Liberals' Quebec Crisis

On A Need To Understand

How is the Quebec polling right now not a five alarm fire?

Yeah yeah, I’m just saying this because I’m backing the Quebec candidate, it’s self serving to make this point, whatever. I get it, I’m not an idiot. It’s not a hard line to draw from the solution I’m proposing to elevating the Quebec polling to crisis levels. But put aside the Steve MacKinnon of it all, and seriously tell we’re not fucked in Quebec right now.

20% in EKOS, 20% in Abacus, 21% in Pallas. We are down up to 11% not on the Bloc in first, no, on the fucking Conservatives for second. We are in third in Quebec in every poll this week. It’s a fucking disaster. And I don’t understand why the idea of giving a fuck about solving that is getting the equivalent of an eye roll from the commentariat.

Let’s be clear - this is shaping up to be a generational realignment for the party in Quebec, with the Conservatives supplanting the Liberals in traditional Liberal-Bloc battlegrounds around Montreal - the places that would be very offended to be actually called Montreal by some Anglo columnist even though half their workforce work in the city. Such a realignment would be messy and unequal, and throw up hugely disproportionate and almost random swings that would reshape the map. And it would make it harder for any future leader to win back seats if in 2029 they’re in third in seats they need to cobble together the Trudeau coalition and instead of a straight fight the Conservatives are actually meaningfully contesting them.

But the other thing is not just policy, though there’s clearly issues with the policy mix, it’s more cultural. The Liberal Party is faced with a rising PQ, and is poised - if you believe the (very bad) English pundits who don’t actually understand how a points system works - to elect a candidate who not only does not have any relationship with Quebec but doesn’t seem to care. And that applies to any of them.

Caring about Quebec feels like such a low bar, and yet in this party it is an afterthought, a thing to pander to in the way that Presidential candidates find it in themselves to care about corn and ethanol when they want to win the Iowa Caucus. But we need a commitment to the ideals of Quebec in our party, an understanding of what it means to not just have Quebec in our country but to embrace the glory of it in all its ways and all that it means. And I’m sorry, but this crop of Ontarians and Clark aren’t it.

This isn’t a litmus test that it needs to be a Quebecer - I wouldn’t call myself one, even though both parents were born and raised there. But it needs to be someone who views Quebec as something more as an irritation to be solved and dealt with. The honest truth is we would be nothing, as either a party or a country, without Quebec. Our greatest people, our greatest legacies, and our greatest moments of humanity and love come from that magnificent place. It is a place that fought hard against conscription and fought for a woman’s right to choose. It is a place that has led on fighting climate change and produced the intellectual heavyweights that have powered our best achievements. It cannot be an afterthought.

Plainly, I’m increasingly worried. I understand that parts of this country hates acting like Quebec is special for understandable reasons, but let’s be completely honest - Quebec is special. It is far from perfect, and its choice in political leaders sometimes leaves lots to be desired (on both federalist and separatist sides), but it is truly special. There is a verve and a pep and a je ne sais quo on the streets of Montreal or Quebec City that you can’t replicate anywhere else. Do we pay a price for subsidizing Quebec? Sure. But there’s no price I wouldn’t pay to keep our version of the shining city on the hill in Canada.

What we need to embrace is not the nihilism of a zero sum approach, but understand that the best way to both solve western alienation and keep Quebec happy is not a government and a party that panders to one at the expense of the other, but to realize that we have to embrace both. We need to do more to appeal to the West, sure - though maybe it’s partially just a better sales job needed, as Max Fawcett’s thorough column about Trudeau’s energy legacy shows - but we also should not take that lesson as a reason or an excuse to believe something idiotic and absurd. Quebec is Canada’s soul, an intrinsic and powerful part of us that we would never be able to live without. And having a leader who understands that is the bare minimum.

It’s the bare minimum on a purely electoral reason - winning Laval and the South Shore and Quebec City seats are important, sure - but it matters as a Canadian. We are circling the drain on plenty of issues in Canada, and at a time of crisis in so many other areas we cannot elect a leader who will allow national unity to be the next crisis. If we elect a leader who is tone deaf and dismissive of Quebec we will hand the next Quebec election to the PQ on a platter and guarantee a referendum by decade’s end. I won’t let that happen. At least without a fight.

If there is some latent understanding in the three major English Canadian candidates I’d love them to find it and show it. But I don’t think any of them have it, because if they did they’d have shown it by now. I am horrified by the crisis we are in and sleepwalking towards. We must not let this get worse. We cannot let the Liberal Party lose our soul in a misguided sense that things have changed.