After the election, what now for the Quebec Liberal Party?

In the wake of what was both a win and a loss of historic proportions for the Quebec Liberal Party Monday night, the question for the once-dominant force in provincial politics is how or if the party can regain the support it once knew.

Saved by its bulwark of anglophone and allophone supporters primarily in western Montreal and a few ridings close to the island, the Liberals won 21 seats, enough to maintain its status as the official opposition.

It did so even though it collected only 14.37 per cent of the overall vote, as compared to 40.98 per cent for François Legault’s victorious Coalition Avenir Québec, and less than Québec solidaire (15.43 per cent) and the Parti Québécois (14.60 per cent).

In 2018, when the Liberals were soundly beaten by the CAQ, the party still attained 25 per cent of the popular vote under Philippe Couillard.

The last time an official opposition party has fallen so rapidly in the popular vote was in 1919, when francophone voters livid over the Conservative Party’s support of conscription rebelled, explained Université du Québec à Montréal political science professor André Lamoureux.

“And even then, the Conservatives still got 17 per cent of the vote,” Lamoureux said. “And yet (Dominique Anglade), with 14 per cent support, is still leader of the opposition. It’s almost surreal.”

Lamoureux equates the Liberals’ downfall to the party’s lack of a “nationalist touch.” Polls indicated only seven per cent of francophone voters intended to support the Liberals in these elections.

“It’s a party that is very multiculturalist, that champions diversity and even the conciliation of religious integration, but doesn’t respond well to the nationalist will of Quebecers,” Lamoureux said.

Historically, Liberal leaders like Robert Bourassa could be federalist while still mounting a strong defence for Quebec on issues like language or provincial jurisdiction, Lamoureux said. Despite his federalist background, Bourassa got 53 per cent of the vote in the 1973 elections, in large part for his willingness to fight against prime minister Pierre Trudeau in Ottawa.

The Liberal Party is further hamstrung by the fracturing of its traditional vote. In the riding of D’Arcy-McGee, for example, which includes Côte-Saint-Luc, Hampstead and part of Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, the percentage of voters who opted for the Liberals dropped from 74 per cent in 2018 to 51 per cent in these elections. The Conservative Party of Quebec took 22 per cent of the vote in D’Arcy—McGee, up from 4.5 per cent in 2018. In the riding of Westmount, support for the Liberals fell from 66 per cent in 2018 to 50 per cent on Monday, and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce saw a similar drop, from 63 per cent to 50 per cent.

The drop in support for the Liberals started far before Dominique Anglade became leader, said Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

“I would say it’s the legacy of the Couillard years,” he said. “Couillard was the least nationalist leader since Adélard Godbout in the Second World War years. … Couillard was really anemic in terms of that, he just didn’t believe in that.

“I think it’s hard for francophones to vote for a party with a leader who is not really nationalist because they want someone who will defend the province in Ottawa. And that’s something the CAQ understands very well.”

Legault has proven very effective at connecting with a large swath of electors by strategically “channelling some concerns,” Mireille Paquet, associate professor of political science at Concordia University, said in an interview with CBC News on Tuesday. “Sometimes it’s about immigration or the survival of the French language, sometimes about the economy and sometimes it’s about presenting himself as the only mature leader, and the only person who can actually manage Quebec.”

The CAQ is also “one of the last examples of a real mainstream party that is mostly concerned about adapting to the demands of voters in order to win,” Paquet said. At the same time, the last elections demonstrated that winning over Montreal voters is not necessary to win a majority.

Prior to the election, Anglade toured the regions and tried to promote an image of the Liberal Party as more nationalist. But its clumsy handling of Bill 96, the CAQ government’s language legislation, alienated its core of anglophone and allophone voters, forcing Anglade to backtrack.

Anglade has conceded the party is in the midst of a long rebuilding phase, one she says they will get through by “staying true to Liberal values, as opposed to switching policy every time the wind changes.”

Béland predicts it will be a long process.

“The Liberals will need to reconcile themselves with Quebec nationalism while keeping their traditional support among anglophones,” Béland said. “And it’s hard to repair these two relationships at the same time.

“They might be crossing the desert for a while.”

rbruemmer@postmedia.com

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