Carney: Lessons From Legault’s Return

How The Path To Liberal Majority Runs Through Legault’s Best Territory

Where did Francois Legault initially break through?

I know this seems like a trick question, but he and the CAQ did it by breaking through a lot of places that English Canadians would call “Greater Montreal” and get death glares from the locals. Places like Blainville, Montarville, Shefford, Terrebonne, and Longueuil either elected CAQ MNAs in 2012 and 2014 or came damn close. The donut, as it were, around Montreal - the South Shore, the Eastern Townships, and then up north of Laval - were the places where Legault was able to revive the party, after Dumont’s 2008 disaster and the party’s retreat back to an essentially Quebec City base.

The reason this matters is that those communities are now almost exclusively the Liberal-Bloc battleground. Yes, you have Gaspé, and there’s weird and messy three way fights in Trois-Rivières and Beauport, but the bulk of the fight is truly in and around Montreal. There are 10(-ish, heavy on the ish) seats where the Bloc won last time that are in and around Montreal, that are in many ways economically dependent on Montreal, and where the Liberals failed to break through in 2021, which is why their hopes of majority government died. Those ten are listed below, with my model’s projected Liberal margins below. (Positives are Liberal gains, negatives are Bloc leads.)

• Châteauguay—Les Jardins-de-Napierville (+4.1)

• La Pointe-de-l'Île (-6.2)

• La Prairie—Atateken (-0.9)

• Longueuil—Saint-Hubert (+5.3)

• Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie (+0.8)

• Rivière-des-Milles-Îles (+2.9)

• Saint-Jean (-9.7)

• Shefford (-0.2)

• Terrebonne (-3.9)

• Thérèse-De Blainville (+6.6)

(Chateauguay was Liberal at the last election but flipped to being Bloc by a hundred-ish votes in the redistribution. You can classify it as either a Liberal gain or a Liberal hold if they win it, but it is technically a Bloc seat in my view. Remember, the 2021 results on the new boundaries are 33 Liberals, 34 Bloc, 10 Cons, and a New Democrat.)

Those are 5 gains for the Liberals already projected, and 2 more that are within a point. If Leger’s 11% lead was used, that would be 7 in total, plus gaining back Gaspé and flipping Trois-Rivière. That’d be 42 seats in Quebec, and get the Liberals about halfway from their current position to the majority government line, all else being equal.

So, why did I lead this piece with Legault? In 2012 and 2014, Legault was a fairly non-ideological figure, positioning himself not as a former PQ Minister but as a Made In Quebec success story in business who could come from outside the system to change it for the better. He was willing, nay eager, to disavow his previous pro-independence views because of the circumstances of the moment, and correctly identified and dealt with the noose around his neck before it was a problem. And the voters that are about to decide Mark Carney’s fate bought it up. Seriously, who does that sound like?

Swap out independence for a carbon tax (not that Quebecers give a single shit about the Federal tax, since it’s never applied there) and make it Made In Canada instead of Quebec, and Carney is pitching himself in a similar way to Legault. The appeal of Legault was the idea he had better shit to do than focus on independence or nationalist chest beating, and that his experience could solve real problems in healthcare, education, and government corruption. His pitch was that he knew where the bodies were buried and had the capacity to actually dig them up and fix the problems. How is this not Carney’s pitch?

There are reasons to doubt Carney’s capacity to actualize this pitch - his French often fails what I call the Scrimshaw Test, which is if you’re speaking slowly enough I can understand you, your French is questionable - but Quebecers are clearly interested. Since Leger dropped that shock poll showing the Liberals at 39% in Quebec if Carney was the hypothetical leader, he has faced intense scrutiny and significant attack, and his vote share is down 3% only from when he was a mere hypothetical. He maintains a robust lead on the Bloc, who are in the mid 20s in Leger and in the 20s far too often for their liking in the polls generally. And he is about to embark on a European trip when he looks statesmanlike while Blanchet and Poilievre try desperately to break into his news cycle.

Every single time I talk about Quebec with smart people who know the province, we end up in the same spot. Carney is third of 3 options in terms of French proficiency of the major leaders, and that’s a problem. The debate(s) in French won’t be great for him, probably. That’s true, but the thing we keep coming back to is what is Blanchet going to say?

It’s all fine and dandy for the Bloc to be lead by a better performer, in the literal sense of the word. If all we’re doing is judging the debate on style points, as an act of performance art, Blanchet is going to kick Carney’s ass probably. He is funny and disarming and good on camera and good on his feet. But what is he going to say?

The Bloc’s basic founding premise - whether pitching an explicitly separatist message or a more nationalist defender of Quebec’s interest in Ottawa message - is that Canada’s interests and Quebec’s interests are at odds. Their whole sales pitch is the idea that the only thing standing between Quebec being sold down the river is their presence in Ottawa. It’s a dumb premise, but it’s their founding premise, their founding grievance. It’s all they have. What they’ve rarely ever faced is the idea that right now what’s best for Quebec is a strong Canada.

What Carney et al can rightly argue is that right now the best thing for Quebec isn’t to run away from Canada but to embrace it. At a time when the Americans are unreliable partners at best, the best thing for a steel worker who just had tariffs slapped on their products is exactly what’s best for the steel worker in the Soo. There is no time in a national crisis for a pissing contest, only for saving some jobs and helping some workers.

If the Bloc want to seriously argue that now is a good time to toss another grenade into the Quebec economy - the uncertainty of a referendum, one that would destroy an already fragile investment environment and crater business confidence - then they’re free to. As I wrote last month, there’s a straight line between the chaos of Donald Trump and the chaos that Quebec voters are poised to vote for in 2026, and that message allows Carney to talk about his big theme - stability in a crisis - in Quebec as well as English Canada while putting a distinctly Quebecois flavour on it.

The Bloc’s big problem is that while I understand the idea that Carney will play badly in Quebec aesthetically, I don’t see that mattering. Carney has the ability to tap into a message that is resonating in Quebec, one that we’ve seen work before, and one that has worked before with the very voters who will decide this election.

Carney has the opportunity to win the voters who gave Legault a second political life, voters who have already shown a desire for less ideology, more problem solving, and want competent governance above all else. If he does, he can win that elusive majority government.