Pellerin: Like Duplessis, Quebec's Legault knew what would galvanize his voters

The Coalition Avenir Québec won its second majority mandate on Monday, the result announced barely 10 minutes after polling stations closed. This was, as I have written, the least surprising election we’ve had in a long while. But it may not be the last. In fact, I’m starting to think we may have a second Duplessis on our hands.

For the younger set: Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis — people sure knew how to give kids great middle names in those days, like U.S. President Harry Truman whose middle name was the simple letter S — mais, revenons à nos moutons. Maurice Duplessis was a dominant figure in Quebec politics, premier between 1944 and his death in 1959, plus three years in the 1930s, because he knew exactly how to appeal to white, Catholic, French-speaking voters who weren’t from downtown Montreal.

Premier François Legault is, like most pure laine Quebecers, culturally but not especially religiously Catholic. He likes reading Quebec books. If he had time he’d watch Quebec TV shows. He speaks good enough English to get by, but he has none of the elegance of Jacques Parizeau and his PhD from the London School of Economics, or the ease with which journalist René Lévesque could communicate anything to anyone, including vividly describing to radio listeners what he saw as he accompanied American soldiers who liberated Dachau. Legault, evidently, doesn’t care what he sounds like in English provided he’s understood. That’s working well for him.

He’s from a modest background, played shinny like all the other kids, lived in a normal house in a normal francophone neighbourhood. He made his name and his fortune co-founding Air Transat, a charter airline that offers Quebecers discounted trips to their favourite destinations in exchange for less leg room or other airborne comfort. Quebecers evidently don’t mind being packed like sardines if it saves them enough money. Legault understood that and made a fortune off it.

He was first elected in 1998 with the Parti Québécois of Lucien Bouchard and served as industry and education minister. That ended in 2008 with the return of the provincial Liberals under the same Jean Charest who just lost the leadership of the federal Conservative party to Pierre Poilievre. Legault kept his seat in 1998 but resigned in 1999.

In 2011 he founded the Coalition Avenir Québec and right away I knew it would catch on. It was nationalist in a way separatist parties couldn’t be; it was confident, almost boisterous instead of whiny, and business-friendly instead of left-wing.

I was certain the party could win the 2012 provincial election. So much so that I asked to be sent to cover it, in Repentigny. I was six years too early, and the crow I ate on air that night was about as deflating as the sorry balloons stranded on the stage after the speech that promised the CAQ was here to stay.

Now, the CAQ has won a crushing re-election with 90 of 125 seats. The Liberals will form the Official Opposition with their 21 seats. The lefty Québec Solidaire has 11 seats and the Parti Québécois, three. In the small mercies department, note that the Trumpist wannabe party won zero seats.

Maurice Duplessis knew what motivated the people who voted for him: protecting their culture, language and identity. The fact that he unduly targeted Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses was not held against him at the ballot box. Perhaps, one could argue, the reverse was true. His era was also known as La grande noirceur (the great darkness) because of its crass anti-intellectualism and autocracy.

Today’s Quebec is different, thank goodness. But it can still be dominated by one political leader if that leader knows how to appeal to francophones who live outside Montreal. François Legault, I argue, knows how to do that precisely because that’s who he is at his core. As long as he follows his instincts, I predict, he’ll be able to remain in power. This could be a long time indeed.

Brigitte Pellerin was born in Quebec weeks after the October Crisis and has followed the province’s twists and turns ever since.