Quebec Premier François Legault during Question Period in December, 2021, at the legislature in Quebec City.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
Near the height of François Legault’s popularity in the early 2020s, it was often said that Quebec had turned the page on its stale sovereignty debate.
The Premier’s vaunted “third way” – a robust Quebec nationalism that evinced little affection for the rest of Canada but scorned independence as impractical – seemed like a long-term path to success for the party he founded, the Coalition Avenir Québec.
The Parti Québécois and the provincial Liberals looked to some like decaying relics of an old political order, where the dominant question was whether Quebec should leave Confederation.
Most Quebeckers appeared to agree with Mr. Legault that it was better to focus on more concrete issues such as economic growth and fixing social services.
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But with the Premier’s resignation announcement on Wednesday, it was not just the career of a political fixture that was teetering, but an ideology.
Columnists were quick to pronounce the “third way” dead and buried. With the PQ leading in the polls by a wide margin and promising a sovereignty referendum in its first mandate, the “national question” is back on the agenda in Quebec, despite Mr. Legault’s best efforts.
Whether or not to hold such a referendum “will be the principal question” when voters go to the polls for a scheduled Oct. 5 election, said Guy Laforest, emeritus professor of political science at Laval University.
But with national unity at the forefront of many Canadians’ minds, amid a rising Alberta independence movement and Donald Trump’s annexation threats, it may be too soon to eulogize Mr. Legault’s vision for Quebec’s place within Canada.
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His party and the ideas it represents are not considered a lost cause in the coming election. Although the CAQ will face a gruelling leadership race in the coming months, it will also be a chance for aspirants to articulate their vision of Quebec, noted Prof. Laforest.
The CAQ contains two main “ideological families,” one advocating a more conservative nationalism appealing mainly to francophones and focused strictly on protecting Quebec’s autonomy, the other more “pluralistic” and open to “interdependence” with Canada, said Prof. Laforest.
Both camps will likely get a hearing during the leadership contest in the form of hard-core nationalists Simon Jolin-Barrette or Bernard Drainville and moderates such as Sonia LeBel or Christine Fréchette – all Legault cabinet ministers who have been floated as possible replacements.
For all their differences of style and emphasis, each has bought into the CAQ’s third-way politics and could defend that approach to Quebeckers.
Although the PQ is leading in the polls, that is largely on the strength of its young charismatic leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, who has managed to present himself as the best alternative to an exhausted Legault government.
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Support for independence itself is relatively static, around 35 per cent, and fully two-thirds of Quebeckers want to avoid a third referendum, noted Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in Montreal.
That leaves plenty of political terrain for parties that oppose putting sovereignty on the ballot. The Quebec Liberals, traditional standard-bearers of the federalist cause, are currently without a leader after the resignation of Pablo Rodriguez in December amid a campaign finance scandal. They are expected to choose his replacement by March.
A revival in fortunes for the Liberals could repolarize Quebec politics along the same lines that defined it from the 1970s until Mr. Legault’s first election win in 2018.
But the last Liberal premier, the soft-spoken neurosurgeon Philippe Couillard, was criticized for being “too federalist,” after speaking openly about his sense of connection with the rest of Canada, Prof. Béland said.
As Premier, Mr. Legault would never face the same charge. The former PQ cabinet minister abandoned the hope of independence because he didn’t think Quebeckers wanted to make the leap, but in government, he more often treated Ottawa as an adversary than an ally.
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The CAQ used the notwithstanding clause to shield legislation on language and religious symbols from scrutiny by the courts, loudly criticized then-prime minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration policy, and even tabled a Quebec constitution this fall that is still making its way through the National Assembly. Mr. Legault preferred the label “autonomist” to “federalist.”
Still, his approach of defending Quebec as a nation against perceived threats by the federal government and other outsiders remained popular. The CAQ’s decline has largely been attributed to unrelated scandals involving digitization at the auto insurance board and a proposed highway in Quebec City.
Even if Mr. Legault’s vision of Quebec nationalism minus the referendums is less ascendant than it once was, reports of its demise may be somewhat exaggerated.
“The third way, it’s too early to say that it’s dead,” said Prof. Béland.