One good reason to be happy with Quebec election

And congratulations as well to premier-designate François Legault of Quebec. His party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, won a clear majority victory in this week’s provincial election — a victory that was historic in that it was the first since the 1970s by a party other than the provincial Liberals or the Parti Québécois.

Many Canadians are only tuning into Legault and the CAQ now. The party is federalist, and publicly supports Quebec remaining part of the Canadian federation. It also positions itself as rightleaning, even more so than the provincial Liberals, who nevertheless actually made some progress in cleaning up the perennial mess of Quebec’s fiscal policies over the past four years. On those grounds, the CAQ’s election is certainly welcome — although outgoing premier Phillipe Couillard’s overtly federalist stance and efforts to restore Quebec’s competitiveness are noted, and appreciated.

Many Canadians are also now noticing that the CAQ has some harder edges, at least by the standards of the rest of Canada. Legault’s party has said it wishes to reduce the number of immigrants coming into Quebec and remove those who haven’t learned French after three years in the province (although it lacks the legal authority in both cases, and Quebec’s aging society certainly could use immigrants, anyway). It has also said it will move ahead with the oft-discussed idea of banning the wearing of religious symbols by public servants, and said this week it would be willing to invoke the notwithstanding clause in order to keep such a law operative in the face of possible Charter objections from the courts.

These are issues to watch. But in the meantime, Canadians should not miss the greater significance of this election. For decades, the separation issue has imposed an illogical, artificial stasis onto Quebec politics: federalists could really only ever support the Liberals, and separatists, the PQ. This has stifled conversations the province needed to have.

Some of those conversations can now begin. Canadians might not like a lot of what they hear. But the almost fully two-thirds of Quebec’s population that wishes to remain in Canada now has more viable governing options than just Liberals over and over again. That’s something all Canadians should be glad for.