Meeting in general council in Bromont, the Liberal Party of Quebec undertakes, if it takes power, to return to a balanced budget. Wow! What an extraordinary commitment!
This is because the party has nothing to promise in an attempt to regain the support of the French-speaking electorate without risking, at the same time, upsetting its Anglo-ethnic supporters concentrated on the island of Montreal and in the Oh yeah. The “partitionist red” zones of Quebec. Only 5% of French-speaking voters intend to vote Liberal.
The PLQ general council celebrates the tenth anniversary of the election of Philippe Couillard’s government before its humiliating defeat in 2018. Couillard and the Liberals suffered the worst electoral defeat in terms of percentage of votes – 24.8% – in history of the party since 1867, obtaining only 31 seats in the National Assembly. In addition, Couillard becomes the first Quebec Liberal prime minister not to obtain a second mandate since Adélard Godbout in 1944. That does not prevent the interim leader of the party Marc Tanguay from saying that the Couillard government, of which he was a part, will be judged favorably by History. The other former leaders of the party, whose names are also associated with the fall of the party, Daniel Johnson, Jean Charest and Dominique Anglade also participate in the meeting.
No public inquiry, Charest dixit
After Charest’s three successive mandates, the Liberals had to face a barrage of allegations of collusion in the financing of the PLQ and corruption in the construction industry. Does Tony Accurso mean anything to you?
Charest stubbornly refused to institute a public inquiry. Liberals aren’t crazy, they knew it was going to backfire on them. But, finally in October 2011, under enormous pressure after the leak of Jacques Duchesneau’s explosive report on embezzlement in construction, Jean Charest announced the creation of the commission of inquiry. Chaired by Judge Charbonneau, it will discover the pot aux roses despite the strange and inexplicable dissent of a member of the commission, Renaud Lachance on the existence of a link between “the payment of political contributions and the granting of contracts to the provincial level”.
Charest will be defeated in his constituency in the elections of September 4, 2012 and the PLQ driven from power in favor of the Parti Québécois. In 2014, the Radio-Canada show Enquête revealed that UPAC had launched the Mâchurer investigation, which focused on a financing activity of the Liberal Party of Quebec.
Conservative, liberal, conservative, Blue, red, whatever! Charest is a versatile federalist, but always on the side of the donors. Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party from 1993 to 1998, he was vice-president of the “no” committee in the stolen 1995 referendum.
A big absentee: Denis Coderre
Former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre, who is impatient to be elected leader of the Liberals, will not be in Bromont. But he will transmit to the meeting a video from Spain where he made the famous pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. You can not make that up.
Another big name from the liberal team, the ex-editorialist of La Presse, ex-senator and ex-whatever, André Pratte who has chaired the political commission of the PLQ for six months, will make his major proposals to bail out the red Titanic.
At its 2019 convention, the PLQ Youth Commission highlighted the party’s total disconnection with the French-speaking electorate as the main cause of its defeat. Do you think that Pratte, Couillard and Charest will find the magic formula to get the Liberals out of the black hole they have sunk into? I do not think so. Unless Coderre has a supernatural revelation on the Camino de Santiago which he will transmit to Bromont. As I have already written, the PLQ also has another problem. The businessmen, opportunists and French-speaking schemers who flocked to him deserted him for the CAQ as his chances of returning to power diminished.
