Duplessis against the “wokes”.
• Read also: The “wokes” oppose the defense of Quebec, according to Legault
This could sum up the new main polarization in Quebec politics.
She has been settling for a few years. The germs were planted 16 years ago, when the manifestos clashed: “Pour un Québec solidaire” responding to “Pour un Québec lucide” (or “Lucien”, as it was mocked at the time).
“Realignments”, as political scientists say, do not happen overnight.
But it had probably never appeared so vividly as on Wednesday, at the Blue Salon.
With a spicy question, the new parliamentary leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois piqued the Prime Minister. The latter’s response came as crystallizing the new opposition.
GND reproached François Legault for lacking humility and for making “his best imitation of Maurice Duplessis”, calling himself “father of the Quebec nation”. Legault retorted, calling GND a “woke”.
The polls had signaled it: QS manages to maintain itself compared to 2018. Attracts a younger, more urban electorate, three characteristics of the PQ of yesteryear. The CAQ, on the other hand, relies on the entrenched, formerly almost all of the PQ, the middle classes who voted ADQ. But also economic Quebec and the elderly, long loyal to the PLQ.
The parliamentary wing of Quebec solidaire was exulting yesterday. Rarely had it been accorded such importance: to be designated “main adversary” by the Prime Minister. “We are on our X!” Enthused a Qsist strategist.
To annoy the PQ, Jean Charest liked, strategically, to give importance “to Quebec solidaire”, as he said awkwardly. On Wednesday, Legault’s attack looked like a consecration. QS has dreamed for many moons of embodying the real “official opposition”.
Not to mention that François Legault has accepted (in large part) to play the (bad) role assigned to him by GND: that of Maurice Duplessis.
Despicable label if there is one in Quebec politics. Even GND, in an interview with QUB radio on Wednesday, admitted that the historic leader of the National Union is being made a somewhat convenient scarecrow.
Faced with the label affixed to him by the Prime Minister, GND was cunning. Claiming to ignore its meaning. Playing on the words “wok” and “woke”. Perhaps because he knows very well that the real “wokes” are those, in his camp, who affirmed that as “white”, he participated in systemic racism within QS itself! They also reproach him for his “pragmatism” and his desire to make QS a “left of government”.
Nadeau-Dubois stumbled by saying that he did not want to play “touch my jurisdiction with the federal government”. His pirouette towards the great evening of independence when we would recover “all the skills” rang false. QS has legal shortcomings and its indolence in the face of constitutional questions reveals this well.
One thing is certain, in the new polarization, it will be difficult for the “old parties”, the PLQ, but especially the PQ, to find a place for themselves. We will come back to that.
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