TVA Debate And Carney’s French

On English Misconceptions

One of the great misconceptions about Quebec is that it’s a place where language matters above all else. Obviously the linguistic divide matters, and Quebecers are usually quite proud of their language and their heritage, but there’s something important that is often lost in English Canada - Quebecers still care what politicians are saying, in addition to their capacity to say it coherently in French.

There is a tendency to treat Quebecers as children, almost - people who can’t actually judge the substance of an issue, but merely default to clapping seal status for the person whose enunciation of their needlessly wordy translation of their Quebec slogan is least bad. I keep seeing serious people, both Conservatives and also non-partisans, claiming that Poilievre’s superior French means he’ll wipe the floor with Carney in the debates - as if Poilievre hasn’t spent the last two years harping on an issue that Quebecers don’t give a shit about in the Federal Carbon Tax. It seems to be this exotic point that nobody mentions, that Poilievre’s signature achievement of opposition is worth less than nothing because Quebecers never paid the Federal Tax and repeal means nothing to them.

The level of infantilization Quebecers are subjected to on these matters is incredible, and incredibly offensive. There’s a reason the Conservatives don’t win in Quebec, and it’s not because of the French language - it’s because Quebecers hold values that are incompatible with much of the Conservative base, especially in the west. It’s a simple explanation that gets muddled by bad faith actors.

The honest answer is that TVA played a high stakes game of poker by asking for $75k per party for attendance at the debate, and they lost. They wanted to cover the cost of the debate with party money, meaning whatever they could sell the ads for was pure profit. Quebecor gambled and lost. If I were Carney, I probably wouldn’t have played that game, but he did and they won, at least for now.

The worst possible outcome for the Liberals is the debate going ahead without them, and that’s off the table. Now, either TVA puts the Greens in the debate and Poilievre pays Carney’s entry fee, or the cancellation stays in effect. Either is better than the worst case scenario. But the idea that Quebecers are going to revolt over debates is nonsense - there is already one French debate that turns into a debate for Quebec, and what’s said by the leaders, in that debate and across the broad suite of the campaign, will be what moves voters.

Quebecers are not, as they are often made out to be, people who cannot focus on the issues at hand. They are Canadians concerned with public services, the economy, and the issues that animate voters to their east and west. There is the additional questions of heritage and culture, but there is an infantilization that we recognize in other scenarios.

When Republicans ran Herschel Walker for Senate in 2022, their implicit strategy was that running a Black ex-Georgia Bulldog football player would be enough to win over some number of usually reliably Democratic Black voters. It was, as I said before the results came in, a white Republican’s sense of how to appeal to Black voters, and it was proven true - Walker did replacement level with Black voters. That's how the discourse in English Canada often feels, similarly lazy and out of touch.

Quebecers are flocking to the Liberals right now - Leger has them up 18%, while Research Co and Angus Reid both have the lead above 20% - and there’s no willingness to try and figure out why. It’s tooting my own horn, but I have yet to see any major English publication try to take a swing at explaining what’s happening in Quebec as well as this site is currently attempting to do. My February longread on this holds up quite well a month later, and functions as a clear explainer of how we got here and why some keep underestimating Carney here.

The fact that the Bloc are continuing to hammer on questions of debates and not, I don’t know, any actual policy or purpose to exist is all the evidence I need to see that they’re scrambling. Yes, the French debate will be a bad night, but by raising their own expectations about it, the Bloc are fucking this up. Short of Mark Carney accidentally calling one of the moderators a slur or insulting Maurice Richard, it’ll be hard for the Bloc to match or exceed the expectations they’ve set here. It’s a fuckup on their part.

But again, I come back to the point I’ve been making since February - what is the Bloc’s message in an election where Canadian nationalism is a real factor and economic uncertainty is the enemy? It doesn’t exist, and the way we know it is they’re scrambling. We’ve already had a Bloc candidate make an ass out of themselves on the issue of whether Canada or Trump is a bigger threat to Quebec, and that sort of question is far more important to the voters of Quebec than Debate nonsense.

The fundamentals of this campaign are what they are, and they’re bad for the Bloc. The fact that the polls are showing huge Liberal surges and a collapsing BQ is evidence that Quebecers haven’t cared until now that Carney’s French is bad. They’re not going to suddenly be shocked, shocked to find he’s not fluent. They know, and they’re voting for him anyways.

Quebecers aren’t idiots, they’re making a rational decision, and if you can’t see that, you’re looking at what matters to Quebec wrong.