Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) leadership candidates Christine Frechette and Bernard Drainville in Laval, Que., on March 28.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
In his farewell speech to Quebec‘s National Assembly last week, Premier François Legault cited a well-known contemporary Quebec thinker whose pithy turns of phrase have become an endless source of amusement, if not bemusement, for hockey fans.
“Il faut prendre ce que la game te donne,” Mr. Legault told MNAs, reprising the words of Montreal Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis, and expressing a sentiment that roughly means accepting the state of play on the ice and adapting to it.
The expression, Mr. Legault said, also applies to Quebec politics. It explains his decision to quit the sovereigntist Parti Québécois in 2009 and eventually found the Coalition Avenir Québec to offer Quebeckers a “third way” between separatism and status-quo federalism.
Persuaded that most Quebeckers would never vote to leave Canada, Mr. Legault pitched the CAQ as an “autonomist” alternative to the PQ and federalist Liberals, one devoted to protecting Quebec’s identity by maximizing the province’s powers within the federation.
Quebec legislature prorogued as CAQ prepares to name new leader
The question now facing the CAQ, which will elect a new leader on Sunday, is whether the third way has a future in Quebec politics after Mr. Legault’s efforts to obtain full control for his province over immigration and cultural policy were met with a cold shoulder from Ottawa.
The PQ argues that the third way has been failure and that only by separating from Canada can Quebec obtain the powers it needs to ensure its linguistic and cultural survival. But while support for the PQ has surged under Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, polls still show that a strong majority of Quebeckers would vote “No” to sovereignty in a third referendum.
That will the leave the next CAQ leader – the party’s 20,500 members will choose between Christine Fréchette or Bernard Drainville – with hope to cling to as the party seeks to climb out of its current rut in the polls before a provincial election set for Oct. 5.
Either Ms. Fréchette or Mr. Drainville will be sworn in as premier before the National Assembly reconvenes on May 5, providing the next CAQ leader with an advantage over Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon and Liberal Leader Charles Milliard in attracting voter attention.
Before resigning to run for the CAQ leadership, Ms. Fréchette served as Mr. Legault’s economy minister, putting her at the centre of the government’s industrial strategy aimed at attracting investment in the province’s manufacturing sector. Unfortunately, she inherited the job in 2024 just as key projects championed by her predecessor – including the planned construction of an electric-battery plant by Sweden’s Northvolt – were unravelling.
Before that, Ms. Fréchette served as immigration minister as the province grappled with a surge in asylum seekers crossing the Quebec-New York border at Roxham Road. The irregular crossings were a major source of friction between Quebec and Ottawa until changes were made to the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement in 2023.
Still, the poised and sober Ms. Fréchette remains the presumed front-runner in the leadership race. She is pitching herself as the CAQ’s answer to Mark Carney, offering a steady hand on the wheel during a period of heightened geopolitical and economic disruption.
The more demonstrative Mr. Drainville, who served most recently as environment minister, has depicted his rival as “beige” and far too cautious. He promises to return the CAQ to its roots as a smaller-government nationalist alternative to the statist PQ.
The two candidates have clashed most bitterly on the immigration file, with Mr. Drainville blasting Ms. Fréchette’s promise to temporarily revive a recently abolished program that fast-tracked temporary residents for permanent resident status. He warns her proposal would lead to a flood of new applicants; he favours a more modest plan.
Like Mr. Legault, Ms. Fréchette and Mr. Drainville are both ex-Péquistes. Mr. Drainville came to national attention in 2013 as the minister who tabled the PQ’s ill-fated Charter of Quebec Values, which proposed to ban all public employees from wearing religious symbols. Ms. Fréchette, then a PQ staffer, quit the party over the charter, which she felt went too far.
In 2019, Mr. Legault’s CAQ government adopted a more limited religious symbols ban and invoked the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to shield the law, known as Bill 21, from judicial review. The law’s fate is now in the hands of the Supreme Court of Canada.
The outcome of the election campaign will likely hinge on the PQ’s referendum promise and which of its rivals is best able to attract nationalist francophone voters who do not want another plebiscite.
The CAQ’s third way has always been a modern version the defunct Union Nationale’s isolationist approach under Maurice Duplessis, who led the province between 1944 and 1959. The UN faded away after the PQ’s rise.
Unless its new leader catches on with voters quickly, the CAQ might soon follow it to the graveyard.