Quebec’s embattled premier Francois Legault, leader of the misnamed Coalition Avenir Quebec (Coalition for the Future of Quebec, or CAQ) party, is once more looking in the rear-view mirror in a desperate attempt to stave off near certain defeat in the upcoming 2026 provincial election. With his party trailing a distant third in the polls (13%), far behind either the leading Parti Quebecois (33%) or the second-place Liberals (26%), Legault is obviously desperate enough to try almost anything. His latest gambit, a provincial constitution, is just that.
While it is probably his worst and most offensive proposal of this kind yet – its contents having been variously described by experts as discriminatory, an attack on civil rights, undemocratic and unconstitutional — it is a logical successor to several other highly controversial initiatives he has introduced in the recent past, all motivated by political desperation rather than logic or evidence, in response to a manufactured issue. Indeed, it includes two pieces of legislation that have been so obviously in contravention of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Bill 96 on the French Language and Bill 21, the so-called Secularity Act) that the government invoked the notwithstanding clause in advance, to prevent such judicial scrutiny. Worse still, like these earlier initiatives, his constitutional gambit is pointlessly engulfing Quebec society in divisive debates of the past and distracting from the very real issues facing Quebecers today.
Like the Charlottetown Accord, there are so many offensive provisions in this proposal that it provides something for almost every civil society interest group to oppose. Evidently anticipating such resistance, the plan also contains an extraordinary measure that “would also forbid organizations that get public funding, such as school boards, from using portions of provincial government grants to pay for court challenges of laws deemed to protect “the fundamental characteristics of Quebec.” This provision, of course, is a direct response to legal challenges that have already been launched by numerous groups against Bills 21 and 96, one of which is currently before the Supreme Court. Frédéric Bédard, a prominent Quebec constitutional lawyer, declared that this particular provision could only be described as “draconian” and stated in an interview that “It’s a very, very sad day for democracy. We’ve never seen something like this in Quebec. Even Donald Trump never thought of that.”[i]
Add to this list of offences the fact that this proposed constitution was concocted by Legault and his inner circle, without any consultation with opposition parties in the legislature or Quebecers themselves, and it becomes increasingly obvious, as both the PQ and Liberal leaders noted, that this is really an exercise in political expediency, not nation-building or cultural protection.
It is no accident that this bizarre behaviour coincides with Legault’s stunning transition from one of the most popular premiers in the country to its most unpopular by far, with an unprecedented low approval rating of 22%.[ii] This is a very long fall for someone viewed until fairly recently as almost unbeatable. For many Quebecers Legault was seen as a fatherly, kinder and gentler Duplessis-type populist figure, who was supposed to be a calm and rational influence on Quebec politics after the tumultuous tenures of the PQ’s’ Pauline Marois and the Liberals’ Philippe Couillard, a period which included the tabling of the explosive Charbonneau Commission on corruption in the province’s construction industry.
Before he took over as leader of the CAQ, Legault was already well-known as a successful businessman who had founded Air Transat. He was also already well-known as a politician, having served as a cabinet minister in the separatist PQ governments of Lucien Bouchard and Bernard Landry. Then, in short order, he resigned from the PQ and the separatist movement itself, and left politics entirely, before resurfacing as the founder of a new political party, the CAQ. His subsequent surprise victory in the 2008 provincial election, which delivered a majority government, can be attributed to two major developments: first, the splintering of the traditional provincial party system into many new fringe parties, which then siphoned off votes from the two major parties, the PQ and the Liberals; and, second, the continued decline of popular support for separation. In this context the CAQ’s (and Legault’s) image of economic credibility and stability, along with the claim that separation was neither feasible nor desirable, but Quebec nationalism could be championed within the existing system, was a winning combination.
This was a seismic shift in the way provincial politics operated. What Legault had done with this approach was to break the decades-long template of Quebec elections as a contest between separatists and federalists, allowing voters for the first time in more than fifty years to consider more typical concerns on the right/left spectrum. Four years later, the ongoing profusion of small parties, and the selection of lacklustre leaders by the PQ and Liberal parties in opposition, allowed Legault to retain and even expand his majority in the 2022 election. This second victory was particularly striking given Quebec’s controversial record during the COVID pandemic, when the province had one of the worst outcomes of any province, primarily due to poor conditions in long-term care homes. However Legault himself was still seen as a steady and reassuring hand at the wheel due to his implementation of some of the firmest restraint measures in the country, including lockdowns and curfews.
Yet by 2023, barely a year after that second electoral victory, polls were indicating that his government was in serious trouble. So what happened?
To begin with, sound management of the economy proved to be a challenge. Although Legault appeared to be making progress in the beginning, as he pursued his “obsession” with bringing the Quebec economy up to the level of Ontario[iii] this soon tapered off. And some of that progress was illusory, since the positive numbers for Quebec were enhanced by the extremely poor performance of the Ontario economy under premier Doug Ford.[iv] This economic stalemate was quickly followed by the now familiar negative fallout from the pandemic that affected all western democracies, including cost of living issues, unemployment and interest rates. But they hit Quebec harder than other regions of the country. [v] And, as Philippe Fourner of Canada 338 polling noted, “Québecers are feeling the same economic pain the rest of Canadians are experiencing, but rather than pointing the finger at the prime minister, they are pointing it at their premier. Many Canadians outside of Québec blame the Trudeau government for the cost of living and inflation,[but] [t]he first government for Quebec voters is the Quebec government, it’s not the federal government.” [vi]
By the fall of 2023 this general economic malaise was so significant that articles began appearing with headlines such as “The beginning of the end for Quebec Premier Francois Legault?”[vii] If this were not sufficient to unnerve the premier, the growing popularity of PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, whose right-wing business agenda was seen to rival the CAQ, now appeared to provide a credible alternative to Legault.[viii]
The unexpected victory of the PQ in a Quebec City byelection in October apparently threw Legault into a panic. The cause of the victory was instructive. It was not nationalistic fervor, but disenchantment with the CAQ on the economic front. In addition to a series of managerial debacles, including the chaotic rollout of an online auto insurance platform,[ix] Legault had earlier scrapped plans for a bridge between Quebec City and Levis. Locally this was a highly unpopular move which most observers believe played a significant role in the PQ upset. The premier’s growing image of dithering and incompetence was not helped when he promptly announced that the bridge was back on the government’s agenda, something the rest of the province opposed.
Similarly, the premier had stated before the 2022 election that increased immigration – seen by many experts as an essential element of economic growth for the province — would be “suicidal” for the French language, a move designed to shore up his nationalist credentials. But in the fall 2023 it was revealed that the Quebec government would increase its immigration levels to 60,000 newcomers, albeit with a French-language test for temporary foreign workers,[x] an about-face which the PQ was quick to criticize.
Last but not least, provincial public sectors workers launched an aggressive strike in the fall of 2023. The strike, the largest in Quebec history, saw the four major unions – including healthcare and education workers — form a Common Front, with hundreds of thousands of disgruntled protesters participating in a series of rotating strikes that extended from early November until the end of December, disrupting almost all sectors of Quebec society. With the real possibility of a General Strike looming on the horizon in January 2024 the government made proposals which saw the two sides return to the bargaining table, and a deal was ultimately finalized in March. The price of peace, however, was steep. Both the financial commitments for wages, and those additional costs flowing from changes to working conditions, led to substantial drains on the provincial coffers, already significantly depleted by the pandemic.
In short, the wheels had come off the CAQ’s economic agenda. The premier and his government were increasingly viewed as incompetent managers as public services became increasingly haphazard and even, on occasion, unavailable.[xi] Public dissatisfaction with the CAQ over the lamentable state of public services also likely led to the PQ’s two subsequent byelection wins in the ridings of Terrebonne and Arthabaska-L’Érable[xii].
And so, the increasingly desperate Legault has abandoned logic and evidence-based decision-making entirely and turned to an extreme nationalist agenda to save the day, despite the fact there were no obvious issues that needed his attention. So he has had to manufacture them. Put another way, Legault clearly believes the PQ is the CAQ’s major theat to another election win, but he fails to grasp that it has been economic and managerial competence issues that have been the primary cause of his problems and are giving the PQ the lead. Instead, he apparently thinks he is still living in the pre-1995 referendum era, and has decided to double down on the nationalist card, defending against imagined threats to the French language and Quebec culture (including university students from other provinces) to out do the PQ, whose various anti-immigrant, racist policies in the name of Quebec nationalism have already alienated many, and whose commitment to a sovereignty referendum is almost inexplicable, since it is clear from all polling results that the PQ has not been gaining steam because of its support for separation.
Indeed, support for separation has remained well below levels obtained during either of the failed referenda, and has in fact been significantly lower than 40% (at roughly 35%) for nearly five decades.[xiii] Most recently this reality has been brought home by polls demonstrating that the PQ currently would win a majority government, even while support for separation has dropped to 29%.[xiv] More ominous still for the PQ’s ‘sovereignist’ agenda is the demographic gap revealed by these polls. The most recent Leger poll, for example, found that more than 65% of Quebecers agree “separatism is an idea whose time has passed”, including 51% of francophone Quebecers and fully 74% of francophone Quebecers between the age of 18 and 34. [xv]
Yet, despite this, PQ leader Plamondon remains adamant that he will keep his longstanding and well-known platform commitment to hold a referendum on sovereignty before 2030. As even a federal Conservative like former Harper adviser Dmitri Soudas can see, (despite his party’s generally tone deaf approach to Quebec and failure to make inroads in that province in several federal elections), the obvious tack for the CAQ to take is to attack that referendum commitment, emphasizing the economic instability a PQ victory would bring, especially during the era of the Trump tariff threats.[xvi] Not surprisingly, even former separatist premier Lucien Bouchard agrees and has called for the PQ to drop its platform pledge to hold yet another referendum on separation, but that plea has fallen on deaf ears.[xvii]
But instead of pursuing this obvious electoral strategy, Legault has spent the last two years in an increasingly desperate attempt to out-do the PQ’s nationalist agenda by putting forward a series of extreme nationalist policies, allegedly supporting Quebec language and culture, none of which are justified by the facts and almost all of which are unconstitutional and/or violations of human rights.
Perhaps the greatest irony in this misguided strategy is the fact that the provincial Liberal Party, now under the leadership of the charismatic and well-regarded Pablo Rodriguez, has been gradually gaining ground and is now solidly in second place and poised to become, at a minimum, the official opposition. If Rodriguez is able to convince enough Quebecers that he rather than Plamondon can be considered a pillar of economic stability, at the same time that he can appeal to the old separatist/federalist divide because of Legault’s lurch to extremism on that file, he may yet be able to cobble together a winning formula in the election next year. In the end, the debate over this proposed new constitution is likely to prove not merely highly divisive but highly instructive about the CAQ’s prospects of survival, as well as the future role of the province in Canadian federalism.
[i]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-tables-draft-constitution-to-affirm-its-distinct-national-character-premier-says-9.6933153
[ii] https://angusreid.org/premiers-approval-sept-2025-ford-legault-eby-smith-moe-kinew/
[iii] https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/analysis-has-francois-legaults-obsession-made-quebecers-as-rich-as-ontarians
[iv] https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/tale-of-two-provinces-economic-and-fiscal-performance-of-ontario-and-quebec-in-the-21st-century
[v] https://www.desjardins.com/content/dam/pdf/en/personal/savings-investment/economic-studies/quebec-canada-economy-17-august-2023.pdf
[vi] https://thehub.ca/2024/01/17/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-quebec-premier-francois-legault-and-the-mighty-caq/
[vii] https://thehub.ca/2024/01/17/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-quebec-premier-francois-legault-and-the-mighty-caq/
[ix] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/public-inquiry-saaq-1.7543376
[x] https://kitchener.citynews.ca/2023/11/01/quebec-increases-immigration-target-by-10000-imposes-french-requirement-for-workers/
[xi] https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebecs-public-services-are-becoming-dehumanized-ombudsperson-warns
[xii] https://globalnews.ca/news/11331000/parti-quebecois-win-quebec-byelection-in-arthabaska/
[xiv] https://globalnews.ca/news/11031402/parti-quebecois-faces-drop-in-support-for-sovereignty-amid-trump-threats/
[xv] https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2024/05/quebec-independence-support/
[xvi] https://globalnews.ca/news/11031402/parti-quebecois-faces-drop-in-support-for-sovereignty-amid-trump-threats/
[xvii] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/parti-quebecois-referendum-1.7614971
