Tom Mulcair: Rating the leaders as Quebec campaign nears finish line

François Legault has been uninspiring, testy and grumpy but is poised for another majority thanks to a voting system he had vowed to change.

Author of the article:

Tom Mulcair  •  Special to Montreal Gazette

Well, it’s been a whirlwind of a campaign and despite the ups and downs, François Legault and his Coalition Avenir Québec appear poised to form a new majority government after next Monday’s election.

Legault got a majority the last time thanks to our unfair first-past-the-post voting system that he had solemnly promised to change.

With only 37.4 per cent of the vote last time he got 100 per cent of power for four years. It will be similar again this time because just like Justin Trudeau, who also vowed to change our electoral system, Legault quickly discovered its charms. Legault recently dismissed the changes that he’d championed just four years earlier as something that only interested “intellectuals,” clearly excluding himself.

Legault has been uninspiring, testy and grumpy (with the eerie exception of a pasted-on smile during his Tout le monde en parle appearance). His prejudices have been on full display with cheap shots equating immigrants with violence and extremism. His language default position remains firmly anti-English and he’s stirred the pot in the Indigenous file (he had to apologize for that one).

Dominique Anglade has had a superb second half to the campaign, perhaps enough of a good performance to allow people to forget the mistakes of her Liberal Party during the first half.

The second debate was her shining moment. Quebecers discovered her. On Tout le monde en parle, she showed strength and determination, digging in when pushed hard on her opposition to Bill 96.

There is something profoundly unfair in the fact that Anglade continues to get slagged by some in the English-speaking community for not opposing Bill 96 enough and, at the same time, gets attacked in French media for opposing it! She’s risen above and has been admirable and consistent.

The two young separatist leaders, Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, have both been solid throughout the campaign, with the biggest surprise being the superb performance of PSPP.

GND is a born performer. Clever, charismatic and a gifted communicator, he’s done very well in front of the cameras and in debate. His Québec solidaire party was the only one whose spending projections held water.

He has had to back away from several key policy options he once defended, like disarming the police. He tries to make an arcane distinction between the official QS policy of disarming the police with its campaign platform. Beep-beep-beep has been his campaign music as he backed away from succession duties on the “ultra rich” that would have made it nigh impossible for farmers to leave their operations to their kids. The bureaucracy that would be required to put in place many of his promises would wipe out any possible fiscal gain, but as one QS stalwart said to me: “They know they’ll never form government, so why worry?”

That same reasoning is supposed to apply to the harebrained QS scheme to spend over $500 million preparing Quebec sovereignty. GND has never been able to explain how years of turmoil in society and for the economy could ever benefit the average working family that he claims to want to help.

Late Monday, QS handed an unexpected electoral gift to the Parti Québécois. PSPP was in a very difficult fight in Camille-Laurin riding. On Monday the QS candidate there got caught pilfering a PQ flyer  and withdrew. That might provide just enough votes for PSPP to eke out a victory in his riding.

Éric Duhaime has pulled off an incredible political feat in resuscitating the defunct Conservative Party. He looks poised to win at least his own riding in Quebec City and perhaps one or two more in the area. Politics will never be dull if and when he enters the National Assembly.

Now, please, go vote!

Tom Mulcair, a former leader of the federal NDP, served as minister of the environment in the Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest. 

1. 

   Opinion: Anglophones should reject Éric Duhaime's overtures

2. 

   Josh Freed: It's hard to get excited over Quebec election's leading candidates