{"id":583326,"date":"2026-04-05T07:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T07:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/583326\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T07:10:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T07:10:21","slug":"francois-legault-leaves-a-richer-quebec-but-one-often-at-odds-with-the-rest-of-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/583326\/","title":{"rendered":"Fran\u00e7ois Legault leaves a richer Quebec, but one often at odds with the rest of Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

It is likely that Fran\u00e7ois Legault will be remembered less for concrete achievements such as infrastructure or government programs and more for the rhetorical landscape he left behind.Jacques Boissinot\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Fran\u00e7ois Legault<\/a> had the chance to travel the world as Premier of Quebec<\/a>. His province has dozens of international delegations and trade offices in far-off places, from Tokyo to Barcelona to Los Angeles. <\/p>\n

But the foreign region that most impressed him, according to one friend and former colleague, was somewhat unlikely: the German state of Bavaria. <\/p>\n

Mr. Legault visited the land of beer steins and lederhosen early in his time as leader of the Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec, and again last year, coming away inspired by its combination of material prosperity and traditional values, said Guy Laforest, an emeritus professor of political science at Laval University. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe liked the economic-identity combination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Premier\u2019s fascination with the rich, conservative bastion still shaped by its Catholic heritage and folklore \u2013 along with an increasingly anti-immigration bent \u2013 is revealing. Although Mr. Legault came to power promising to use his business background to make Quebec a smoothly run leader in innovation, a \u201cSilicon Valley of the North,\u201d he governed as a defensive nationalist, devoting as much energy to protecting Quebec\u2019s culture and closing the wealth gap with the rest of Canada as to cutting red tape and building a cutting-edge economy. <\/p>\n

As he prepares to leave office, Quebec is indeed richer, having continued its recent trend of stronger economic growth than the Canadian average. It is also arguably more inward-looking, often at odds with the rest of the country and its own minority populations. <\/p>\n

When he steps down on April 12 with the election of a new party leader, after announcing his resignation as Premier in January, he will leave behind a province that is more Bavarian, and less Californian, than he found it. <\/p>\n

Fran\u00e7ois Legault urges Quebec to protect identity in farewell speech<\/a><\/p>\n

The co-founder of Air Transat put his economic credentials at the heart of his political rise. An accountant by training, it has often been said of him that \u201che knows how to count.\u201d <\/p>\n

Even when he joined the sovereigntist Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois as a minister in 1998, it was in heavyweight, managerial roles such as commerce, science and technology, and later education and health. The narrative of a culturally fragile Quebec needing to be protected by legislation didn\u2019t appeal to him. <\/p>\n

\u201cHis nationalism was really an economic nationalism,\u201d said \u00c9ric B\u00e9dard, a speechwriter for Mr. Legault at the time, and now history professor at Quebec\u2019s Universit\u00e9 T\u00c9LUQ. \u201cEarlier in his career he wasn\u2019t comfortable with that defensive discourse. For him it was a discourse of losers.\u201d <\/p>\n

By the early 2010s, with the PQ languishing in opposition, he set out to found the Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec, a new political party that would unite federalists and sovereigntists, put the endless debate about independence to rest, and focus on the economy and good governance. He spoke of addressing long-simmering tensions about Quebec identity in the face of rising immigration, but he also promised a tech-driven knowledge economy using the province\u2019s strong postsecondary sector as a springboard. When he won a majority in 2018, it was as the first entrepreneur to become Premier of Quebec, after generations of leadership by the liberal professions, said Prof. B\u00e9dard. <\/p>\n

The Legault vision of an economy-first premiership quickly confronted a building mood of anxiety about the place of French and Quebec values. Whether out of expediency or sincere conviction \u2013 even former colleagues like Mr. B\u00e9dard aren\u2019t sure which \u2013 he leaned hard and fast into a role as folksy defender of the nation. <\/p>\n

Legault\u2019s legacy leaves many religious, linguistic minorities feeling less welcome in Quebec<\/a><\/p>\n

His government\u2019s Bill 21, passed into law in 2019, banned the wearing of visible religious symbols on the job by public servants in positions of authority, including police, judges, prison guards and, most controversially, teachers. Its biggest impact was on hijab-wearing Muslim women and, despite a fierce public controversy that continues with the recent Supreme Court hearings, the law was popular with the Quebec public. <\/p>\n

A similar dynamic played out with Bill 96, Mr. Legault\u2019s 2022 effort to protect French by requiring its use by medium-sized businesses (not just large ones) and requiring immigrants to receive services in French after six months in the province, among other provisions. <\/p>\n

Both laws were passed with the pre-emptive use of the Charter\u2019s notwithstanding clause, in theory shielding them from judicial review, although the Supreme Court is considering whether that is true in the case of Bill 21. Many religious and linguistic minorities, especially Muslims and anglophones, felt targeted. <\/p>\n

Julius Grey, the veteran Montreal constitutional lawyer, said that Mr. Legault succumbed to a \u201cdesire for uniformity,\u201d and that in his identity legislation, including a proposed Quebec constitution and ban on most public prayer, the Premier was \u201cworse than\u201d Maurice Duplessis, the autocratic and reactionary premier of the 1940s and 50s. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s another attempt to freeze our beliefs today, and saying this society can\u2019t change.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr. Legault has invited analogies to the notorious Chef before, including by comparing his party to Duplessis\u2019s Union Nationale, but even most of his critics agree the parallel is imperfect. <\/p>\n

Eric Andrew-Gee: Legault\u2019s \u2018third way\u2019 Quebec nationalism down but not out after resignation<\/a><\/p>\n

Unlike his swaggering, corrupt predecessor, Mr. Legault is widely seen, for all his faults, as an honest and sympathetic character. The progressive author Francine Pelletier, who has criticized his hardline stance on Quebec identity, admitted that she would miss his presence on the political stage. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhy he\u2019s forgiven, and why I think history will forgive him: He wasn\u2019t arrogant,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Never was Mr. Legault\u2019s avuncular persona more appreciated than during the COVID pandemic. His emotionally vulnerable and plainspoken press conferences during the height of the crisis made him Canada\u2019s most popular Premier, with approval ratings that reached 85 per cent. <\/p>\n

The affection was returned by a leader visibly moved at the spectacle of a society making painful sacrifices for the collective good. The pandemic lesson Mr. Legault evokes most often, tellingly, is not the importance of science, an efficient administration or the heroic contribution of a heavily immigrant health care workforce, but the \u201csolidarity\u201d of the Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois people. <\/p>\n

It was the more technical aspect of governing that ultimately tripped up Mr. Legault and ended his honeymoon with voters. Despite a deeply-felt communion with the nation, as he saw it, results were consistently lacking on major files, especially in his second mandate, after another majority victory in 2022. <\/p>\n

His government waffled on building a controversial third link between Quebec City and its neighbours across the St. Lawrence, failing to square the complex engineering of the project with its even more sensitive politics. <\/p>\n

Legault resignation shakes up Quebec\u2019s political landscape at uncertain time for businesses<\/a><\/p>\n

The digitization of the province\u2019s auto insurance board was a fiasco, half-a-billion dollars over budget, glitchy, and with problems hidden from the public by bureaucrats and possibly even government ministers. <\/p>\n

The province lost another quarter-of-a-billion on a failed investment in the Swedish battery-maker Northvolt, which declared bankruptcy last year to the embarrassment of a government that had made the partnership a centrepiece of its green-economy strategy. <\/p>\n

The provincial budget in the Legault years has swung from a $2.6-billion surplus to a projected $8.6-billion deficit. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to know how to count when you\u2019re starting a business,\u201d said Ms. Pelletier \u2013 and quite another when you\u2019re managing a de facto nation state. <\/p>\n

It is likely that Mr. Legault will be remembered less for concrete achievements such as infrastructure or government programs and more for the rhetorical landscape he left behind. The Premier used dramatic language to describe the position of Quebec francophones in a context of rising immigration and ubiquitous English-language content online. He warned that they risked \u201cLouisianization,\u201d evoking the decimation of French as a living language among Louisiana Cajuns; in another interview he said it would \u201csuicidal\u201d for the Quebec nation to accept more than the province\u2019s current intake of newcomers. <\/p>\n

That rhetoric was criticized at the time for being too extreme, but the ostensible decline of French in Quebec, and the need for nationalistic measures to counter the trend, have become givens in provincial politics. <\/p>\n

Before Mr. Legault came to power, \u201cthe political discourse was very different,\u201d said the conservative intellectual and former Legault staffer \u00c9tienne-Alexandre Beauregard<\/a>. \u201cThe Liberals didn\u2019t say they were nationalist.\u201d Now, describing yourself that way is de rigueur across the partisan spectrum. <\/p>\n

Even some allies found that Mr. Legault\u2019s nationalism could be limiting, that it could produce a certain insularity in his approach to leading the province. He spent relatively little effort cultivating relations with Ottawa and foreign governments, for example, said Mr. Laforest, the political scientist who was involved in discussions around founding the CAQ.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one thing I would reproach him for.\u201d <\/p>\n

In fact, apart from Mr. Legault\u2019s love affair with the moneyed conservatism of Bavaria, he didn\u2019t travel much as Premier, preferring the confines of the \u201cbeautiful nation\u201d whose ramparts he worked hard to build up. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: It is likely that Fran\u00e7ois Legault will be remembered less for concrete achievements…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,66,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":{"0":"post-583326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-ca","15":"tag-canada","16":"tag-canada-news","17":"tag-canada-sports","18":"tag-canada-sports-news","19":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","20":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","21":"tag-canadian-news","22":"tag-economy","23":"tag-education","24":"tag-environment","25":"tag-federal-government","26":"tag-foreign-news","27":"tag-globe-and-mail","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","29":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","30":"tag-government","31":"tag-life-news","32":"tag-lifestyle","33":"tag-local-news","34":"tag-manitoba","35":"tag-national-news","36":"tag-new-brunswick","37":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","38":"tag-northwest-territories","39":"tag-nova-scotia","40":"tag-nunavut","41":"tag-ontario","42":"tag-pei","43":"tag-photos","44":"tag-political-news","45":"tag-political-opinion","46":"tag-politics","47":"tag-politics-news","48":"tag-quebec","49":"tag-science","50":"tag-sports-news","51":"tag-technology","52":"tag-travel","53":"tag-trudeau","54":"tag-us-news","55":"tag-world-news","56":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}