(Texte français disponible ici.)

I won’t be celebrating Canada Day. I’ve never celebrated it, and I’m not about to start today.

Nor have I ever celebrated Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Waving flags while everything that holds our society together is falling apart isn’t my thing. Or, in the case of July 1^st, while a former UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance is throwing the principles he sold us in his book straight into the trash.

Displays of national pride—whether in Quebec City, Ottawa, Washington, or elsewhere—all too often resemble massive distraction campaigns by politicians trying to make us forget their incompetence or their most indefensible maneuvers.

And then, I have this damned habit of always calculating, quantifying, and measuring. Canada’s relative standard of living has been declining for decades; the dysfunction of certain branches of the federal government is legendary; our military, once that of a credible middle power, has become insignificant; more than 150 years after Confederation, we have failed to agree on free trade among the provinces…

Let’s just say that the “fleurons glorieux” and the “true north strong and free” have looked better.

Even though I don’t have a maple leaf tattooed on my heart, I feel no particular animosity toward the Canadian flag and what it represents. Like most of my fellow Quebecers, I even feel a certain pride in the idea of being Canadian. And even more so when it allows me to say, while travelling, that I’m not American.

This isn’t unusual. Recent polls show that between 72 and 80% of Quebecers say they are “proud” or “very proud” to be Canadian.

(Since 32% of Quebecers currently support independence, that means up to a third of separatists would also be proud to be Canadian. Why, you ask? It’s complicated.)

There are also several reasons to prefer that Quebec remain a Canadian province rather than become a country.

I mean, aside from the fact that this is what two thirds of us want. An argument from majority is no more valid than the argument from authority, and the majority isn’t always right.

It’s obvious that having full control over one’s destiny has its advantages, no matter what some federalists may say. It’s just as obvious that there would be significant financial repercussions that could affect our standard of living and our public services, no matter what some sovereigntists claim. And besides, creating a country on the thinnest of margins isn’t a winning formula.

But we’ve been debating these arguments for 50 years without really listening to one another, and that’s not what I want to talk about today.

I’d like to point out that, on this Canada Day, Canadians A mari usque ad mare should celebrate Quebec. And that Quebecers should also feel a bit proud of having improved this country that was initially imposed on them.

Because just about everything Canadians love that comes from the federal government was most likely first a Quebec initiative. Because the social conscience of this rather conservative country—which sometimes claims to be progressive—is us.

Tommy Douglas and Saskatchewan gave Canada universal health insurance.

Everything else comes from Quebec.

Of course, it’s a bit embarrassing that it took so long to grant Quebec women the right to vote—in 1940, two decades after the federal government and most provinces—but you’ll see that we made up for it afterward, and then some.

The first law ensuring that women earn the same pay as men for doing the same work was passed by us in 1996. It took the federal government another 25 years to reach the same conclusion. RCMP officers, military personnel, and federal public servants are still waiting.

We were the first to establish a network of subsidized daycare centres back in 1997. It’s imperfect and incomplete, but better than anywhere else in the country. Here, too, the federal government needed another quarter-century to catch up.

Unsurprisingly, Quebec is the province with the highest employment rate for women aged 25 to 44, who are better able to balance motherhood with their personal aspirations than anywhere else in the country. Other Canadian women are beginning to benefit from this as well.

We were also the first to introduce a universal drug insurance plan, back in 1997. The other provinces followed suit.

The first same-sex civil union took place in Montreal in 2002, thanks to a Quebec law that preceded federal legislation by three years.

The first true parental leave program, including exclusive leave for fathers, was introduced here in 2006. Quebec remains a model in this regard.

These firsts aren’t just Canadian—they’re North American.

We were also the first to legalize assisted dying in 2015, and that sparked a debate that reached all the way to the Rockies and beyond.

And there are others, less fundamental but still noteworthy.

Quebec has strictly prohibited advertising aimed at children for nearly 50 years. The rest of Canada is still considering it.

It was also in Quebec that the first public no-fault auto insurance system for bodily injury claims was implemented in 1978, replacing legal proceedings that were as inaccessible as they were uncertain.

As for the right to abortion, we can once again say thanks to a Montreal doctor who made it his cause. This led the Quebec government to announce that it would no longer bring criminal charges for abortions performed in clinics. That was in 1976, twelve years before the landmark Supreme Court decision that decriminalized abortion across the country.

In addition to social progress, Quebec has also pioneered significant democratic advances that have since spread to other jurisdictions.

Quebec was the first province to limit political donations from individuals and to lower the cap on those contributions. That was in 1977. Here, too, the federal government took a few more decades to follow suit.

If you feel that Canada isn’t evolving quickly enough, consider that things could have been much worse without Quebec’s tendency to take its inspiration from continental Europe rather than England or the United States, as most of Canada tends to do.

The most frustrating thing for the Rest of Canada is that most of these advances took place under a government of the Parti Québécois.

Just imagine: if Canada has become what it is today—especially in terms of social policies—it’s largely thanks to the separatists!

+++++++

The same argument applies to Quebecers who dream of independence. Not a big fan of Canada? You might like even less what it would have become without us.

Without Quebec, Canada would have had more Conservative governments, and those Conservative governments would have been quite a bit more conservative. But Quebec prevents that, if only because the parties vying to govern in Ottawa need us.

Whether it’s social policies, environmental policies, or policies regarding the rights of Francophones in other provinces, Quebec’s mere presence in the Canadian federation pulls it toward progressive policies, in the truest sense of the word: those that bring about progress.

All of this is then reflected in Canada’s foreign policy, which is also that of a country where the second-largest province is predominantly Francophone. Abroad, Stephen Harper usually began his speeches in French.

Put another way, being part of Canada may not always be ideal, and the Rest of Canada can be a bit annoying, but a Canada without Quebec would be a far more unpleasant neighbour.

Without Quebec in the last election, Pierre Poilievre would be firmly in control of a majority government. Trump on one side, Poilievre on the other. Does that sound appealing?

In short, Quebec makes Canada better.

Even if it’s not entirely on purpose on the part of Quebec—or of the rest of this strange country—it might be worth giving it some thought on this 159^th anniversary of Confederation.

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My name is Patrick Déry. I’m a French-speaking Québécois writing for a living, and trying something different here. If you enjoyed reading this text, you can support me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and “likes” are always appreciated.

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(Texte français disponible ici.)

Today, Quebec is celebrating. That usually means lots of blue and white flags and lots of music.

I’m not usually a big fan of flags, but I do like our fleur-de-lis flag. For the royal blue—my favourite colour. For its uniqueness, just like the nation it represents. For what it’s meant to inspire, because a flag is ultimately a symbol that evokes an ideal.

I love our music, the soundtrack to our Fête nationale. I’ve worn out my left wrist, my right shoulder, and all ten fingers trying to play along with Piché and Bélanger. I’ve put Ferland and Charlebois through far more than they deserved. And I still hope to be able, one day, to play En Berne by the Cowboys Fringants at the same frenzied pace as Jean-François Pauzé. Or to sing like Leonard Cohen. All of these artists—and others—will be performing all over the place today. And in my heart, too.

Over the years, I’ve come to wonder what exactly we’re celebrating on June 24.

Why do we wave flags? Why do we gather in parks or around bonfires all over Quebec every year, six months before Christmas?

Yes, “we” exist. Some would say against all odds. For my part, I’d say with everyone. As in all those who were there before Jacques Cartier planted his cross in Gaspé, and also all those who came afterward and who continue to arrive even now, and who allow us to carry on. Because without them, we’d already be quietly dwindling away.

Yes, “we” are happy—one of the happiest peoples in the world, apparently.

But we can’t even agree on what we’re celebrating today.

For many of us, June 24 is a perpetual dress rehearsal for the big night that will see Quebec become a country.

For many more of us, it’s the celebration of a province that’s a little different from the rest of an imperfect country to which it must nevertheless continue to belong.

For the vast majority of us, June 24 is, thankfully, a celebration for all those who consider Quebec their home.

For far too many of us, unfortunately, it is merely the celebration of those who can say “poutine” and “tabarnak” without an accent, who venerate the same saints as our ancestors, who blend into the crowd at the Saint-Jean parade without drawing too much attention.

For far too many of us, including some politicians, it’s a celebration for those who answer our eternal existential question—one that will likely never be resolved—in the same way they do. The rest of us will just have to celebrate a week later.

We pretend not to notice these differences too much while we wave our fleur-de-lis flags and listen to music together. Politicians of all stripes wish everyone a happy National Day, even if, deep down, they still secretly resent those who don’t see things the way they do.

This generally turns la Fête nationale into an occasion for an over-the-top display of somewhat hollow tributes to a glorified past. It’s also, to some extent, in the hope of an optimistic—though somewhat vague—future that not everyone envisions in the same way.

But, in practical terms, what are we actually celebrating?

Quebec has consistently had the highest high school dropout rate. Since education is the main determinant of just about everything else, I have a hard time celebrating that.

Our roads, our hospitals, our schools, and our entire public infrastructure are falling apart because we’ve been too foolish to maintain them properly. It would take at least $50 billion to fix everything up.

Recently, we learned that we need to add to that the cost of maintaining our drinking water system, which is leaking everywhere and is in such poor condition that tens of thousands of housing units can’t be built. That’s another $50 billion—so at least $100 billion in total—for all our infrastructure. You wanted to sing? Well, now dance!

And that’s not even counting the fact that the entire system continues to deteriorate faster than we can repair it. In other words, next year, the figure will be even higher. I’m having a hard time celebrating this, too.

Our healthcare system hasn’t been able to properly care for us for a long time now. But while the wait drags on and patients die on waiting lists or are forgotten in the ER, we keep finding all sorts of bonuses to add to our doctors’ paycheques—doctors who are already among the highest-paid in the world. That, too, tends to dampen my national pride.

Six years after a pandemic that was devastating for our seniors, thousands of our most frail elderly are spending the final years of their lives in double, triple, or even quadruple occupancy in a long-term care facility, waiting to die while staring at the ceiling of their room. I’m not sure they’re in the mood to celebrate either.

I could also talk about the way we (mis)treat the most vulnerable our youth in the DPJ—before abandoning them to their fate at age 18, only for them to swell the ranks of our homeless population.

Or how we always find a way to cut the meager funding for community organizations—which do everything the government won’t or can’t do—and thus barely keep our social solidarity afloat.

Or the hundreds of millions wasted every year on botched projects, and the millions more paid out as bonuses to those responsible for the waste. Surprisingly, there’s always money for that.

Meanwhile, just about everything I’ve mentioned above is going to get worse because there will be fewer people to deal with the problems and more problems to deal with—especially because Quebec is aging very quickly.

Instead of planning for this highly predictable and now very imminent future, our politicians’ priority has all too often been to stir us up on one side or the other of a country that will never come to be.

In recent years, a party that was neither for nor against Quebec independence had the “genius” to find a common bogeyman that united both federalists and sovereigntists alike, spending eight years pouring gasoline on the fire of our linguistic and identity-based fears. Anything that isn’t catho-laïque-franco-pure-laine has thus been portrayed as a threat, even though many of these aspiring Quebecers are the backbone of our hospitals and schools, in addition to holding jobs essential to the functioning of our society.

I realize I’m a bit of a party pooper for always focusing more on problems we can measure than on those we like to imagine.

Still, when I see blue and white everywhere on Saint-Jean’s Day, I now tend to wonder whether we’re waving our colours to forget or out of sheer ignorance, and I’m a little less inclined to stand in a park with my fleur-de-lis flag.

And I tell myself that maybe we should replace our flags with shovels and picks, and put on work gloves, because we’ve got quite a chore ahead of us.

It would be nice if, by this time next year, we’d made progress on two or three things.

We could at least celebrate that.

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My name is Patrick Déry. I’m a French-speaking Québécois trying something different here. If you enjoyed reading this text, you can support me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and “likes” are always appreciated.

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(Texte français disponible ici.)

Asking whether Quebec is still a democracy may seem like an exaggeration, given how obvious the answer appears to be. Yet, is it?

What defines a democracy?

Free elections. An electoral system independent of politics. Election results that reflect the will of the people. Effective checks and balances. Respect for minority rights. The rule of law.

Elections in Quebec are free—there’s no doubt about that. The problem is that there’s not much left besides voting every four years.

When politicians draw the line

A new electoral map was recently adopted almost by Quebec’s National Assembly. That seemed like good news, especially since Éric Duhaime, the anti-vaccine conservative leader, did not agree.

But our friend Éric is right. The snag is that Quebec’s MNAs sidelined an independent body they created a few decades ago.

In 1979, the National Assembly established the Electoral Representation Commission (or CRÉ, for Commission the representation électorale, a branch of Quebec’s Chief Electoral Officer). Elected officials thus relinquished their authority to draw the boundaries of electoral districts due to the obvious conflict of interest. One need only look at the United States to appreciate the value of keeping politicians at bay.

In 2011, the National Assembly unanimously reaffirmed “the primacy of the institution known as the Chief Electoral Officer in redrawing the electoral map and [confirmed] that an electoral map established by a bill rather than by the Chief Electoral Officer would be illegitimate.”

“Illegitimate?” Yikes. Yet that is exactly what politicians of all stripes just did.

The CRÉ (we’ll keep using the awful, but convenient acronym) first presented its new electoral map in 2023. Several ridings were redrawn. Two ridings whose populations had significantly declined were eliminated (in the Gaspé Peninsula and eastern Montreal), and two others were added where the opposite had happened (in Centre-du-Québec and the Laurentians).

The CRÉ should have left the Gaspé Peninsula alone…

I don’t want to delve this into the psychology of Quebec’s politicians and why their level of interest and outrage are generally proportional to how remote an issue is from the major urban centres where two thirds of us live—because I’d need at least another 1,000 words—but that’s just how it is. With my regards to the people of Gaspésie.

Quebec’s MNAs thus attempted to delay the adoption of the new electoral map until after this year’s elections, perpetuating inequalities in representation instead of correcting them. The Court of Appeal, followed by the Supreme Court (this spring), declared the maneuver unconstitutional.

No problem. The National Assembly adopted their own map. It seems that just about every party has found a sandbox to protect—one into which they did not want to add too many red, light-blue, orange, or dark-blue voters from a neighbouring riding, which would have upset the delicate balance that had temporarily painted a corner of Quebec in their colour.

The official argument—that of preserving the political weight of Eastern Quebec, or other ridings—is fallacious. It is not the weight of a given territory that must be preserved, but that of the voters. Quebec is changing; its democratic system must adapt.

Instead, politicians chose to knock out one of the safeguards of our democracy. The precedent has been set unanimously. Next time, it could be with a simple majority.

This is not the most serious blow to Quebec democracy, only the most recent, and it illustrates a trend, as we will see: in the past, Quebec’s MNAs were among the guardians of our institutions. Now, they neutralize or circumvent them to their own advantage.

This is an even bigger problem when the composition of the National Assembly itself no longer reflects the will of the voters.

Majority, where hast thou been?

The first thing that comes to mind when we think of democracy is often a Legislative Assembly that reflects the will of the voters. In Quebec, this has not been the case for 60 years, and it keeps worsening.

From the creation of our National Assembly in its current form in 1867 until 1962—that is, until Jean Lesage’s second term—forming a government almost invariably required the support of the majority of the population.

I say “almost” because, between 1867 and 1962, the party that took office had won at least 50% of the vote in 22 out of 27 elections—about 81% of the time. Not perfect, but not too bad either.

The rule became the exception. In the 16 elections that followed—from 1966 to the present—only two were won with a majority of the voting.

This means that, for the past 60 years, the morning after an election, a majority of Quebecers are on the losing side. That’s bonkers. (The same goes for Canadian elections, and, I would guess, many other provinces.)

In Quebec, “majority” governments have thus taken office with barely 40% of the vote. In 2018, the Coalition Avenir Québec secured a “majority” with 37% of the vote, setting a new low.

In the next election, the Parti Québécois could win a majority of seats with just 32% or 33% of the vote. Things are still moving, but the scenario is entirely plausible, and it is likely that this would have happened if elections had been held earlier this year.

Just let that sink in: a “majority” government that two thirds of us would have voted against. That’s bonkers, too.

Just name one other situation in life where a “majority” decision can be made with 37%, let alone 32% of the vote. It would not be acceptable in a classroom or a beer league. But that’s the way democracy works here.

Some will say this is normal because of our first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system and the split vote among five parties. Rather, it’s proof that our NPAA (not-proportional-at-all) electoral system, which dates back several centuries, wasn’t designed to accommodate the emergence of new parties. That’s why very few countries have adopted it in the last 100 years.

It’s also why Quebec politicians, from René Lévesque to François Legault, including Jean Charest, had sought to change it when they were in opposition—only to abandon the idea once it benefited themselves…

It would be a lesser evil if the checks and balances were effective. That is no longer the case.

Checks put in check

The executive branch. The legislative branch. The judicial branch. Our parliamentary democracy is based on the separation of powers among these three branches, which serve as checks and balances on one another so that the democratic will of the voters is heeded, while also preventing abuse and arbitrariness.

That’s the theory. In practice, the executive branch swallowed up the legislative branch a long time ago. Recently, it has also swallowed up the judicial branch. Gulp.

Originally, the executive branch—the decision-makers—was represented by the Cabinet. Today, power is concentrated in the hands of the Premier and a few individuals in his inner circle. Under François Legault, a close advisor like Martin Koskinen had more power than many ministers. But that is still not too far from how it was originally supposed to work. The problem is with the legislative and the judiciary.

In principle, the Legislative Assembly (or “National,” in Quebec), which is composed of members from across the political spectrum, makes laws and holds the government—the executive branch—accountable. MNAs from a given party hold their own ministers to account, ask (real) questions, and even sometimes vote against their own party. This happens elsewhere, notably in the UK and the US.

In Quebec, like elsewhere in Canada, party discipline means that members of the ruling party behave like houseplants. The government ends up doing just about whichever it wants over the course of four years, unless it’s a minority government. And even then.

The recent end of the legislative session, which saw the current government abandon several bills, is more of an exception and an example of poor planning than the rule. (The suspension of the session, made necessary by Mr. Legault’s resignation as a Premier, didn’t help.)

In practical terms, party discipline has all but wiped out the National Assembly and the legislative branch.

That leaves the judicial branch—the courts. The Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms solidified and expanded judicial review of the validity of laws and government actions. (We’ll skip over the Canadian Charter, which Quebec never ratified.) For more than 40 years, members of the National Assembly from all parties have consistently voted unanimously in favour of amendments to the Quebec Charter, with very rare individual exceptions. And no one dared to deviate from our Charter, much less suspend it preemptively.

A lesser-known fact is that Quebec’s Charter has a generally wider scope than its federal counterpart, as it applies to relations between private individuals, and not only between individuals and the government.

The CAQ did not think much of that. It gutted and suspended our Charter by a simple majority vote, using a gag rule to cut off debate—notably to pass Bills 21 and 96. Worse still, these suspensions of our fundamental rights were carried out preemptively and on a broad scale, as articles 1 to 38 of the Charter were neutralized. Zap.

What is the connection between the preemptive suspension of the right to a fair trial, or the protection against an unreasonable search, and a language law, you would ask? None whatsoever, but the CAQ took no chances. The target is the courts and the so-called government of the judges.

Nationalist and somewhat reactionary legal scholars used the concept of “parliamentary sovereignty” as a pretext to legitimize this war in the courts. The concept has a different meaning in the United Kingdom, where the Constitution is a patchwork of laws, conventions and customs that has never been codified. Here, however, it amounts to the neutralization of a countervailing power that had existed since the Magna Carta, and the return of political arbitrariness.

The Parti Québécois, which could form the next government, shows no sign of reversing course, even though the Quebec Charter was a great source of pride for René Lévesque, its founder:

“In 1975, the people of Quebec adopted a charter of human rights and freedoms that remains, to this day, one of the most comprehensive in the world. Such a charter is the quintessential instrument for affirming a people’s values. It expresses both their most fundamental convictions and the choices and trade-offs—not always easy ones—that must be made in any society. It guarantees every person the minimum conditions necessary to exercise their freedoms.”

But today’s representatives of the Parti Québécois remember Lévesque only when it suits them.

Minority rights in their sights

Some say that democracy is the tyranny of the majority. This is a poor analogy because true dictatorships almost always arise from the will of a grassroots movement, which generally represents the majority. What truly distinguishes democracies is respect for the majority’s will, but above all, respect for the rights and freedoms of minorities.

As we have seen, it has now been 60 years since the will of the majority has been the deciding factor in bringing a party to power. As for the rights of minorities, the CAQ has made them dependent on political whim. Here again, the PQ seems intent on continuing down this path.

In Quebec, whether you belong to a linguistic, religious, or immigrant minority, you have become a political target. All sorts of justifications have been invoked to infringe upon your fundamental rights, but none has been supported by evidence of a rational connection or the effectiveness of the restriction in achieving the law’s objective.

That does not mean that other (political) objectives have not been achieved.

Why prevent a government employee from communicating with an immigrant in their language if they are capable of doing so? Why ban a school cafeteria worker or volunteer from wearing a hijab? Why send back immigrants who are already settled here, speak French, and provide an essential part of the workforce? One is led to believe that the pettiness of these measures is their primary objective.

What rule of law?

In the past, successive Quebec governments made efforts to respect our laws—above all, the Quebec Charter—and deferred to the courts.

Now, our government is amending the Charter, suspending its application, and neutralizing the courts.

This spring, Quebec nearly became the first democracy whose Constitution would have taken away more rights from its citizens than it would have granted. Every Quebec Premier since Jean Lesage would have been horrified by this. Not the CAQ, some of whose ministers even considered passing the new constitution by using a gag rule.

+++++++

Quebec still holds elections every four years. The media and the opposition sometimes manage to stir up enough of a fuss to make the government look foolish and eventually backtrack.

But generally speaking, the Cabinet—even the Premier’s office—decides just about everything. The legislature is under its thumb, institutions are bypassed, the judiciary is neutralized, and political will takes precedence over the rule of law.

All of this with barely 40% of the vote. And soon, with perhaps even less.

Quebec is far from being China or Russia. But from an institutional standpoint, there are fewer and fewer differences between La Belle Province and illiberal democracies, such as Hungary under Viktor Orbán, or even Donald Trump’s United States.

The tone may be different, but all the pieces are in place for a group determined enough to break the conventions that ensure the primacy of institutions to seize the levers of power for themselves. This, in fact, is essentially what we have been witnessing for the past eight years.

Quebec is certainly not a dictatorship. But it is just as certainly sliding toward something that is no longer quite a parliamentary democracy based entirely on checks and balances and the rule of law—as was still the consensus just a few years ago.

At the very least, we have entered a phase where the exercise of power consists less in advancing society as a whole than in the appropriation of its levers by ideologues seeking to impose their vision.

This can even go so far as a lame duck government attempting to enshrine its ideology within the fundamental structures of our society by permanently altering them, as the CAQ attempted to do with its draft constitution.

That was only the first round. Now that the method has been proven effective, others will use it.

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This text is 2,456 words long, which is about 10 pages of a book. I hope you liked it.

My name is Patrick Déry. I’m a French-speaking Québécois trying something different here. If you enjoyed reading this text, you can support me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and “likes” are always appreciated.

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(Texte français disponible ici.)

Mark Carney stirred up a hornet’s nest by saying that a 50% + 1 threshold is “absolutely not enough” to separate Quebec from Canada.

Pro-sovereignty politicians predictably got all worked up, because that’s what they do. Politicians from other parties followed suit, partly out of reflex. That’s what we’ve always said in Quebec, no matter which side of the national question you’re on.

I agree on the principle. If a line must be drawn, I too prefer it to be at 50% + 1 rather than at an arbitrary threshold that would be the subject of endless debate and would be practically impossible to set.

But that discussion misses the broader point.

For nearly 20 years, support for sovereignty has remained steady at around 35% to 40%. Recently, that figure has dropped. If a referendum were held today, the “Yes” camp would garner 32% of the vote, according to the polling aggregator Qc125.com.

To find such low support for Quebec sovereignty, one has to go back to the 1980s, during the Mulroney years and the promises of the “Beau Risque” period, before the Meech Lake Accord collapsed.

In fact, as far back as support for sovereignty has been measured, with the exception of periods of constitutional crises or scandals—which were short-lived—a clear majority of Quebecers has almost always preferred to remain within the Canadian federation, despite all its flaws.

Another way of seeing it is that, over the past 50 years, Quebecers would have voted “No” for 45 years, as shown in the chart below. I discuss this in detail here.

There never was enduring support for Quebec’s sovereignty. The most plausible scenario for a Yes victory would be a referendum held during a standoff with the federal government or with the rest of the country, leading to a temporary surge strong enough to briefly push the Yes vote above 50%.

In short, a passing whim.

That is why pro-sovereignty politicians are so attached to the 50% +1 threshold. Because, even in the best-case scenario, it wouldn’t be much more than that.

The burden of proof for breaking a country and creating a new one should be higher.

Legally, Mark Carney is wrong. But he isn’t wrong as far as legitimacy is concerned. Who really wants a country that the majority of its inhabitants will likely regret just a few months later?

The 2026 version of the Parti Québécois and its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, are all about that.

+++++++

In his book Les orphelins politiques (The political orphans), PSPP from 2014 criticized the Parti Québécois’s “referendum obsession”: “To the sovereigntists, I say: your obsession with holding and winning a referendum harms progressivism and amounts to psychological harassment for the majority of the population.” He suggested that the PQ channel its energies elsewhere. There was so much to be done to improve the lot of us all.

2016 PSPP, which had then moved closer to the PQ, presented himself as an advocate of moderation, reason, and openness to Quebec cultural and ethnic minorities.

Consistently, 2016 PSPP, also a candidate for the PQ leadership, promised not to hold a referendum during a first term of a Parti Québécois government. In a second term, he would have opened a registry that would have led to the triggering of a referendum after signatures from 20% of all voters would have been collected, but only if a subsequent poll—presumably on a large scale—indicated 45% of Quebecers supported sovereignty.

It was a prudent approach. You don’t hold a referendum just to lose it or to create a country that people don’t want. It almost sounded like 2016 PSPP wanted to change the PQ.

2016 PSPP lost the leadership race.

And he had four years to reflect on his failure and his ambitions before finally becoming leader of the PQ in 2020.

In the 2022 election, the PQ came quite close to disappearing, garnering only 14% of the vote—a historic low—and electing just three members. It could have been worse. PSPP himself benefited from a stroke of luck after another candidate withdrew, having been filmed replacing a leaflet from her PQ opponent with her own.

The context and a certain political flair worked in favour of 2022 PSPP. His generally measured rhetoric initially appealed to voters’ intelligence before it evolved into a particularly bitter version of the sovereigntist argument.

Somewhere between 2020 and 2022, this version of PSPP had apparently realized that, in a shrinking party, those who remain are generally not the most moderate, but the most motivated.

In the fall of 2023, however, PSPP was still speaking of an independent Quebec as the “friendly neighbour” of a dismembered Canada. “Most Quebecers love Canada,” he acknowledged.

Then, the PQ took the lead in the polls following the collapse of the CAQ. That wasn’t enough to shift support for sovereignty, which continued to hover between 35 and 40%.

And the PQ went all in.

By the spring of 2024, Ottawa was fully regarded as a hostile power. The PQ leader seemed to care not a whit about relations with his potential future “neighbour.”

Speaking to his supporters gathered at a party convention, he portrayed the federal government as “openly and explicitly planning” Quebec’s “decline,” a regime that “knows only how to crush those who refuse to assimilate.” A referendum during a first PQ term, not later than 2030, was thus a last chance in the face of the risk of “disappearance.”

Ten years after denouncing it, PSPP had fully embraced “referendum obsession” and “psychological harassment.”

Speaking to his supporters at the same convention, PSPP also denounced the “deportations” and “executions,” referring to the Great Upheaval of the Acadians and the Patriots’ Rebellion. But in both cases, these events took place before the confederation, and even under British rule. They have nothing to do with modern Canada, which itself has changed significantly over the past 150 years. But why get bogged down in these details?

2024 PSPP spent the rest of the year blaming Ottawa and an unpopular federal Prime Minister (at the time, Justin Trudeau) for most of Quebec’s problems. The sovereignty needle still wasn’t moving.

And the PQ began shooting at anything that moved and wore a maple leaf.

In early 2025, PSPP effectively aligned himself with Donald Trump, agreeing with him that Canada had been a “bad neighbour” on the border issue—even though fentanyl and illegal immigrants are entering mostly through Mexico, and even though it is American guns in Canada that are the main problem, not the other way around. Journalists pointed out PSPP’s factual errors. It didn’t seem to bother him.

The criticism regarding “mass immigration” continued, even though Ottawa tightened its criteria for temporary immigration, notably at Quebec’s request.

Then, this year, at the party’s national convention held in January, the PQ leader launched into a long tirade about “British colonialism” in North America, South Africa, and India, the continuation of that legacy in Canada in 2026, and its “possession of the spirit” (?!??).

It was a vengeful, surreal speech, riddled with gross exaggerations and inaccuracies. The PQ leader spoke more about Gandhi and Mandela than about his own predecessors, and compared the Canadian federation to colonial India, apartheid-era South Africa, and the former USSR.

🤯

This week, when the Quebec City—Toronto high-speed rail project was discussed, 2026 PSPP promised to pull Quebec out of the “Canadian unity” train.

Huh?

In Europe, high-speed rail lines connect London and Paris, Paris and Berlin and other cities in Germany, Lyon or Marseille and Madrid and Barcelona. There are legitimate questions to ask about the high-speed rail project—about costs and profitability, and about the route as well—but since when has the simple act of making it easier for people to travel between major cities become a bad thing? In a sovereign Quebec, are we going to cut air routes?

The PQ leader could very well have said he had reservations due to the potential costs. We all do. But, caught up in his anti-federal persona, 2026 PSPP took everyone by surprise by turning a transportation and economic opportunity issue into a partisan one, relying on a hypothetical $200 billion cost pulled out of thin air, and inventing an even more hypothetical $40 billion windfall that Quebec could recoup by withdrawing from a project that won’t happen without us. Just about everyone, except his die-hard supporters, is still wondering what got into him.

This crudely ideological stance looked even more absurd when it was discovered that, as recently as February 2025, the PQ was “dreaming” of a Quebec City—Toronto high-speed rail line, even though the cost estimates were the same as they are today.

At the time, the PQ was suspicious of the announcement by a Justin Trudeau nearing the end of his term, and criticized the federal government for not having launched the project ten years earlier. Now that the high-speed rail is moving forward, that’s not good enough either.

Damn if you do…

From a media perspective, the positive arguments for sovereignty have all but disappeared from the PQ’s rhetoric. All that remains is resentment toward Ottawa, which the PQ leader works hard to stoke on a daily basis.

Fascinatingly, every time the PQ takes a slightly harder line against the federal government, support for sovereignty takes a hit.

In the spring of 2023, support for the Yes was around 42%. In 2024, it held steady at 40%. In 2025, it was 35–36%. And, even though 2026 isn’t over yet, support for the Yes has fallen around 31–33%.

The further the dream of sovereignty recedes, the more the PQ leader seems to seek opportunities to turn his guns on Ottawa, pursuing his scorched-earth strategy, trapped in his role as a referendum-obsessed figure.

Even support for the PQ seems to be suffering. After peaking at 35 to 37% in 2025, voting intentions for the PQ have dropped back down to around 30%. If you have moderate sovereigntists in your circle, many will tell you they’ve had enough of the Poilievre-like rhetoric. Testimonials are multiplying on social media. Even former PQ ministers no longer recognize their party.

But since five parties are vying for seats in the National Assembly, the PQ could still form a government with just 30% of the vote.

The Parti Québécois could even win a majority. In fact, with the current vote split, the PQ’s chances of forming a majority government are excellent as long as it reaches a threshold of 32 to 33% of the vote. And the party is counting on this to trigger a referendum that most Quebecers do not want any more than they want Quebec to secede.

+++++++

I voted Yes in 1995. I would vote No today.

The context has changed, which also changes the answer—and even the question. It has less to do with Donald Trump than with the evolution of Quebec and Canada. Many of Quebec’s legitimate constitutional objectives have been achieved from a political standpoint, even if they haven’t been formalized.

Nor is it because I think the federal government is wonderful, or out of any immoderate love for the Supreme Court, Toronto, or the Rocky Mountains. It’s because, like the majority of Quebecers, I believe that we are generally better off—or at least not as bad off—within Canada as outside of it.

I fundamentally believe there are many valid arguments for independence, just as there are for remaining in Canada. And, even though I’ve written extensively on this topic, and even though the nature of my work and my approach have led me to explore the subject far more from the perspective of better public policy than from that of my own preferences, I don’t want to talk about that today.

I want to talk about the fundamental reason for creating a new country: for the people who will live in it.

I remember October 30, 1995, perfectly. As a young entrepreneur, I saw sovereignty less as a rejection of Canada than as an opportunity for Quebecers to make decisions entirely for themselves, just as I did with my business.

The first results coming in on TV on that Halloween eve were promising. But as the evening wore on, it looked increasingly tight. Really, really tight. Then it became clear that if the Yes side won, it would be by the skin of its teeth.

From that moment on, I hoped the No camp would win.

Because the aftermath of a country won on a razor’s edge would have been unmanageable. Because I’ve never seen independence as an end in itself.

There would have been legal challenges, perhaps another referendum in the event of a change in government, to reverse course. Above all, there would have been divisions that would never have ended. It would have been a major mess. You don’t build a country within a margin of error.

Yet, it is precisely this hope that the referendum obsessives cling to. And that is what sets the referendum obsessives apart from other sovereigntists.

As Mario Dumont—a one-time sovereigntist leader who became federalist after the 1995 referendum—once said, the Yes camp was not 50,000 votes short in 1995. It was 500,000 votes short. The referendum obsessives don’t get that.

It doesn’t sink in any more than the fact that a majority of Quebecers don’t want Quebec to be a country. They are incapable of accepting one very simple thing: sometimes, people just don’t buy into it.

Not because they are misinformed, manipulated, colonized, or incapable of thinking for themselves, as PSPP seems to believe when he speaks of “possession of the mind.”

Once all the arguments have been made—and one can certainly argue that this is the case in Quebec, after nearly 60 years of debate on the issue and two referendums—sometimes people simply disagree.

And we have to accept that. Because that’s what democracy is all about, too. You don’t force a country on its future inhabitants.

But the referendum obsessives won’t accept that. They’re still dreaming of 50% + 1, even though for twenty years it’s been 60%, 65% on the other side.

And that is why the 2026 PQ is still banking on a parliamentary “majority” that it would secure 32% or 33% of the vote to force a referendum that most Quebecers don’t want, hoping to stoke just enough anger that we’ll change our minds for a few weeks. What would come next is an afterthought.

Because, ultimately, they believe they know what’s best for all of us better than we do ourselves, and that we’ll eventually come to understand it, whether we want it or not.

That’s having a pretty low opinion of their political project and of the people they want to lead.

-30-

This text is 2,477 words long, which is about 10 pages of a book. For three days, the research and writing had me almost as obsessed with sovereignty as the PQ leader.

My name is Patrick Déry. I write for a living, and I’m trying something different here. If you enjoyed reading this text, you can support me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and “likes” are always appreciated.

You can also subscribe to this publication (free or paid, your choice).

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I’ll put the candy here, but only if you promise to read all the way to the end. Deal?

Okay, let’s get started.

+++++++

When the French language is in danger, you can count on Jean-François Roberge to come to the rescue.

Nothing escapes the watchful eye of the Minister of (take a deep breath) the French Language, the Canadian Francophonie, Laicity [i.e., secularism], Democratic Institutions, Access to Information, and the Protection of Personal Information. Phew!

From now on, as a result of an initiative by one of the many ministries headed by Mr. Roberge, every municipal employee must ensure that the business with which they deal on behalf of their employer complies with the Charter of the French Language, better known as Bill 101, along with its recent amendments, such as Bill 96.

Previously, only transactions of $5,000 or more fell under the scope of the law. From now on, before buying a drain auger or a sandwich at a local store, municipal employees will have to verify whether said business complies with the rules of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF).

Minister Roberge seems to be truly proud of this.

(Side note. I did not come up with the example of a clogged drain. The government did. I don’t know enough about the condition of the public service’s restrooms or Minister Roberge’s bowels to understand why this is a concern for his staff. I also didn’t know this was an issue in municipalities. Since a drain auger sells for $43 at Canadian Tire, it might be more practical for each city to buy its own tools rather than sending an employee to the hardware store every time a toilet gets clogged. Perhaps the Minister of Municipal Affairs should look into this.)

At hearing about the new manoeuvre from Mr. Roberge, one can’t help but think that the French language situation must be really bad in Quebec’s retail sector. Just think about it: every single employee in every single municipality in the province, from Gatineau to Gaspé, has just been turned into an OQLF inspector. From a Machiavellian-bureaucratic standpoint, it’s actually brilliant, and kudos to the twisted mind that came up with that.

On the other hand, it might not do much for municipal employees’ productivity, but that’s clearly not a preoccupation for Mr. Roberge. Our unmasked vigilante’s only concern is our common language.

By the way, how is French faring in Quebec’s businesses?

As luck would have it, the OQLF published a study on businesses’ compliance with Bill 101in early May. The study examined signage, language of service, invoices, and payment terminals in Greater Montreal stores.

More specifically, between January and May 2025, OQLF inspectors surveyed the Quartier Latin—that is, part of downtown—Taschereau Boulevard on the South Shore, and Laurentides Boulevard in Laval. In total, they visited nearly 1,000 stores.

What were the results?

The “overall compliance rate”—that is, the percentage of merchants fully compliant with the OQLF’s criteria—was 77%, as shown in this graph from the OQLF’s website:

So, 23% of merchants are non-compliant. That may seem like a lot—even alarming. Are merchants in Montreal and its suburbs rebelling against Bill 101?

The picture changes somewhat when we look at each criterion separately. The highest non-compliance rate is then 13%. The violations are not the same across all stores, and a very large proportion were compliant with several of the aspects.

What are the problems?

Language displayed on payment terminals: this is the most common issue. The display is in English in 13% of cases (and therefore in French in the remaining 87%). In its report, the OQLF notes that its inspectors helped merchants—who seemed cooperative—to change the default setting to French.

Receipts: 11% were issued in English. This is not insignificant, but it is once again more of a technical issue related to software or its configuration than explicit disobedience. It is also possible that convenience stores or fast-food owners did not attach much importance to a receipt that customers do not look at. Still, 89% of stores were compliant.

Outdoor public signage: non-compliant in 8% of cases. So, 92% were compliant. Here, the rules are well known, but things get complicated in practice. Sometimes, the company name is English and translates poorly. Personally, I hope I never see Canadian Tire become Le Pneu canadien.

Sometimes, businesses simply lack imagination. Staples, which became “Bureau en gros” in Quebec, showed that it is possible to both be effective from a marketing standpoint and respect our linguistic difference, which is unique in North America.

Sometimes, too, business owners are simply reluctant to follow the rules, and they aren’t necessarily English speakers. I struggle to understand why a French-speaking Quebecer would insist on naming their bar Le Red Room rather than La Chambre rouge, especially since it generally refers to the same thing in literature and popular culture, but some people do it anyway.

Language of service: the fourth and final criterion is the one that receives the most media attention, and also the one that generates the most dissatisfaction. According to the OQLF, more than 10,000 complaints were filed over the past year. This is also the main reason that prompted the OQLF to conduct the inspections.

So what is the percentage of stores that were unable to provide service in French during the OQLF’s inspections? Two percent.

You read that right: in Montreal, on the South Shore, and in Laval—these bastions of rampant anglicization—an employee was able to service OQLF inspectors who spoke to them in French 98% of the time.

Here is the overall picture, once again taken from the OQLF website:

Of course, it’s not perfect. Of course, there’s still work to be done, but even in Montreal, where a third of the population doesn’t speak French as a first language, at least 87% of merchants comply with one or more of the OQLF’s criteria, and 98% meet the most important one: being able to serve their customers in French. We’re a long way from a linguistic apocalypse.

These generally positive findings regarding the languages used in retail stores are little known, but not new.

In 2022 and 2023, the OQLF conducted a larger-scale study, visiting 10,000 stores to assess the language of greeting, the language of service used spontaneously, and the language of service upon request—that is, when service in French was requested after initial contact in English. It wasn’t just the Quartier Latin that was surveyed, but the entire island of Montreal, from east to west.

Across the island, 97.4% of merchants were able to service customers in French. In 90% of cases, service was spontaneously offered in French. Even when it wasn’t (which is understandable in English-speaking neighbourhoods), nearly all employees were able to provide it upon request, hence the overall result of 97.4%.

Better yet, this figure was on the rise, as the same rate was 95.9% in 2010 and 96.4% in 2017.

You have to go all the way to page 32 of the report, just before the conclusion, to discover what I believe is the most important chart.

During this period, when we were bombarded with articles about the “decline” of the French language and our former prime minister was raising the spectre of Quebec’s “Louisianization,” the lack of service in French became even rarer, dropping from 4.1% to 2.6%.

Let’s just say that puts alarmist headlines like “Unable to be served in French” into perspective.

That’s not all. Hold on to your poutine.

In the western part of the Island of Montreal—its most English-speaking area—95% of merchants were able to serve customers in French. Ninety-five percent! (It’s listed at the top of page 35 of the OQLF report if you’re curious.)

Even if the greeting was more often a “Bonjour-Hi,” or even just a “Hi,” the fact remains that almost everyone in the western part of the island is willing and able to serve those who ask for it in French.

Admit it, you wouldn’t have expected that.

To those who doubt the figures, may I remind that the OQLF recently sought to “Frenchify” the slogan “Go Habs Go”, and it’s hard to suspect the organization of linguistic complacency.

+++++++

Even media outlets that generally rely less on sensationalism struggle to report the good news.

In early May of this year, when the OQLF published its report on inspections conducted in 2025 at stores on the South Shore, in the Latin Quarter, and in Laval, Radio-Canada limited itself to discussing the overall compliance rate, without distinguishing between the language of the payment terminal and customer service. One in four stores does not comply with Bill 101. Ouch!

That’s the kind of headline that puts a lot of people in a bad mood. It was also rather simplistic for a topic we know to be so explosive.

The article mentions the 10,000 complaints that we talked about earlier, but fails to note that they rarely lead to court convictions. Generally, merchants cooperate. And not all complaints are valid. In 2012, out of a total of 4,000 complaints, 47 led to convictions and fines.

La Presse went a step further, choosing the angle of language in signage and running a headline about “delinquent merchants.” The article provides more information; it is balanced and, as a good on-the-ground report, gauges the sentiment of business owners. However, it does not mention the surprising and very positive results concerning the language of customer service. If one only reads the headline—which is what between half and as many as three quarters of us do—they’re left with a generally negative impression.

The most positive coverage came (surprisingly) from the Le Journal de Montréal, whose reporter decided to provide an overview of the Office’s findings. But watchout, the OQLF didn’t venture into the English jungle in the western part of the island! Yet, the findings likely wouldn’t have been that different when it comes to the language used to welcome customers.

(Note: I couldn’t find an article in Le Devoir on this topic.)

++++

Journalists both report on the society we live in and reflect on it with their own preferences and blind spots. I’m no exception.

When it comes to French, I can’t help but feel that we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture and that we’ve become somewhat pessimistic by reflex, even though the overall data on the evolution of French in Quebec is generally reassuring, as I’ve detailed here with numerous charts you won’t find anywhere else.

Can Quebec one day become French enough to put our fears to rest?

For now, the answer seems to be no. And we remain vulnerable to the diversionary tactics of Jean-François Roberge and other politicians who raise scarecrows and distract us from what really matters.

-30-

This text is about 2,000 words long, or eight pages of a book. The research, writing, and teasing of the inimitable Minister Roberge took me about two days.

My name is Patrick Déry. I write for a living, and I’m trying something different here. If you enjoyed reading this text, you can support me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and “likes” are always appreciated.

You can also subscribe to this publication (free or paid, your choice).

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(Texte français disponible ici)

The first thing that comes to mind when discussing the principles of the Quebec Liberal Party is that it doesn’t seem to have any. And I’m not talking about ethics or “brownies.”

The way Sona Lakhoyan Olivier handled herself as an elected official is obviously pathetic. Not only did the Liberal MNA for Chomedey make her constituency office staff—who are the payroll of the government—work on Pablo Rodriguez’s leadership campaign, but she also destroyed the evidence when she became the subject of an investigation. Then, she tried to influence her employees’ potential testimony. When the Ethics Commissioner lambasted her, she added another lie by saying she made a “mistake.”

Ms. Lakhoyan Olivier was expelled from the caucus and the party, which was the least that one could expect. The UPAC and Chief Electoral Officer investigations could make other heads roll, but it seems more likely that the Chomedey MNA’s case is an isolated one.

No one seriously believes that the new leader of the QLP, Charles Milliard, would tolerate, encourage, or resort to such outdated antics. Nor would Monsef Derraji, André Fortin, Madwa Nika Cadet, or Enrico Ciccone, to name just a few. Moreover, the media’s appetite for scandals within the QLP would likely have eventually exposed the “fling flags,” had there been any others.

Polls regarding the QLP also seemed to show that this is what many Quebecers believe. Between Pablo Rodriguez’s resignation in late December, and early April, the Liberal Party rose from a low of 21% to a high of 32% in voting intentions. That’s not too bad, since the leadership race was a non-event, that the new leader remains largely unknown to the general public, and that the issue of illegal financing remained in the background all the while.

Since then, the QLP has stopped rising and even dipped slightly, hovering around 28%. If this were just a single poll, one might conclude it is within the margin of error, but it looks like the beginning of a trend. Something has hurt the party more than Ms. Lakhoyan Olivier’s shenanigans. What happened?

I will offer a very personal and generally unconventional interpretation. You may disagree.

But first, I want to break down the fluctuations a bit. It won’t take long, but it will add some perspective. Before the scandal that would see the downfall of M. Rodriguez, the QLP was holding steady at around 25 to 27% of voting intentions, which was its best performance in five years.

(The images below are taken from Philippe J. Fournier’s inevitable Qc125.com.)

Following the ouster of parliamentary leader Marwah Rizqy, which led to Pablo Rodriguez’s resignation, support for the QLP dropped to 21%. This was still better than the support levels below 15% recorded throughout 2023 and part of 2024. There were no brownies back then, but not much inspiration either.

With the coronation of Charles Milliard, support for the QLP steadily rose to 32%. It’s obvious that a new leader of a ruling party always sparks curiosity, but it’s still noteworthy that this rise occurred despite the ongoing, extensive coverage of allegations of illegal financing and ongoing investigations by the UPAC, the Chief Electoral Officer, and the Ethics Commissioner of the National Assembly.

Between early February and mid-April, dozens of articles mentioned the allegations and the multiple inquiries going on. Yet, support for the QLP kept rising.

Then came the first snag: Mr. Milliard, what do you think of Bill 96?

Much like Robert Bourassa, whom he holds up as a role model, Charles Milliard responded in three parts: he was neither for, nor against it, and quite the opposite.

On April 16, Charles Milliard stated that he wanted to remove certain provisions from Bill 96, notably the one prohibiting government employees from communicating in any language other than French with immigrants who have been living in Quebec for more than six months, as well as certain rules applying to small businesses. So far, so good.

Then, Mr. Milliard explained that he wanted to protect “a large part of Bill 96” and, consequently, that he wished to renew the use of the notwithstanding clause to shield the law from the application of both the Quebec and Canadian Charters of Rights, and from judicial review.

That day, Mr. Milliard crossed the Rubicon, breaking not only with his party’s position on Bill 96 but also with the quasi-constitutional nature of the Quebec Charter—a legacy of Robert Bourassa that the CAQ had trampled upon by first passing Bill 21, then Bill 96. It caused a stir in the caucus.

The next day, April 17, Mr. Milliard half-backtracked, leaving open the use of the notwithstanding clause. To his English-speaking audience, he added that he wanted to ensure the use of the clause would no longer be necessary, without saying how he intended to achieve that.

(My take, for what it’s worth: the simplest way would be to stop infringing on the fundamental rights of Quebecers, or to remove the derogation clause from Bill 96 and then let the courts do their job.)

Two days later, on April 18, the figure skating session took a different turn, and Mr. Milliard said he would sit down with legal experts in the government to determine whether the notwithstanding clause was necessary. He also said he wanted to make additions to Bill 96 to promote French proficiency among young people and increase investments in the francization of immigrants. It smacked of desperation and improvisation. But the linguistic toothpaste was out of the tube, and would not go back in.

+++++++

In Quebec, three topics will always get media coverage above almost anything else: the Canadiens in the playoffs, Céline, and language issues.

For three days, every Quebecer interested in politics watched Mr. Milliard juggle the plates being thrown at him, trying to drop as few as possible of them.

Ronald Reagan had this saying: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

The Liberals’ momentum stopped there. And the slide began.

Some will conclude that it was mainly English-speaking Quebecers who turned their backs on the QLP.

When we look a little more closely at the Léger polls conducted before and after Mr. Milliard’s double about-face, we see that support for the Liberals among English speakers dropped from 61% and 65% in the two earlier polls (those from March 21 and April 4) to 57% and 59% in the two later polls (those from April 19 and May 17). So, let’s say from 63% to 58% on average, with all the caveats that must be noted for a smaller sample size. The drop is real, and could have been greater when accounting for the fact that overall support could have risen still.

Among Francophones, the support dropped from 23% and 22% previously to 19% and 17%. So, on average, from 22.5% to 18%. As a proportion of total support, we’re talking about an 8% drop among Anglophones and a 20% drop among Francophones.

I repeat: all things considered, Francophones reacted more strongly.

I think the majority of Quebecers—at least those who are still open to changing their vote—believe Mr. Milliard when he says he would never have tolerated and will never tolerate illegal financing and vote-buying.

Generally speaking, they are even willing to trust him more than Mr. Rodriguez and the other leaders that the QLP has had since the 2018 election.

I also think that, as the fundamental rights of many of us are being trampled, a lot of Quebecers hope for an approach based on unwavering principles.

So far, they are still waiting.

-30-

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living, and do my best to Quebecsplain in English in this space.

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Yes please!

(Texte français disponible ici.)

Canada will host the new Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank. In very broad terms, the bank will serve as a sort of financial arm of NATO, designed to support the development of defence capabilities of member countries.

Four Canadian cities, including Montreal, are vying for the headquarters, the prestige, and the anticipated economic benefits. The other three are Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver. Quebec politicians’ support for their city’s bid is almost as unanimous as their support for its hockey team during its playoff run. Only one party, Québec Solidaire, opposes it, for ideological reasons.

(Dear Ms. Ghazal, we’re against war too, but go ahead and explain that to Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump.)

Despite Montreal’s merits, Ottawa’s bid seems more logical, if only because the federal capital is home to both the seat of government, the Department of Defense and the military, as well as nearly all foreign embassies on Canadian soil.

That won’t stop Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal from lobbying in the hope that the Defense Bank will set up shop in their cities, and each mayor and premier from touting their city and province. Because that’s what politicians do.

It was actually amusing to see Christine Fréchette tugging at Emmanuel Macron’s sleeve in the hope that he would do Montreal a favour. Did Ms. Fréchette seriously think that the head of state of Europe’s leading military power would risk appearing to try to influence NATO’s decision-making process, especially since France’s participation in the bank has yet to be confirmed?

Some of the arguments put forward to promote Montreal’s bid are even more fascinating.

In a letter to the National Post, Quebec’s Minister of International Relations and La Francophonie, Christopher Skeete, noted that Montreal is “the only North American metropolis where French is the official language and where English remains indispensable in business, science, and diplomacy.”

NATO’s headquarters are indeed located in Brussels, and its two official and founding languages are French and English, as specified in Article 14 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

Bernard Drainville, the Minister of the Economy, piled it on, noting that the eighteen countries that supported Canada “would be very happy for the bank to be located in a multilingual city” where one can “find people who speak [their] language.”

Other strengths of Montreal were highlighted. Yes, yes, the connection to Europe, international organizations, artificial intelligence, aerospace (the Defense Bank will not build aircraft, but let’s move on).

But “the only North American metropolis where English remains indispensable”? “A multilingual city?”

The same government that, for the past eight years, has placed the threat of the English language and the decline of French (which isn’t “declining” all that much, by the way) at the heart of its legislative agenda, suddenly sees the virtues of its metropolis’s bilingualism and multilingualism?

Because it’s mostly English that’s being discussed. No one speaks “multilingual.” But many Germans, Norwegians, Finns, and Eastern Europeans speak English, not to mention the British and Americans. And it’s true that Montreal is more English-speaking than Vancouver, Toronto, or even Ottawa is French-speaking. But since when has the CAQ considered this to be an advantage?

We’re talking about the same government that, with Bill 96, raised language requirements for small businesses, despite the additional costs and the message sent to entrepreneurs, and despite the tenuous link between the language of work with international clients and partners and the language spoken in daily life. (I used to work a lot with anglophones; I did not begin to use English with family and friends.)

We’re talking about the same government that starved English-language universities and raised tuition costs for students coming from other provinces because the previous premier, Mr. Legault, felt that he heard too much English in downtown Montreal, not to mention the damage to Quebec’s reputation when it comes to recruiting young talent from abroad.

We’re talking about the same government that imposed a cap on the number of students allowed to study in English in CEGEPs, and that is threatening to force students already enrolled in English in vocational and adult education programs to switch to French, even if there is no room for all of them in French-speaking classes.

We’re talking about the same government that considered passing a law to ban “Bonjour-Hi.” And now, we’re touting the city’s English character?

Well, who would have thought? Michael Rousseau would be pleased.

The prize for cognitive dissonance, however, goes to the Parti Québécois, whose MNA Pascal Paradis (hello, friend!) delivered a passionate plea for Montreal’s bid, extolling Montreal’s “linguistic diversity” and denouncing Toronto’s “fear campaign,” after Ontario Premier Doug Ford not-so-subtly raised the possibility of a referendum in Quebec.

The “fear campaign”? Can we put ourselves in the shoes of NATO leaders for just two minutes?

For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re a senior official or a five-star general within NATO. Your job description, as a decision-maker for a military alliance comprising 32 countries, includes trying to anticipate everything that could go wrong. In fact, being a bit paranoid is an asset, and it is this ability to anticipate pitfalls four or five steps ahead that has led you to the highly strategic position you hold today.

The member countries of your organization have chosen Canada—and Mark Carney to some extent as well—following the repositioning vis-à-vis the United States illustrated by his speech in Davos.

For the headquarters of the new Defense Bank, you must choose between four cities. One of them is located in a province that could secede from the host country, or, at the very least, hold a referendum on the issue, as the leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has promised. Mr. Plamondon (or PSPP), is also the politician most likely to be the next premier in five months. Doug Ford didn’t need to point that out; there are people at NATO who must know that too. Political changes within member countries are certainly part of strategic intelligence.

PSPP also said that he considers Mark Carney—the guy who won Canada’s nomination—to be in a position of “colonial domination” over Quebec, much as England might have been over India or South Africa. No kidding.

Another sovereigntist party leader, Yves-François Blanchet, head of the Bloc Québécois, has argued that Canadian federalism poses a greater threat to Quebec than the United States.

Even if the bombastic rhetoric is more about posturing than substance, would you seriously insist that the NATO Secretary General recommend to the leaders of member countries that they locate the headquarters of the new organization in a region that could be torn apart for years over its political status, both before and after a potential referendum, when there are other perfectly suitable cities, including the country’s capital (Ottawa) and its financial hub (Toronto)?

Neither would I.

The “fear campaign” denounced by Quebec politicians of all stripes is not directed at Quebec, and it does not originate in Toronto. It is a distinct Quebec product, manufactured by sovereigntist politicians, and aimed at Ottawa because it serves their interests.

But sometimes, the political boomerang comes back, and there are consequences. It would be honest to own up to them.

-30-

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living, and do my best to Quebecsplain in English in this space.

If you enjoyed reading this piece, you can encourage me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and likes are always appreciated.

You can also subscribe to this media by clicking on the button below.

Yes please!

(Texte français disponible ici.)

The Habs are on fire.

Lane Hutson looks like a magician on skates. Jakub Dobeš is making us forget all about Carey Price. Alex Newhook thinks he’s Maurice Richard. Even Caufield and Demidov have finally found the back of the net.

Quebec has never been more blue, white, and red than in this glorious spring. It’s not me saying it—it’s the experts. The connoisseurs. The Hot Stove League, and those who were there even before that. Forget 1993 and 1986, and all the other cups.

When we sent Tampa Bay on vacation, the very serious Patrice Roy invited Réjean Tremblay and Pierre Houde to the no less serious Téléjournal. The journalist asked the two veteran hockey commentators what we were collectively feeling and expressing.

Réjean didn’t hold back: “It’s crazier than in Lafleur’s glory days.”

Wow. The Habs won four straight cups back then. And we’d only just won the first round. But then, we bottled the lightning. Bring on the buffaloes, the hurricanes, and the avalanches! “Ça sent la coupe!”

After years of watching her government rail against Montreal, the premier and the mayor appeared together wearing the most beautiful red jersey in the known universe. (No, it’s not the Blackhawks’.)

In Quebec City, the mayor of the former Nordiques also put on his Habs jersey. Twelve thousand enthusiastic fans paid to watch a Canadiens game on the giant screen at the Vidéotron Centre. Even a former Nordiques head coach agreed to cheer on his former enemies!

Federalists and sovereigntists form a distinctly Quebecois bloc behind the Canadiens. On social media, the leaders of the CAQ, PQ, Liberals, Solidaires, and Quebec Conservatives are celebrating the successes of the “Quebec team,” hoping that a few drops of the unconditional love we have for Les Glorieux will rub off on them.

Never have temporary immigrants and unilingual Anglophones been so popular in Quebec. Especially those who skate fast and put the puck in the top corner!

Our media professionals are giving it 110 per cent. No angle is overlooked: some journalists bravely don an opposing team’s jersey in a downtown bar, hoping to be heckled so they can report on it the next day; others, more cautious, are visiting schools to ask pupils which team will come out on top; others reached out to Habs fans watching live games from the other side of the world; in the face of the rapidly spreading illness, some have asked experts how you catch playoff fever.

Even columnists who got all worked up for the last 50 years over the impending demise of French have found a way to get excited about this team that’s more flying than Frenchmen.

As for those with no roof over their heads, no job, and no money, they forget their problems watching these magnificent millionaires skate. “It reminds us that we’re alive,” they say. You bet.

If anyone still doubts that hockey is a religion here, the city of Saint-Eustache broadcast a game in a church.

+++++++

In Quebec, spring is the season that brings us together, especially when the Canadiens’ spring doesn’t end too soon.

In La Belle Province, once the first round of the playoffs is over, the Canadiens become a social project that unites us under a single flag—one that we hang from our car windows.

I say this with a smile, but without cynicism.

And I find myself dreaming. Imagine if we channelled this incredible collective energy into finding solutions to our many problems.

Imagine if, instead of having 26 experts from the same newspaper racking their brains over whether it’ll be Buffalo in six or the Habs in seven—not to mention all the pre- and post-game shows—we devoted that same mental energy to anything that could improve our society.

If education were as important as the Canadiens in the playoffs, hockey analysts would remind us between periods that it makes no sense for Quebec to have the worst dropout rate in the country, and that all students should have access to engaging academic, artistic, or athletic programs that would encourage them to reach their full potential and pursue their dreams, regardless of their parents’ income or where they live.

If the next generation in our schools and hospitals were as important as those who will one day succeed Suzuki, Slaf, and Caufield, we’d make sure to give our young teachers and nurses fair playing time right from the start of their careers. And we’d prevent hundreds of these future star players from deserting our education and healthcare teams every year.

If healthcare were as important as the Canadiens in the playoffs, we’d be just as outraged that, sometimes, in order to avoid spending months on a waiting list for an imaging test or surgery, we have to pay more than a pair of tickets in the red section of the Bell Centre.

If the fate of our seniors were as important as that of the failing hands that carried the torch, thousands of us would be demonstrating every day on Saint Catherine Street so that our parents and grandparents could live out their last days with dignity, without having to be crammed two, three, or four to a room, staring at the walls while waiting to die. Because we have a moral obligation to do better.

If our collective prosperity were as important as the Canadiens in the playoffs, we would stop giving billions to corporations that pay armies of lobbyists to influence those in power, and we would invest heavily in ourselves—in the training and support of our workers and innovators—because a nation’s most precious resource will always its people.

If our collective solidarity were as important as the Canadiens in the playoffs, we would ask those millionaires we idolize on the ice to follow the example of P. K. Subban, who donated ten million dollars to the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation and improved the lives of more than 100,000 sick children and their families. Try to top that, Lane Hutson!

We would not just be satisfied knowing that the TV is on in homeless shelters when the Canadiens play; we’d make it our duty and a point of pride to put a roof over all those whom life has left behind and help them come back into society.

If democracy were as important as the Canadiens in the playoffs, we would change the way we do politics so that governments are always formed by the coalition of multiple parties representing a majority of us. And we would suspend for misconduct any politician that tried to force its obsessions and ideology down our throats against our will.

If making Quebec a better society were as important as the Canadiens in the playoffs, federalists, autonomists, and sovereigntists would focus most of their efforts on improving our lives, sometimes giving credit to their opponents, rather than spending their days trying to prove that their political adversaries are bad Quebecers. Because, in the end, we’re all playing for the same team.

If the French language were as important as the Canadiens in the playoffs, we’d be talking about Richard, Boom-Boom, Béliveau, Lafleur, Roy, and all those exceptional champions who helped us overcome our insecurities and showed us that we could aspire to the highest honours in the language of our ancestors. We’d celebrate every day the immense success of our distinct society, in which Quebecers of all backgrounds participate. And we would hammer home the point that success and survival come with hope and confidence, far more so than with defeatism and fear.

And, when a newcomer to Quebec hasn’t yet mastered French after six months, we’d accommodate them with a smile and kindness by handing them a copy of Charles Binamé’s The Rocket. Because, in North America’s first French-speaking city, we mustn’t treat our language as a punishment, but as yet another door opening onto the world.

If we did all that, we’d all be a little happier, even when the Canadiens don’t stretch their season into May.

And the collective euphoria that unites us behind these inspiring athletes would be a little less of an escape and a little more a source of real pride, because even if the Canadiens lost, we’d all know that Quebec has already won.

-30-

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living, and do my best to Quebecsplain in English in this space.

If you enjoyed reading this piece, you can encourage me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and likes are always appreciated.

You can also subscribe to this media by clicking on the button below. Go Habs Go!

Yes please!

The headline in Le Journal de Montréal is morbidly eye-catching: five babies died during childbirth.

(One might wonder why a story about Renaud Lavoie, a sports journalist, having had “the scare of his life” is considered more newsworthy than the indescribable tragedy of babies who actually died, but let’s move on.)

Inside, the newspaper devotes a full spread to the tragedy of parents who lost children after a full-term pregnancy.

A requested C-section that was performed too late. Another that went wrong. A delivery whose induction was postponed by a week due to the lack of availability at the maternity ward. Another C-section that was performed after 30 hours. And yet another that never took place.

Five babies who should have lived. Five lives that will never be. Five mothers and fathers who will be haunted by that moment for the rest of their lives.

And all of this happened at the same hospital, in Valleyfield.

My first thoughts are for the parents. The birth of my daughter, now fifteen today, could have turned into a nightmare had it not been for the surgeon, who appeared out of nowhere when no one else knew what to do, and saved the day.

Each of these individual tragedies is indescribable. But are they exceptional, or even abnormal? Even in the world’s best healthcare systems, there are accidents and mistakes, and there is no country where newborn mortality is zero. Sometimes, it happens. We just hope it doesn’t happen to us.

What do the numbers say? The article from Le Journal de Montréal provides some data. From 2014 to 2024, between 210 and 250 viable babies—meaning 28 weeks of gestation or more—did not survive in Quebec.

At first glance, the numbers appear stable from year to year, except for 2019.

From here on, we’re going to go beyond the journalist’s work and make the numbers speak (this isn’t a criticism, much less a judgment). And I apologize in advance for the grim math. The subject is as sensitive as it is essential, and there is more than meets the eye, as we’ll see.

First, a reminder. There are about 110 hospitals with a maternity ward in Quebec. That works out to about two stillborn babies per hospital every year. Not all hospitals have the same number of births, so the figure can vary from one to another. Also, some hospitals are specialized in children’s care, like Sainte-Justine or the Montréal Children’s. Still, as incredibly sad as five stillborn babies over five or six years are, it does not seem to be that uncommon. In fact, it is likely that there are likely hospitals where such events occur more frequently.

That leads to two questions.

The first: Are 200 or 250 baby deaths too many? And is Quebec doing worse than other places?

The second: Are things moving in the right direction? Just looking at the table in the Journal, I’m already pretty certain they are not, because the total number of births in Quebec has been declining for several years. So if the number of deaths is stable…

In 2014, the first year of the data set in the Journal, there were 88,036 births in Quebec, according to Statistics Canada. In 2024, there were 77,052. So, ten years later, with fewer births, we end up with more deaths at 28 weeks or later. Something is wrong.

I expanded the series to the early 1990s and linked it to the annual number of live births. The result is the number of late fetal deaths per 1,000 births, or the stillbirth rate.

Plotted on a line graph, it looks like this:

In the early 1990s, the ratio of stillbirths to live births was around 3 per 1,000. Over the next two decades, it gradually declined, stabilizing at around 2.4. In 2019, it reached a low of 2.1, but this seems to be an anomaly.

And, surprise, surprise—over the past five years, it has begun rising again, quite steeply. A rise from 2.4 to 3.3 amounts to an increase of nearly 40% in newborn mortality. That’s 70 more babies dying in a single year.

It’s even more painful when you look at what happened in Ontario during the same period. Please see the orange curve on the chart below.

For about 30 years, Ontario had a higher stillbirth rate than Quebec. The trend then reversed. If Quebec had the same rate as Ontario in 2024, about 40 babies would still be alive today.

Even though Ontario is doing better than Quebec, our neighbouring province is not a model. In Northern European countries, the neonatal mortality rate hovers around 2 per 1,000 births. In Korea and Japan, it is even lower.

The conclusion is brutal: if Quebec performed as well as Northern European countries, every year, about a hundred more babies would have their whole lives ahead of them. Over ten years, that’s a thousand children. Enough to fill a few primary schools…

+++++++

What happened?

I haven’t seen anything that would indicate a change in methodology explaining the reversal of the trend. Quebec made a slight adjustment to its criteria in 2019, but that only affects mortality rates between 20 and 23 weeks of pregnancy, not at 28 weeks and beyond. And Statistics Canada and the provinces have ensured for decades that the data are comparable from one province to another.

There remains another explanation, unfortunately plausible, logical, and consistent with the many red flags our healthcare system has been sending us for years: vulnerable patients waiting for years for a family doctor; tests that take too long to be performed; pathology results that get lost in the system; cancers detected too late and that have become more severe, even incurable; dozens of patients dying while waiting for heart surgery; others dying after being completely forgotten in the ER; prenatal checkups skipped for two trimesters. And so on.

Quebec’s healthcare system, constantly stretched to its limits, has been failing Quebecers for some time. Now it’s the newborns’ turn to pay a gruesome price.

+++++++

When my daughter was born, delivery was supposed to be routine. The doctor who had been monitoring the pregnancy suggested letting the resident doctor handle it, as it was a textbook case.

Then, labour began. The baby wouldn’t come out. One hour. Two hours. My then-partner-now-wife pushed as hard as she could, but to no avail. Her face was covered in red spots because she had strained so hard and tiny blood vessels had burst. Labour dragged on, and nurses, orderlies, and others started filling the room. At some point, there were a dozen of us. Everyone was offering their opinion, trying to get the baby out any way they could. Pull, push, try again. Nothing worked. I had the agonizing feeling that we were living an episode of ER. But George Clooney was nowhere to be found.

The resident doctor did not know what to do anymore. My wife was exhausted. A nurse said that the baby’s heart rate was slowing down.

I turned to the resident: “I think you need help.” It seemed to snap her out of it; she rushed out immediately. A few minutes later, our family doctor was there. Eventually, she decided to call in the surgeon.

A man in his early sixties arrived. He took a look, asked for the vacuum extractor, inserted it where the baby needed to come out, gave it a twist, and pulled my daughter out in no time. Annabelle was born. With a temporary cone head, but she was breathing. And the surgeon was gone, as fast as he came in.

The whole thing took two or three minutes.

I turned to a nurse and asked her, “Who’s that superman?” She told me he was a top surgeon, fed up with the dysfunctionality of a broken health-care system, and that, at the end of the year, he intended to retire to play golf and be done with the nonsense.

That was fifteen years ago.

-30-

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living, and do my best to Quebecsplain in English in this space.

If you enjoyed reading this piece, you can encourage me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and likes are always appreciated.

You can also subscribe to this media by clicking on the button below.

Yes please!

________

Methodological note: Regarding the number of live births in Quebec, the Institut de la statistique du Québec and Statistics Canada report very similar figures; however, I have used Statistics Canada’s figures for the purpose of comparison with Ontario.

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