Carney, Quebec, And The National Question

On Leadership And Understanding

11 years ago this month, I remember driving with my family down to Montreal, attending the funeral of a Great Uncle I had met a few times but didn’t know well. The only thing I really knew was that he was a staunch Anglo, but at some point either that day or after I found out he had been such a staunch Anglo that he had literally once had his mailbox blown up by the FLQ during the runup to the October Crisis.

His last memory, essentially, would have been the election of Pauline Marois and the third PQ government we’ve ever seen. And now, not even 11 years later, the issue of independence and Quebec’s National Question has been essentially wiped away, a relic of history that is somehow not even a decade gone. It’s not that there are no supporters of independence – the last Leger poll has 36% in favour – but that the issue no longer dominates. For as much as the Federal Parliament ostensibly has 32 Members part of a separatist party, there may as well be none for the amount they advocate for it.

The reasons for it are varied – the Constitutional question was destroying any progress Quebec could make at any other issue, for one – but the inescapable fact is that Quebec is no longer a society defined by the National Question. Unsurprisingly, it’s also the part of the country the Liberals are holding up best in. And I think those eager to get rid of Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader should do well to remember that as easily as this came about, it’s not hard to see the removal of a Quebecer from the PM’s office may hand those agitating for the National Question’s revival a boost.

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Somewhere in the archives of this site is the idea that I don’t think a Prime Minister Freeland would do meaningfully worse than Trudeau in Quebec – a column written at a time when I was still of the belief that the Liberals would be running well, or at least competitively, nationally. Now, however, with the evidence that it’s Quebec stopping the Liberals from complete meltdown, it’s harder to say.

We got a poll from Pallas last week that had Federal vote intention on a Quebec only sample, which had the Liberals at 34, the Bloc down from 2021 at 28, and then the Tories at 25. These numbers are impossible to square with the general national polls unless there’s a Quebec only strength, and it’s not shocking that Quebec would be last to turn on a native son. Plainly, if there was an election right now, the only reason the Liberals would have any chance in hell of stopping a Tory majority is because they’re holding up decently in Quebec. (This is not a prediction about the state of the polls in 2025.)

This is why I’m somewhat baffled at the argument for Mark Carney in specific, or any change in the LPC leadership. There are cases to be made for various people, but changing to Freeland or Anand feels like the kind of move a political party makes when they have no rationale for a move but feel the need to do something for the sake of it. Freeland has all the downsides of Trudeau – tarred by the economic record and the fact she has been anointed the successor -  while Anand’s best argument is unusable. Her case for the leadership is she’s the most competent Minister in Ottawa, which is true (Sean Fraser will take it once he bullies a few more cities into better housing policies) but irrelevant. Do you think the Liberals want to go into the next election relitigating vaccine policy and how efficiently Anand procured them?

The case for Carney makes somewhat more sense – he’s Freeland without the baggage of the last 8 years and without her frustrating gift for giving the Opposition soundbites that play badly. He’s a brilliant mind and could probably bring the argument back to the economy, and probably have the appetite for spending restraint and/or tax rises that would cool the economy and allow for rate cuts going into 2025. I get enough of the case.

I don’t think Carney’s Ignatieff and the people making that comp are missing the key fact about Ignatieff’s time (Jagmeet ain’t exactly Jack). That said, he’s much more Malcolm Turnbull than his defenders in the commentariat want to admit – except without the thing that made Turnbull actually popular, which was his willingness to say non-traditionally conservative shit. Turnbull’s time in office was a political disaster, because people are not looking for a technocratic government right now, they’re looking for fighters. And Carney’s not that.

Carney’s also not someone who has ever had to lead from the heart and not his head. There’s no argument that Quebec independence is a good thing for Quebec on any form of practical grounds, which is why it died essentially when the rest of the country stopped feeding it culture wars to fight. Carney’s never shown any understanding of Quebec, and it’s a huge liability to any future for him. The lack of evidence is not evidence of lacking necessarily, but it’s a huge gamble to assume that Carney can meet the moment in La Belle Province.

The thing about Quebec is it requires a different, additional intelligence to succeed there. It is a place with issues like everywhere else, but it also dances to its own beat. And electing a leader who has never shown he gets that quality that is singularly Quebecois is an easy way to test just how low the floor on the Liberal vote is.

Long time readers of this site or anyone who’s ever looked at my Twitter banner should know that Montreal occupies an almost alarming place in my mind, and certainly in my heart. I owe my sanity to that place, to the glory of the world’s greatest city, and the internal contradictions that make it so glorious. Montreal is a city only understood as a miracle, a place that should have been nothing but failure that somehow became everything. The Liberal-Bloc battleground is full of places dependent on Montreal but would be greatly offended to be called Montreal, to a level and a degree that Mississauga wouldn’t feel about being called Toronto.

A successful Liberal leader needs to understand that when you’re in Anna Gainey’s fiefdom it’s still Dorchester, but the second you step off island the conversation has to radically change. And the Liberals need a leader who gets it as not just an intellectual exercise, but on a visceral level. And Carney needs to prove he gets it before he can even be considered for a leadership bid. If the Liberals nominate a leader who fails to get that Quebec is great because of its internal contradictions and not in spite of them, then Quebec might well respond by seeking not to be governed by people who don’t understand it.

The thing that has turned down the temperature on the National Question has been intentional decisions by the Feds. Harper, for all his ills, understood that his job was to not fuck up in any way that would give the issue any life, and in Trudeau, there’s a Liberal leader and a PM who understands Quebec in the way Quebec wants to be understood. A leader who doesn’t get Quebec won’t get the landmines to avoid, and there’s a very real shot Carney doesn’t get it. And the downsides are real.

A failed leadership change won’t just lose the LPC the next election, but could revive Quebec’s National Question as a front burner issue. May those advocating for Carney’s accession reckon with exactly what they’re advocating for.