As Quebec’s COVID cases rise, so does premier’s popularity
MONTREAL— Among the provinces, Quebec has so far been hardest hit by COVID- 19. Even before the imposition this week of a curfew, it had become clear that the latest lockdown was falling well short of flattening the curve.
For all that, Premier François Legault’s popularity is undented. A year- end Léger poll of Quebec personalities found the premier at the top of the chart, more than 30 points ahead of third- place Justin Trudeau.
Since the pandemic began, Legault has remained in the top tier of the country’s most appreciated premiers. If a provincial election were held tomorrow, the ruling Coalition Avenir Québec would likely sweep all but the Island of Montreal.
But Legault’s high standing is not exclusively related to a pandemic- induced rallying around the flag. A mix of positive political chemistry and fortuitous timing contributes to his success. Here are some elements of that mix.
Quebecers were anything but mesmerized by Legault when he came back from political retirement to create and lead the Coalition Avenir Québec almost a decade ago.
In his first election as leader, he earned only 27 per cent of the vote. In the second, the CAQ’s share of the vote fell to 23 per cent.
Many then wrote Legault’s political obituary.
Over this crossing of the political desert, some of his star recruits left to join the Liberal party. Dominique Anglade, the latest leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, was one of those.
But Legault persisted and led his party to a majority victory on his third attempt. It was over his spell in opposition that he built the comfort zone with the electorate he enjoys to this day. On that score, his electoral travails parallel those of late NDP leader Jack Layton who swept Quebec after having been ignored by its voters over his first two federal campaigns.
Opposition parties often treat their leaders as disposable quantities, to be thrown out after one lost election.
And yet it is not only in Quebec that the attraction of an unfamiliar bright shiny object tends to fade on the way to the ballot box.
Former prime minister Kim Campbell’s fall from grace in 1993 is only one case in point.
In 2015, a sense among voters that they knew Trudeau for having watched him grow up while his father was in office likely contributed as much to his come- from- behind majority victory as the fact that he was a fresh face.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, the pandemic has been a blessing of sorts for the CAQ premier. Like Trudeau over his first term, Legault brought to power a largely untested team whose members he was not always particularly familiar with, along with some halfbaked policies.
By the time the pandemic took hold in Quebec, his government — in its second year — was fast reaching the point where weak links in the cabinet chain and glaring policy inconsistencies start to matter.
The COVID- 19 crisis allowed Legault to monopolize centre stage for months on end, giving his less agile ministers the opportunity to surmount a steep learning curve ( or be dumped) in the shadows of the pandemic.
Potentially polarizing debates over policy were shovelled forward or slipped under the COVID carpet. The opposition parties were relegated to relative obscurity.
For the first time in more than 40 years, the success of the current Quebec premier is not meant to serve a larger cause in the battle over the province’s political future.
It is possible for voters on both sides of the divide to find that the premier is doing a decent job without wondering whether his performance will make secession more or less likely. That in itself is a bit of a novelty.
Given the conservative leanings of the Coalition Avenir Québec, one might have expected the political divide in Quebec to shift to a left- versusright axis. But Legault’s brand of conservatism bears little resemblance to what so often has come to define other rightofcentre parties in Canada and the U. S.
On issues such as climate change, universal child care, access to abortion or medically assisted death, the CAQ is really closer to Trudeau’s Liberals than to the Ontario Tories and their federal cousins.
Finally, for the most part, the current Quebec government and its premier steer clear of the anti- elitist discourse that has come to fuel the narrative of a large section of the Canadian right.
Where other right- leaning leaders often seem to go out of their way to demonstrate that there is not an intellectual bone in their bodies, Legault boasts the fact that he is an avid reader.
Based on his social media output, he favours fiction over non- fiction. And yes, he has been reading and reporting to Quebecers on a sizable number of novels over the course of the pandemic!