Legault, Blanchet, PSPP: each with their own contradictions

The speed with which the Bloc Québécois voted against the Conservatives’ motion of censure surprised even the sovereignist troops.

All parties have their share of contradictions. By attacking the Party and the Bloc Québécois head-on, François Legault wanted to highlight those of his sovereignist adversaries, but he also highlighted his own.

It is true that the Bloc Québécois’ eagerness to say that it would not support the Conservative Party’s motion to defeat the Liberal government was surprising, even within the sovereignist ranks.

Placement of the powers of the National Assembly under supervision, Increasingly unitary state, unheard of arrogancemaneuvers aimed at crush those who refuse to assimilate, biggest skid budgetary in recent history: in recent months, no words seemed strong enough, coming from the mouth of the PQ leader, to denounce the federal government’s encroachments in Quebec’s areas of jurisdiction.

Seeing Paul St-Pierre Plamondon explain that a new federal government would probably do no better than Justin Trudeau’s was quite ironic. The PQ leader had no choice but to show solidarity with his sovereignist counterpart, but he still repeated more than once that he was not responsible for the Bloc’s strategy.

The Bloc Québécois’ choice of priorities also surprised some in Quebec City. While the Parti Québécois intends to make immigration the issue of the fall — by publishing a vast orientation document on the subject — the Bloc has made it a priority among others in its negotiations with the Trudeau government. Asked about its demands with regard to the PLCYves-François Blanchet first mentioned the improvement of pensions for seniors.

Beyond principles, it is clear that the Bloc Québécois is making a strategic calculation: it wants to give itself time to complete its discussions with the Liberal Party. Above all, it believes it has more to gain from ensuring the survival of a minority government than from contributing to the election of a majority government, a scenario that seems inevitable in light of the most recent polls. It still has to play its cards right to take advantage of the benefits that the current situation provides.

In any case, the Bloc will not be able to trigger an election on its own. Even though it tore up the agreement that bound it to the government, the New Democratic Party has not given up on supporting the Trudeau government. Given the state of his party, Jagmeet Singh will probably find good reasons to continue supporting his ally of yesterday, formal agreement or not, if the survival of the government depends only on him.

Even if the BQ and the PQ did not want to get involved in François Legault’s game, it is clear that the Quebec Premier’s statement will contribute to increasing the pressure on the Bloc to obtain results quickly.

Yves-François Blanchet has always prided himself on defending Quebec consensus and it is written in the sky that new issues will sooner or later place the National Assembly and the Trudeau government at odds.

This is without taking into account that keeping an unpopular government in place for too long could prove costly in electoral terms, as the elected Democrats recently made clear to their leader.

There CAQ also in the hot seat

However, it is not only the sovereignist movement that François Legault’s statement puts in the hot seat. During the last elections, the leader of the CAQ had presented the obtaining of new powers in matters of immigration as a question of survival for Quebec. Two years later, he is still trying to temporize.

The creation of a pan-Canadian task force to examine the issue of asylum seekers reassured him for a while, but the Prime Minister now seems disillusioned. The fact that he is now asking the Bloc Québécois to get rid of the Liberal government looks very much like an admission of failure, as the Parti Québécois has pointed out in broad strokes.

It is an open secret that the CAQwould prefer to see a Conservative government installed in Ottawa. In the last election, François Legault tacitly supported Erin O’Toole, but the situation has changed.

Unlike his predecessor, Pierre Poilievre has not (yet) made any formal commitments to Quebec. There is therefore no indication that the current problems would end if a Conservative government were elected.

On the more specific issue of immigration, it must be admitted that it is mainly provinces led by Conservative governments that have closed the door to a more equitable redistribution of asylum seekers across Canada, which earned them criticism from the current federal Minister of Immigration this week. It would be very surprising if Pierre Poilievre were to alienate his own allies to please François Legault.

This is without taking into account that the Quebec premier has never seemed to make much of the presence of the Bloc Québécois in Ottawa. The fact that he is now asking for a helping hand that he himself refused during the last election is in the same category.

All things considered, the goal behind François Legault’s statement was perhaps not so much to bring about the short-term fall of the Trudeau government as to confront the sovereignists with their contradictions. In doing so, he also highlighted his own.