will that translate into votes here?
The Green party, mired in the midst of internal war as the campaign started, barely made a mark on the Quebec campaign. It only managed to field 56 candidates in Quebec and party leader Annamie Paul did not even campaign in Quebec.
Finally, there are questions about how well Maxime Bernier's People's Party of Canada will fare. The most recent Léger poll has the party polling at four per cent in Quebec. After losing his home riding of Beauce in the 2019 election, Bernier is trying to win it back.
While some said the COVID -19 protests became the defining issue of the election in the rest of Canada, in Quebec the campaign became a classic turf war in the few ridings which actually change hands on a regular basis in elections.
Those are largely francophone suburban ridings around the island of Montreal and in the regions, where the Conservatives and Bloc do battle, with the Liberals sometimes coming up the middle when the vote splits.
That explains why some wins are by such small margins.
“There is indeed a certain level of volatility among francophone voters,” Béland said, adding the Liberals started the campaign with high hopes of increasing the number of seats in Quebec only to see their lead dwindle.
“Trudeau needed Quebec and it is slipping out of his hands,” added Montigny, saying the party's strategy of appeasing Legault worked at the beginning of the race but fell apart when Trudeau started talking about national standards and intrusions into Quebec's jurisdictions.
“Legault said clearly that Quebec wants more autonomy, not less,” Montigny said. “Why they (the Liberals) announced plans to take away power from Quebec is beyond me. Trudeau blew it.
“The question now is who will be the most motivated to go and vote. Bloc people now have a reason to go vote. The Liberals wanted to make gains in suburbs around Montreal. Now it's not so clear. I expect some wins will be by razor's edge.”
Few analysts are making predictions on the outcome of the election but there are indicators the voters are anxious to get this over with. A total of 5.78 million people voted in advance polls, which is an 18.46-per-cent increase from 2019.
Pollster Jean-marc Léger notes his most recent survey indicates only 25 per cent of voters remain undecided, which is dramatically fewer than usual. In other campaigns, the percentage of people who decided in the last three days of the campaign was as high as 40 per cent.
The total estimated cost of the election, Canada's 44th in history, is $610 million.
We don't need a premier playing the role of a priest from 1950 telling people what to think and for whom they should vote.