PQ CONFRONTS A BLEAK DIAGNOSIS
PARTY DIGESTS WORRYING TREND AS YOUNG VOTERS TURN AWAY
At a Parti Québécois leadership debate last Sunday, Martine Ouellet asked rival candidate Alexandre Cloutier whether he agreed with her that in Quebec, laws and court decisions should be written in French only.
Her suggestion was to return to provisions of Bill 101 that were struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1979. In an independent Quebec, that would be possible, Cloutier replied. “But there’s a legal framework to respect, Martine,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, but we have to respect it.”
His sensible response was greeted with loud boos from the PQ faithful packed into Montreal’s Monument- National theatre who had no time for the niceties of constitutional law. The episode was an indication of how disconnected from reality — and how nasty — the contest to choose the party’s next leader has become.
Given an opportunity to rethink its direction after Pierre Karl Péladeau’s surprise resignation as leader last May, the PQ has instead doubled down on its bedrock issues of independence, language and Québécois identity. With a new leader to be chosen Oct. 7, the pressing questions of the race have been how soon to hold a referendum, how much to toughen Bill 101 and how far to go in restricting religious attire. The problem for the PQ is that this bedrock risks sinking the party.
Two days before the debate, political scientists had gathered in a Montreal lecture hall to hear the results of research by Valérie-Anne Mahéo of Université de Montréal and Éric Bélanger of McGill University.
“Is the Parti Québécois bound to disappear?” they titled their paper. Like good academics, they stopped short of giving a definitive answer, but the trend line is not good.
Working from a survey of voters conducted immediately after the 2014 Quebec election, which saw Pauline Marois’ PQ minority government lose to the Liberals, the researchers found that voters aged 18 to 34 had largely deserted the PQ. Once the most nationalist generation, younger Quebecers are less inclined to be moved by the issues that brought their parents and grandparents into the street. Only 22.6 per cent of Generation Y voted for the PQ in 2014, compared with 36.5 per cent of the baby boomers.
“Quebec independence is less of a priority for them, and they do not seem as convinced by the idea of giving Quebec more powers within the Canadian federation,” the authors wrote of the younger generation.
“Even more surprising is the fact that they are less attached to Quebec, although they are not necessarily more attached to Canada in return.”
Born in 1980- 94, members of Generation Y have never voted in a sovereignty referendum, and they were spared the constitutional drama of the 1980s and 1990s.
“With successes in language protection and increased economic well-being, the economic, cultural and linguistic grievances became l ess salient,” Mahéo and Bélanger write.
Generation Y Quebecers have come of age in a much more ethnically diverse society, which was reflected in their opposition to the PQ Charter of Values targeting religious attire worn by minorities.
While voters often become more conservative with age, the authors suggest the younger generation’s positions on the issues of diversity and sovereignty reflect “more permanent societal changes.”
The popular vote for the PQ has been steadily declining over the past 20 years, sliding from 44 per cent in 1994 to 25 per cent in 2014. Its main supporters, the baby boomers, are greying.
“As Generation Y ( and soon the Millennials) occupies a larger place in the electorate, and as the weight of the boomers continues to decline, we should see further decline in the PQ,” Mahéo and Bélanger conclude.
It’s a bleak diagnosis, and yet there is little sign the patient has noticed.
Four candidates are running for the leadership, but only two are considered to have a chance of winning: Cloutier and Jean-François Lisée. Both were ministers under Marois.
Cloutier was i n charge of intergovernmental affairs and “sovereigntist governance,” which was essentially a mandate to stir up trouble with Ottawa. Lisée was minister of international relations, but also a chief salesman of the Charter of Values, memorably writing in The New York Times that the PQ initiative followed in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson.
Of the two, Cloutier offers the PQ the greatest hope of reconnecting with younger Quebecers. He is just 39, a graduate of Cambridge and he declared after the PQ’s 2014 defeat that he actually opposed the Charter of Values, even if he never spoke out while in government.
In this race he has said he would prohibit the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols only among state officials in positions of authority, such as judges, police and prison guards.
Considered the favourite going into the race, Cloutier has seen Lisée eat away at his lead with a heavy focus on protecting Quebec values.
Alone among the candidates, Lisée has ruled out calling a referendum during a first PQ mandate if he wins the 2018 election. But this does not appear to be a deal-breaker among party members attracted by his hardline proposals to defend “Quebec identity.”
He wants to post signs in government buildings advising employees that it would be preferable if they wore no religious symbols. He has also said it may be necessary to ban face- covering burkas and niqabs in public because the garments are a symbol of inequality among the sexes and because they could be used to conceal firearms.
A CROP poll published Sept. 22 in La Presse found that Lisée stood the best chance of beating the Liberals in an election. Among PQ supporters, Cloutier and Lisée were essentially tied, with 37 per cent and 36 per cent support respectively. Ouellet was a distant third at 22 per cent and newcomer Paul St- Pierre Plamondon received five per cent.
Unusual in leadership races where the victor and losers usu- ally rally together after the vote, the PQ contenders have favoured a scorched-earth approach.
Last week, Lisée tried to portray Cloutier as soft on identity issues by tweeting that he had the support of Montreal imam Adil Charkaoui, whose mosque was attended by young Montrealers who left to fight in Syria. Cloutier angrily denied the charge, but Charkaoui did Cloutier no favours with a later video declaring him the PQ’s “most moderate voice.”
The dispute drew former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe into the fray, who told the Journal de Montréal that Lisée’s irresponsible actions disqualified him from leading the PQ.
Ouellet has repeatedly complained that party brass lined up behind Cloutier are sabotaging her campaign. As the legislature resumed sitting last week, the PQ put out an ad featuring almost all its MNAs declaring, “We are Parti Québécois.”
Ouellet was absent, and she said she had been deliberately excluded; party insiders told La Presse she had wanted to change the script to stress her commitment to independence.
In the heat of the dispute, she tweeted “I am Option Nationale,” a reference to a fringe hardline separatist party. She later deleted the tweet, claiming her account had been hacked.
The candidates have at least succeeded in drawing attention to the contest, but there is a sense that they are stuck fighting old battles while the world passes them by.
On Wednesday, two sovereigntist stars, Jean- Martin Aussant and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, announced an initiative to get Quebec back on track. They said they “are worried about the direction Quebec has taken in recent years.”
A series of public meetings this fall will yield a report that could be the founding platform of a new political party.
“Too often, we hear the same debates between t he s ame people who make the same arguments,” the group said in a news release.
It is not a bad description of the PQ leadership race. And it could be an early sign of the “realignment in Quebec’s party system” that Mahéo and Bélanger predict is on its way.
MORE SURPRISING IS THE FACT THEY ARE LESS ATTACHED TO QUEBEC.