New Quebec Party Hindered by Existence in Three-Dimensional Realm

The Coalition pour l'avenir du Quebec could win an election as long as it doesn't do anything to signal it is real.

The National Post’s Tasha Kheiriddin is none too impressed with Francois Legault’s long-awaited manifesto outlining the intentions of his fledgling provincial party, le Coalition pour l’avenir du Quebec (CAQ). While Legault is setting himself up as a centre-right, federalist alternative to the flagging Liberals, for Kheiriddin he hasn’t gone nearly far right enough. “CAQ is making a milquetoast effort,” she writes. The manifesto “includes a lot of pretty phrases about ‘putting Quebec in motion’ and ‘creating a program to bring people together,’ but nothing original, or groundbreaking, or, well, really right-wing.” In fact, Legault proposes policies like more pay for teachers and maintaining the French-language-enforcing bureaucracy, which would help keep the provincial government’s size at elephantine proportions, hardly what you’d expect from someone professing to adhere to the small-government model.

The Montreal Gazette’s editors are similarly nonplussed, asking “Is this all there is?” After months of waiting for what many Quebeckers were hoping would be salvation from the uninspiring mess the province’s politics has become, “[w]hat was finally released with much fanfare wasn't so much a political program as a collection of fairly standard policy proposals that leave much to be desired in terms of detail.” And the broad strokes that are there are nothing novel to either the left or right: promoting investment, maintaining the status quo on language, and shelving the sovereignty debate indefinitely, a conclusion referendum-weary Quebeckers reached long ago. Funnily enough though, the Gazette notes that a “poll this week suggested that more Quebec voters would back Legault than any of the other contenders,” suggesting that existing leaders have set the bar for success in Quebec politics so low, Legault cleared it just by throwing his hat in the ring.

In fact Legault’s numbers have only declined since October, when his party not only had no manifesto, but no name. Despite his best efforts to remain vague, Legault's decision to say things is clearly a move in the wrong direction. If he really wants to win, he should take a vow of silence and hide in his basement until the next election.