It was only a few months ago that François Legault, shortly after leaving the Parti Québécois, gathered a few thirty-something political junkies over pizza and wine around a pool table in his spacious third-floor home office to discuss launching a new political party.
Since then, Quebec politics has been in ferment. Voters decimated the federal separatist party in May and show signs of demanding changes at the provincial level, as well. Mr. Legault's group still isn't a formal political party, yet it tops the governing Liberals and the opposition PQ in opinion polls.
In an interview, Mr. Legault told The Globe and Mail why he believes he can be the one to break out of the stale sovereignty-federalist dialectic, calling both sovereignty and renewed federalism "a dead end." He says Quebec needs a second Quiet Revolution that will place nationalist aspirations at the forefront, but put off making a case for sovereignty for at least a decade.
During its early meetings, the group wrestled over how to break the divide between sovereigntists and federalists that has polarized political debate in Quebec. Lucien Bouchard had once promoted the idea of a third way. But instead, he went on to lead the PQ and found himself trapped between the two poles.
Mr. Legault, a former high-profile PQ cabinet minister who quit the party in June of 2009, is determined to succeed where Mr. Bouchard – his political mentor and the man who recruited him into politics – had failed. And Mr. Legault has no intention of repeating the mistakes of the Action Démocratique du Québec, the 17-year-old, right-leaning party that became the official opposition in 2008, but quickly returned to the political fringe after a series of blunders by its rookie representatives.
Mr. Legault's idea of another political party may have seemed far-fetched at first. But now it is commonly accepted in Quebec that the province is going through a wholesale realignment, following the federal election result of May 2 when an orange avalanche swept the province, destroying old political allegiances. The NDP, which in its 50-year history had succeeded in electing only two members of Parliament, overran Quebec by winning 59 of the province's 75 seats.
Quebec voters demanded change and got it on the federal stage. Now, Mr. Legault is poised to take advantage of the upheaval at the provincial level.
The political void left by an unpopular Liberal government and a PQ struggling in the midst of a full-blown crisis has created a rare opportunity for Mr. Legault's team.
The yet-to-be named party is still six months from being officially launched, yet money is already flowing in and candidates are being recruited. At a fundraising event a few weeks ago in Montreal, Mr. Legault attracted 350 business leaders, mostly Liberal supporters, who at $250 a head, donated more than $80,000 to his coalition.
"We have to find a way to bring the best and the brightest together as part of the same team … that is to say a super team of competent people who will accept for one or two mandates to relaunch Quebec back to prosperity," Mr. Legault said in an interview in his luxurious Montreal home.
Disgruntled PQ-leaning nationalists are also joining the Legault camp, including a caucus member who quit the party to sit as an independent, anxious to carry the Legault banner in the Quebec National Assembly.
Mr. Legault wants to put sovereignty and demands for renewed federalism aside for at least a decade. There is one controversial issue however that will need to be addressed if he ever does become premier: protection of the French language.
When he unveils his culture and language platform in September, Mr. Legault will call on Ottawa to give Quebec complete powers over language – the foundation, he argues, of building a stable French-language nation in North America.
"If the federal government is serious about recognizing Quebec as a nation, it has to start by giving the province all the powers over language to the Quebec government," Mr. Legault said. And if Ottawa refuses? Mr. Legault suggests that if Quebecers stand together on the issue, the federal government will have no choice.
A requirement for political success is winning over the province's business community, which Mr. Legault claims is "the prisoner" of the Liberals. "I have sensed that in the business community since about a year now there is a great interest in the creation of a new party," Mr. Legault said. "Business leaders are open to the idea of a new party and are deeply disappointed with the Quebec Liberal Party's failure to act."
How should a governing party act? Not by renewing the Canadian federation or achieving sovereignty, he said. The time has come to set aside the issue of Quebec's political future and focus instead on education, health care, the economy and reinforcing Quebec's French culture and language.
"We have to accept that today Quebeckers aren't ready to decide [on their political future] and at the same time there are important problems to solve. More then ever there is a need to bring Quebeckers together," Mr. Legault said. "We can defend the national interest of Quebec without promoting sovereignty."
What's needed before returning to the old debate, he said, is to generate new wealth, solve problems in health and education, and build a sense of pride by promoting "economic nationalism." Then the issue of sovereignty or federalism can be revisited, he said.
"Once we get back the leverage and the bargaining power, maybe in 10 or 15 years, we can return to the debate," he said. "But if we do nothing now, I'm afraid that choice will no longer be available to us."