(Texte français disponible ici.)

Do you have a maple leaf engraved on your heart? Or, simply put, despite your love for Quebec, do you prefer to remain Canadian? Any one of those shades of red—and all the shades in between—makes you a federalist.

According to Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, that also means you’re not a Quebecer.

Blanchet really did say that in an end-of-year interview with La Presse, published on December 24th. It went relatively unnoticed, quickly buried by Christmas Eve and that we ate, drank and celebrated that evening. The news cycle came to a halt while we were serving tourtière. After the holidays, journalists and political commentators moved on to other topics.

I’ve been thinking what Blanchet said and the resounding silence around it almost every day for the past three months, because it’s so huge, so absurd, but also so revealing of the mindset of certain current sovereigntist leaders.

If a referendum on Quebec’s independence were held today, nearly 70% of us would vote “No.” So, according to Blanchet’s logic, 70% of Quebec’s inhabitants “are not Quebecois”.

Nor are the majority of those who have lived in Quebec for the past half-century.

Sovereigntist leaders from a bygone era—let’s say, pre-charter of values—would never have dared to say such a thing, out of respect for their fellow citizens whom they were trying to convince and whom they aspired to lead in the country they were proposing, but also because it is nonsense. Quebec’s status will be decided amongst Quebecers; those who prefer to remain in Canada are no less Quebecers than those who would vote to leave.

I cannot recall this ever having been called into question by a mainstream politician. The federal government and certain federalist politicians may well have come under fierce attack by sovereigntists. But they never attacked the whole of Quebec federalists.

Similarly, Robert Bourassa or Philippe Couillard never viewed sovereigntists as a subcategory of Quebecers. The federal government has never administered a test to determine whether you were sufficiently federalist to be able to vote or to be elected. A sovereigntist party has thus been sending MPs to Ottawa for over 35 years. It even briefly formed the official opposition.

Today, more and more sovereigntist politicians seem to think that Quebec is not inhabited solely by Quebecers. Since Mr. Blanchet’s statement three months ago, no prominent sovereigntist figure has contradicted him.

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the leader of the Parti Québécois, even went a step further recently, asking residents of the Outaouais region to “vote like a Quebecer” in the upcoming elections.

Yes, he actually said that.

One might assume that, for Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon, voting like a Quebecer means voting for the party he leads.

Currently, the Parti Québécois stands at 31% in the polls. So, 31% of us intend to “vote like a Quebecer”. How would the rest of us vote? Like a colonized person? A sell-out? An Anglophone? An immigrant?

Or, worse still, a Canadian?

Yuck!

One might think this trivial. For my part, I believe a significant shift is taking place in Quebec politics. A more accusatory discourse has emerged, perhaps influenced by a general deterioration of the political climate, first in the United States and then in Canada. Political thinking has also evolved in the same direction, and more radical rhetoric—previously on the fringes of the major parties—is now being adopted by their leaders.

In the past, sovereigntist leaders never attempted to draw a line between “real” and “fake” Quebecers. They sought to rally, to convince, to bring people together. Sometimes through criticism, but never through exclusion. Whether sovereigntist or federalist, we were not necessarily so far apart on the essentials; we simply hoped to change people’s minds and believed that dialogue was possible. This was also essential to winning an election, let alone a referendum.

For instance, in his often-quoted “Centaur” speech of 1998, Lucien Bouchard assured English-speaking Quebecers that their institutions, rights and way of life would be protected in an independent Quebec. Bouchard famously said that, “When you go to a hospital and you’re in pain, you may need a blood test; but you certainly don’t need a language test.”

But before Bouchard, René Lévesque had drawn the boundaries of the national debate in a far more explicit manner.

It was in March 1980, two months before the first referendum, during an address to representatives of the English-speaking community. The opening words left little doubt as to Lévesque’s intentions: “Dear Fellow Quebecers.”

This was not mere politeness. In his speech delivered in English, Lévesque sought to clear the air once and for all by addressing what “Québécois” or its English equivalent “Quebecer” meant in the eyes of his party’s members.

“I would like to try to get to the bottom of this rather tired question about who—in our view, supposedly—is entitled to call himself or herself a Quebecer. This very artificial, but also very insistent uncertainty even lies at the bottom of some concerns that have been voiced in several quarters that we would not consider the Anglophone vote valid than the referendum results come in. This is a sort of maximum variation of the notion that has been promoted and particularly in opposition quarters for over three years, according to which, for us, to be a Quebecer, one must be a French Canadian and even also a Catholic, whether practising or not. So, let’s come to grips, if possible, once and for all, with this business of who is a Québécois or a Quebecer.”

“‘Quebecer’ is a name that, to us, unites all those who were born or who live in Québec and it links together their many language, ethnic, cultural, religious, geographic and other differences. It is the mark of belonging to a people and to a land and the use of the word or its French equivalent ‘Québécois’ is in no way the exclusive property of one group and much less of one party.

(…)

Today, the word Quebecer is recognized and whether the term is used in English or in French, Quebecers in English may do things that are more or less intelligent or palatable and Québécois in French may act brilliantly or stupidly, but in no case could their title to their Québec identity possibly be challenged. I hope that’s clear!”

As a reminder, Lévesque was not keen on the name “Parti québécois”, because he felt that the politicization of the term might exclude those with other political preferences. Nearly 60 years after the PQ was founded, Lévesque’s most recent political heir demonstrated this when he called on people to ‘vote like a Quebecer’.”

As with the Bloc leader’s comments about federalists, it seems that no one is considering that PSPP might actually mean what he was saying and, if he does, that it is completely bonkers.

For some sovereigntists, English-speaking Quebecers have often been seen more as an obstacle than as fellow citizens exercising their democratic freedoms. Questioning the authenticity of their ‘Quebec-ness’ was a convenient way of pushing them aside and considering only the ‘real’ Quebecers. Without the “English,” Quebec would already be a country, wouldn’t it?

This mindset still exists today, but it has crept into acceptable discourse, or at least a discourse that has been accepted. Recently, commenting on a poll, a former PQ MNA pointed out that the Francophone vote is “the one that counts.” Sovereignist leaders go even further, encouraged by commentators who are increasingly uninhibited, even hateful, towards those who commit the crime of not sharing their vision of the national question.

It is no longer just the Anglophones who are an obstacle; it is all federalists. And, confusing their own political preferences with what they see as an obvious and inevitable conclusion, sovereigntist politicians have come to assert publicly and without any embarrassment that federalists are not Quebecers, do not vote like Quebecers, forgetting that these “non-Quebecers” represent the majority of the electorate whose support they seek.

It marks the emergence of a voice that has always existed amongst the most militant sovereigntists, but which had never reached the top of the movement. It also reflects radicalization—in the first meaning of the word—or, at the very least, a greater intransigence of the movement as a whole.

This shapes and influences the actions and priorities of pro-independence politicians and their advisers. If only 31% of Quebec’s inhabitants are Quebecois, why worry about what the others think?

+++++++

The more a party represents a broad coalition, the more compromises it must make. When Quebec was dominated by two parties—which was the case for almost our entire political history—virtually everyone wishing to engage in public life gravitated towards these two poles. First, it was the Liberals and the Conservatives, then the Union Nationale, and then the Parti Québécois.

The PQ has historically brought together both impatient and less impatient sovereigntists, as well as those further to the right and others very much on the left. The Liberal Party comprised supporters more enthusiastic towards Ottawa and others that saw themselves more as Quebecers than Canadians.

The fragmentation of our political landscape has multiplied the poles of attraction. Nationalist federalists and disillusioned sovereigntists have turned to the CAQ. Left-leaning sovereigntists, as well as supporters of the QLP, have swelled the ranks of Québec solidaire, which is now more of a left-wing party than a sovereigntist one. The right-wing and anti-establishment electorate, and even a somewhat paranoid fringe, who were previously scattered along the federalist-sovereigntist axis, have found a home with Éric Duhaime’s Conservatives.

Each of these five poles is ideologically ‘purer’ than the PQ or the QLP could ever have been when they each defined nearly half of the Quebec political spectrum.

Discussion within these new, narrower camps is easier. Each party increasingly resembles an echo chamber, almost unanimous within its own ranks, but divorced from the far more diverse conversation that animates the whole of Quebec society.

This ideological purity is also appealing because it can now be rewarded at the ballot box if a critical mass is reached, even if that mass falls well short of a majority.

In 1973, with 30% of the vote, the Parti Québécois won six seats. René Lévesque was defeated in his own constituency. Today, with 31% of the vote, the PQ would have a good chance of forming a majority government.

Why try to win over voters by making compromises if ideological purity is enough? Why adopt a moderate stance if accusatory rhetoric, bordering on paranoia and insults, manages to mobilize a sufficient base?

It’s much simpler. And too bad for the others.

Politicians of all stripes are often so convinced they are right that they can no longer see a legitimate point of view in their opponents. Being a federalist doesn’t necessarily mean you think everything that comes out of Ottawa is brilliant. For most of us, even if the federal government sometimes makes us roll our eyes, it just means that, at the moment, we generally feel we’re better off with Canada than without it.

Outside the political bubble, our day-to-day relationships—with colleagues, friends, family, even as a couple—aren’t determined by the national question. Some are federalists. Some are sovereigntists. Others are somewhere in between. All of this can change. It’s part of who we are. Like many Quebecers, I voted ‘Yes’ in 1995, and I’d vote ‘No’ today.

Daniel Johnson senior used to say that “every Quebecer is a separatist for at least an hour a day.” That sums up the general feeling quite well.

The new sovereigntist discourse sees things in black and white — or rather, in blue and red. Federalists are colonized, or even traitors. At best, they are being manipulated and are incapable of understanding what is good for them.

This can lead to being content to form a government with a third of the electorate. It can also justify holding a referendum when the other two thirds are not interested.

After all, they aren’t really Quebecers.

-30-

This text is 2,004 words long, which is roughly eight pages of a book. The research, writing and amateur artistry took me two days and left me homesick.

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 text, 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!

The Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec (FMSQ) is angry.

Negotiations with the government have reached a deadlock. The FMSQ is now boycotting the system through which consultation requests are routed to specialists—the infamous CRDS, a centralized and inefficient system whose shortcomings have been detailed by the Auditor General. Some 300 appointments are reported to have already been cancelled, and more than 6,000 available slots were withdrawn.

The FMSQ has denied any responsibility. Santé Québec has called for sanctions to be imposed on doctors at fault in cases where patients’ health is at risk. The FMSQ has served a formal notice on Santé Québec, accusing it of creating a “climate of fear” and criticizing it for tactics “amounting to intimidation” and for “illegal reprisals bordering on bad faith.”

In short, things could not be better.

As with every round of negotiations with doctors, a medical federation insists that it’s all about access to care. But as usual, it always comes down to the money. The FMSQ was asking for a 17% pay rise. Québec is offering 11% over five years. The gap amounts to several hundred million.

Even in the FMSQ’s ivory tower, someone realized that a 17% increase was indefensible. Demands were scaled back to 14.5%, which is what GPs secured (following the recent debacle of Bill 2, which led to the Health Minister’s resignation and the Premier telling blatant lies).

The political and media skirmish between the government and the FMSQ is less interesting than the bigger picture. Once the ruling party and an interest group are at odds, the outcome is generally decided by leverage. Usually, this favours the doctors’ federations.

In this sense, doctors are no different from other union members, except for the figures, which are bigger. Quite bigger.

According to the RAMQ, doctors’ salaries cost $8.7 billion in 2024–2025. Of this, about $5.1 billion went to the 11,500 medical specialists who billed the government. If doctors were a ministry in the government of Quebec, it would be the fourth largest, behind Health, Education and Higher Education (universities). And ahead of Employment, Family, Municipal Affairs, Transport and the Economy.

Which brings us to the individual remuneration of a specialist doctor.

In 2024, in Quebec, specialist doctors received an average of $445,611, again according to RAMQ data. That’s not even for working full-time. According to a recent HEC study, the average full-time equivalent remuneration for a Quebec specialist doctor was $548,000 (in 2022).

The FMSQ disputes these figures, arguing that it is only $460,000. Cry me a river.

In some cases, practice and equipment costs must also be deducted from gross earnings. For radiologists, this can be particularly costly, at around $200,000 a year. But as the average radiologist earns $920,104, we won’t worry too much about them. And medical specialists working in hospitals (about three quarters of them) have no office costs.

Furthermore, in Quebec (and Canada), doctors can incorporate their practices. This allows them to pay taxes at the much lower corporate rate.

For example, an employee earning $500,000 a year would, in theory, pay an effective tax rate of around 47%, or approximately $235,000. For companies, the maximum tax rate is 26.5%, and can be as low as 12% on the first $500,000. Medical associations have already published material showing how their members can save money by incorporating their practice. (See “Optimisation de la rémunération” here, page 14.) There are even firms that specialize in tax planning for doctors. In short, all sorts of strategies are available for doctors to pay significantly less taxes.

But let’s go back to the remuneration of specialists, and take a moment to look at the following table.

As previously mentioned, a typical specialist doctor in Quebec earned $446,000 in 2024.

(Number crunchers will note that the median—the midpoint—is more representative than the average, which can be influenced by outliers. The median was not available, but I was able to determine from the distribution that it lies somewhere between $400,000 and $450,000 a year. So, we’re in the same ballpark.)

For a general surgeon, the average gross revenue is $500,000. For a cardiologist, it is $557,000. For an ophthalmologist, it is $715,000, or around $600,000 after expenses. And for a radiologist, around $700,000 after expenses. On average. In Quebec, hundreds of specialist doctors earn over a million a year. In 2024, there were 377 of them, twice as many as ten years earlier. Around ten earned over two million.

Why must it keep going up with every round of negotiations? In the name of what principle?

Specialist doctors in Quebec—like those in the rest of the country—are already among the highest-paid in the world, as demonstrated by a study by the Institut du Québec published a few years ago.

Countries such as France, Finland, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Norway manage to have healthcare systems that function better than ours—or, at the very least, are less dysfunctional—whilst paying their doctors half as much as we do. (In Europe, most doctors working in hospitals are employees.)

Quebec doctors were granted significant pay rises some twenty years ago, with the promise that this would encourage them to work more, thereby improving access to the healthcare system.

The opposite happened. The average number of procedures billed and days worked by a single doctor fell as many of them chose to buy themselves time, which makes sense when you’re already earning a small fortune. Yes, many specialist doctors still work very hard. But, on average and at the margin, they work slightly less than before. Pay rises, by discouraging work, have reduced access to care in Quebec.

Certain specialties are exceptions and have seen an increase in the volume of procedures due to technological advances (performing cataract surgery or interpreting imaging results takes less time than it used to). In any industry, a productivity increase would have reduced expenditure: for the same cost, one can produce more and sell a good or service at a lower price. It is through this economic mechanism that our standard of living has risen dramatically over the past 100 years. In healthcare in Quebec, the opposite has occurred, and the incomes of radiologists and ophthalmologists have skyrocketed.

One might add that specialties dominated by women—those that often require more time with patients—have benefited less from pay rises. No one is going to feel sorry for psychiatrists and geriatricians, who earn a very good living, but there is a major problem if incentives lead to these specialties being underpaid compared to others (or are the others overpaid?).

It is also telling that the lowest-paid specialty is public and community health. Good public health policies can have a significant multiplier effect on an entire population. (The reverse is also true; just remember how the first few months of the pandemic were managed in Quebec.) But in Quebec, prevention isn’t worth much. It is illness that is insured, not health. We say “assurance maladie,” and not “assurance santé.”

Such inconsistencies are possible because, strangely enough, the government has no say in the remuneration of individual specialties: the many associations of medical specialists, of which there are about three dozens, sort this out amongst themselves. Looking at the chart, one gets an idea of which groups carry the most weight. (For the record, Gaétan Barrette, a former Health minister in Quebec who was president of the FMSQ when the major “catch-up” in remuneration took place, is a radiologist by training.)

The solution is obviously not to give $600,000 or $700,000 to every medical specialist.

Quebec and Canada have chosen to have few doctors, but to pay them more than almost anywhere in the world. And Quebec and Canada remain among the places in the developed world with the fewest doctors per capita.

This is a resounding failure of public policy.

In recent years, Quebec’s government has (finally!) significantly increased the number of medical school places, but we won’t see the effects of this for at least a decade, especially as many doctors are due to retire soon. A quarter of Quebec doctors are over 60. Among cardiac and thoracic surgeons, who operate on the heart as well as cancers, the average age is 57.

Sooner or later, the government will end up giving in, as it always does, and hundreds of millions will be added to specialists’ pay, just as they were for GPs, with no benefit to patients. A rise of “only” 11 per cent in specialists’ pay would result in additional expenditure of around $600 million over the next five years.

As a comparison, in the latest budget, the government announced that $209 million would be allocated over the next three years to build 1,000 affordable homes.

What does Quebec need most in 2026? An additional 3,000 affordable homes, or to overpay certain medical specialties even more, without this making any difference to access to care?

Could it be that we are not putting the money in the right place?

+++++++

In the most recent negotiations, public sector employees secured a minimum of 17% over five years, rising to 20% depending on inflation. Teachers secured up to 24.5%. Construction workers received 22% over four years. Quebec police officers received 26 to 33% over six years, which sets the tone for Montreal, where the collective agreement expires this year. In short, everyone who can is pulling the blanket over to their side.

It must be said that the (bad) example comes from the top. In 2023, members of Quebec’s National Assembly voted themselves a 30% pay rise, even though they were already the highest-paid MLAs in the country, in addition to enjoying a more than generous pension scheme (MNAs from the Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire voted against it). Quebec’s MNAs received another pay rise last year, and they will receive another this year and next. In total, over five years, their salaries will have increased by 51%. I doubt that many Quebecers feel that they are better governed.

In some cases, it is deserved: Quebec’s nurses and teachers were among the lowest paid in the country. But what they were asking for above all was recognition, stability, support and slightly more predictable working hours or assignments. They were given none of that, which means the problems causing up to a quarter of young teachers and nurses to quit in the first years of their careers are still there.

In any case, we will not solve Quebec’s structural labour shortage through a bidding war on all sides.

The demands of the Specialist Doctors’ union are an example of union logic taken to the point of absurdity: everyone else is getting pay rises, so we want ours too, whatever the starting point is.

A lot of doctors feel uneasy about this, but few dare to speak out to tell their federation—and their colleagues—that perhaps a little soul-searching is needed regarding pay rises when the walls of Quebec’s hospitals are literally held together with pins and patients are dying on waiting lists.

A few years ago, a group representing several hundred family doctors, the Regroupement des omnipraticiens pour une médecine engagée (ROME), called on the government to take the money earmarked for pay rises and reinvest it in the healthcare system.

Do you know of any other sector where a professional association has campaigned against pay rises for its own members?

Dr. Simon-Pierre Landry, who was president of ROME, spoke of a “disconnect” between the leaders of medical federations and the majority of doctors, the former being caught up in a constant drive for pay rises, whilst the latter are generally more interested in improving working conditions and the healthcare network.

Dr. Landry felt that the situation had become awkward in the presence of patients and other professionals within the healthcare system. “If nothing is done, we believe we are heading towards a social and political crisis.” We are already well on the way there.

It is time for other doctors to stand up and bring their unions back down to earth.

-30-

This text is 2,214 words long, which is roughly nine pages of a book. The research, writing and creating the tables took me just over two days and left me feeling like I needed to see a doctor.

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living, and do my best to Quebecsplain in English in this space. I also enjoy making numbers talk and putting together charts that you won’t see anywhere else.

If you enjoyed reading this text and if it did not get you sick, 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!

If you’re reading this and you’re living in Quebec, I’m about to ruin your day. You’ve been warned.

It’s for your own good—for ours, actually, and for our children’s—because we need to wake up. Fast.

(Cet article est disponible en français ici.)

Some people are afraid of spiders. Others are afraid of dogs, cats, mice, or clowns. Still others are afraid of journalists (usually politicians).

As for me, I’m mostly afraid of certain numbers: 2 and 1. As in the expression: 2 Quebecers of working age for every 1 Quebecer aged 65 and over. You have no idea how frightening this seemingly harmless statistic can be, because it gives a pretty clear picture of what lies ahead. Unfortunately.

In economics, we talk about the “demographic dividend” when a society has more young people than older people. To put it very simply—and at the risk of offending my mother and my in-laws—young people bring in money, and older people cost a lot.

The demographic dividend paid off for the baby boom generation, in Quebec and elsewhere. Everyone started having children during a period of unprecedented economic prosperity, just as Western governments came to the conclusion, around the same time, that the state had a certain responsibility for its population.

We built everything—from our roads to our hospitals, our civil service, and our social programs—and above all, our education and healthcare systems as we know them today. We also established certain standards and ways of viewing work and retirement.

All of this worked very well for a while, and most of us couldn’t imagine it ever ending. A few economists and demographers tried to warn us, but who wants to be told in the middle of a party that it might be time to start clearing the table?

A demographic “boom” always comes to an end—an end that’s very easy to spot and whose consequences are just as easy to predict. In Quebec’s case, the demographic dividend stopped paying off a long time ago. A growing demographic debt continues to mount, even if many still struggle to grasp it.

Our politicians don’t talk about it much. No one wants to campaign by saying things are going to get really bad, that major efforts—even sacrifices—will be necessary, and that it will hurt even more if we do nothing about it.

While we raise scarecrows about the imaginary threat posed by gender-neutral washrooms or largely French-speaking immigrants who help support our public services, we ignore the monster that is about to devour us all—sovereigntists or federalists, Francophones, Anglophones, and allophones, immigrants or native-born, left and right, woke and anti-woke.

Fifty years ago, there were seven “active” Quebecers of working age for every Quebecer aged 65 and over. Twenty-five years ago, it was 5 to 1. Fifteen years ago, 4 to 1. Five years ago, 3 to 1.

Today, the ratio is 2.6 to 1. In five years—which, in terms of public policy, is practically tomorrow morning—that ratio will be just over 2 to 1. It will stabilize then, but we’ll still hover around 2 “active” people per retired Quebecer—or, at the very least, generally “less active” for a few decades.

Here’s what that looks like. (You can check the raw data here.)

Quebec hospitals have been struggling for a while and it’s getting worse. There’s also a shortage of skilled workers just about everywhere. Imagine what it will be when our ratio of working-age people to seniors drops from 2.6 to 2.2 in five years. While this doesn’t seem like much, it is a huge gap. All things being equal, it is as if, with a wave of a magic wand, we were to remove 600,000 Quebecers from the workforce today (in reality, it is the result of people entering the potential workforce when they turn 20, and other people leaving when they then turn 65, but the effect is the same).

What’s more, Quebecers tend to retire relatively early, which extends the number of years during which an individual uses all kinds of services without contributing to their provision by providing labour. And I’m not even talking about the impact on public finances. Just the workforce.

They say that economists and meteorologists are the only two professions where people are paid to be wrong, but demographics are entirely predictable and can be measured decades in advance.

People have done so, but we didn’t listen to them, and Quebec’s successive governments—of all political stripes—have let us slowly slide down the slope toward the demographic precipice due to a lack of vision, courage, or competence.

That doesn’t mean we absolutely had to have more children or increase immigration—neither would have hurt, though that’s easier said than done—but we still should have acknowledged the reality, set the right priorities, and adjusted our public policies accordingly.

We should have maintained, built, planned, innovated, increased our productivity, and adopted best practices from here and elsewhere. But, aside from raising contributions to the Quebec Pension Plan, we have done almost nothing. In Quebec, a public policy that we might have hoped would be transformative is too often limited to a tax, a check, a subsidy, or even a mere wish.

The result is that today, our society has one foot on the edge of the precipice. The other is over it.

After forty or fifty years of neglect, the needs have never been greater for our schools, our hospitals, our roads, our bridges, and our entire public infrastructure. Despite massive spending, our fundamental infrastructure is deteriorating faster than we can repair it. That doesn’t stop some politicians from promising pharaonic tunnels under the St. Lawrence River.

In addition to building the future, we must also preserve the present. Educate, care for, and protect our children, our seniors, and our most vulnerable. Somewhat embarrassingly for a society that claims to be supportive and egalitarian, we’re already failing at this. In the coming years, fewer of us will be supporting the social safety net, yet that same net will have to support a greater number of us. Our collective solidarity will be put to the test like never before. It has already begun.

And fasten your tuque, as Québécois say (“Attachez vos tuques”), because this is far from over. We’re not talking about a “grey” storm or wave, but a demographic winter that will stretch over several decades: on the current trajectory, Quebec is facing a labour shortage for the next 30 to 40 years. At a minimum. Which just goes to show that, even if our institutions seem to have already reached their limits, that doesn’t mean we can’t sink even deeper.

It’s unpleasant to hear, and even today, it’s tempting to ignore it. But that doesn’t change the grim reality.

The same challenges exist elsewhere. But conditions and choices specific to Quebec could make things more difficult here. Consider, for example, the fact that we’ve decided to have fewer doctors than almost anywhere else in the Western world, or all the issues surrounding immigration.

The coming conditions will be especially difficult for our hospitals, those who use them, and those—especially women, in fact—who support them. But it is also the entire functioning of our society that is threatened: schools, construction, the dentist, or the local mechanic. There will be a shortage of everything. The most privileged will fare a little better, which will make the problem worse for everyone else, as we’re already seeing in healthcare, and as we’ll see with everything else.

Last, how are we going to rebuild everything that’s falling into ruin if there are fewer hands to hold the shovels and hammers? In the Montreal Canadiens’ locker room, one can be inspired by a moving message from those who came before: “To you from failing hands we throw the torch be yours to hold it high.”

In Quebec, there have been more torch passers than torch takers for quite some time now.

Again, all of this was entirely predictable, but our public decision-makers generally refused did not want to look beyond the next election or their obsessions, and our interest groups decided to pull the blanket as far as possible toward their side, regardless of the consequences. Corporate interests and special interests have taken over; solidarity and the public interest have been pushed aside.

Today, we’re preparing to kick out immigrants who are largely French-speaking and integrated, and who help us keep it all afloat. And, no, an immigrant worker in his prime doesn’t consume as many services as he produces. He’s just helping us out.

The final outcome won’t make anyone happy, except perhaps those responsible for the policies that led us here, safely entrenched behind their denial and—let’s face it—the comfortable situation, privileges, and pensions guaranteed by their years in power. In a few years, we’ll be holding state funerals for those who got us into this mess.

While some of our current elected officials wallow in the populist gutter—either by bandying about all sorts of bogus statistics on immigration or by trying to make us believe that the French language is going to disappear—we keep burying our face in the sand in the face of the most serious public policy challenge Quebec has ever faced.

Did you vote for this?

-30-

This text is 1,621 words long, which is about seven pages of a book. The research, writing, data processing, and attempt at artistry in Excel took me two days and aged me by two years.

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living, and do my best to Quebecsplain in English in this space. I also enjoy making numbers talk and putting together charts that you won’t see anywhere else.

If you enjoyed reading this text and if it did not get you too down, 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.

I want to subscribe!

This week’s media bombshell: according to a Léger poll, the Quebec Liberal Party has caught up with the Parti Québécois in voting intentions.

So, depending on your favourite media outlet and your favourite body part, the Péquistes and the Liberals are now either neck and neck or elbow to elbow.

I will go even further, at the risk of making some political analysts’ brains explode: given the margin of error, it is possible that the QLP may even have surpassed the PQ due to the typical 3% margin of error for a poll with such a sample size (1,041 respondents).

In other words, the QLP may be sitting at 33% and the PQ at 28%. Break out the champagne! Or the tissues! Stop the presses!

Or maybe the QLP is at 27% and the PQ at 34%. Put away the champagne and get the tissues! And vice versa! And restart the presses!

But maybe it’s neither one nor the other.

The margin of error is less than 3% most of the time, but pollsters can be spectacularly wrong because polling remains an imprecise science (see, for example, the Orange Wave of 2011 or the collapse of the PLQ vote in 2018).

So, maybe the PQ is at 40%. Take cover!

+++++++

All kidding aside, statistically speaking, it’s entirely possible that the QLP has caught up with the PQ in voting intentions. Political polls are generally reliable, and Léger’s polls are usually spot on. So, if an election was held tomorrow, the result would probably be as predicted.

Statistically, that’s true. But democratically? Not even close. For two reasons.

The first reason is that the election is not tomorrow, but seven months from now. Robert Bourassa liked to say that six months is an eternity in politics, as Pierre Poilievre recently learned the hard way. (Which also means that seven months is 1.166666 eternities, with an infinite row of sixes, for those who like really precise numbers.)

So, everything can still change several times one way or the other. (Does anybody remember the “Coderre effect”? Or Pablo Rodriguez?)

All of this is conjecture and speculation, which obscures a fundamental issue, leading us to the second reason: even if the QLP and the PQ were neck and neck, nose to nose, belly button to belly button, or toe to toe from a statistical point of view, the race isn’t even close if we look at what that would mean in terms of the number of seats in Quebec’s Assemblée nationale.

Because, despite a slim advance that’s within the margin of error, the Parti Québécois would still win about 20 more seats than the Liberals. The PQ would thus probably get a majority of seats in the Salon rouge, while the QLP will have to make do with being the official opposition for the next four years. This is quite clear when we look beyond the vote and consider the projected number of elected MNAs.

The Léger poll made for some great headlines, but the race isn’t even close. If elections were held tomorrow, the PQ, with less than a third of the vote, would probably elect more members than all the other parties combined. It’s not neck and neck; it’s one side with its nose above the fray and its elbow firmly planted in the ribs of the others.

It is sometimes said that democracy is the tyranny of the majority. In Quebec, we have entered a new political era: the tyranny of the minority.

And, amid the background noise of political pundits who keep track of the score like all of this was a game, we are losing sight of a major issue, namely the slow atomization of our democracy: in Quebec, a political party can form a “majority” government with a third of the vote, or even less.

The 31% of the vote that the PQ received could give it 63 seats. Since the National Assembly has 125 seats, the PQ would have exactly the minimum number of seats needed to control the legislature for four years and, consequently, all legislative and governmental action.

Even though only 31% of Quebecers would have voted for it.

If we increase the PQ vote to 33% and decrease the QLP vote to 27%, as allowed by Philippe Fournier’s election simulator on the Qc125.com website, the PQ majority strengthens to a very comfortable 70 seats.

Can you think of many situations in life where it is possible to have a “majority” with a third of the votes?

In Quebec politics, it is.

+++++++

This has been going on for some time now. But it’s getting worse.

The PQ has been in “majority territory” for a little over a year. But the PQ has never polled over 38%, staying mostly between 31% and 35%.

Never in Quebec’s political history has a government obtained a parliamentary majority with such low support from the electorate.

As of now, the record for the smallest majority belongs to the CAQ. In 2018, the party founded by François Legault won 74 seats with only 37.4% of the vote. Perhaps tellingly, the previous record belonged to Maurice Duplessis, whom Legault has claimed as an inspiration. In the 1944 election, the Union nationale du “Cheuf” won a majority with 38% of the vote.

In 1944, the division of the vote between three parties allowed for this electoral anomaly. The same phenomenon repeated itself in 2018 to favour the CAQ, but this time, four parties were politically viable. Today, five parties can hope to win at least 10% of the vote, or close to it: the Parti Québécois, the Quebec Liberal Party, the Conservative Party of Quebec, the Coalition Avenir Québec, and Québec solidaire.

Every time the political pie is divided further, the threshold required to form a majority government decreases.

This division of the vote among five viable electoral parties is unprecedented in Quebec’s history. Our voting system, which dates back to a time when there were only two political currents—one conservative, the other progressive—cannot properly digest five parties.

In Canada, a similar scenario occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Jean Chrétien’s Liberals took advantage of this to win three consecutive “majorities” with 40% of the vote or slightly less, which helped sow in Western Canada the seeds of resentment that are being reaped today.

But in Quebec, this is more recent. The problem is also exacerbated by the fact that the Parti Québécois could use this “majority” to trigger a referendum on sovereignty, which is not desired by the population, either in form or substance.

And as the CAQ prepares to use its legislative steamroller to pass a series of laws whose democratic foundations are questionable, the shortcomings of an electoral system that seeks, above all, to manufacture majorities, whether real or artificial, are staring us in the face.

François Legault should know. In 2012, the CAQ finished only five points behind the PQ and four points behind the Liberals, but with 35 and 31 fewer seats. Small consolation, the PQ had formed a minority government and the CAQ held the balance of power.

In 2014, Legault was again in the front row to witness the problems with our voting system. Although he had increased his party’s representation from 19 to 22 MNAs, the Liberal Party formed a “majority” government with only 41.5% of the vote.

That was too much for him. In the spring of 2018, François Legault made a formal commitment to reform our voting system, with the Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire. (And Quebec’s Green Party, if you’re wondering who is the guy on the right.)

It is worth quoting some of the words spoken by François Legault at that time:

“So, I am happy today to reiterate my commitment. If we are elected on October 1, a CAQ government will introduce a bill in the first year of its term, and a CAQ government will set in motion a reform of the voting system to be adopted during its first term.

So, I think the current system has served us well, but it is increasingly showing its limitations. Citizens feel that their vote counts less and less. The status quo is fuelling cynicism in Quebec. Mixed proportional representation is a system that has proven itself in several countries around the world and will give more weight to each vote. It is a good compromise for our regions, it is a good compromise for our democracy, it is a good compromise for Quebec. That is why I am pleased that it is part of the program and priorities of a potential CAQ government.

In closing, I would like to highlight the exceptional work of the Mouvement Démocratie nouvelle. You can count on us.”

The joint press briefing by the opposition parties is available here if you want to increase your level of cynicism.

In the fall of 2019, the CAQ kept its promise and tabled its electoral reform bill. The good intentions did not go any further.

By the end of 2021, two years and a pandemic later, Legault was seeing himself as some kind of Father of the Nation—or so he seemed to believe. He was enjoying this a lot. The man who had pledged to be a transformational was one-term Premier was now thinking about a second term. (And, eventually, a third. But polls changed his mind.)

With less than a year to go before the election, the Nouveau Cheuf realized that reforming the voting system could deprive his party of an artificial but valuable majority. Being foremost a pragmatic, Legault threw the electoral reform bill into the dustbin of the National Assembly.

During the 2022 campaign, when asked about his broken promise, Legault explained—without laughing—that he had to uphold his commitment of not keeping his promise to change the voting system.

It takes a certain stature to be willing to give up power if that power is not in line with the will of the electorate. François Legault has shown us time and again that he does not have that stature, but that didn’t stop him from being re-elected by a “majority” in 2022 (with 41% of the vote…) or the CAQ from governing uninterrupted for eight years.

And that is what the CAQ’s thinking heads have always been primarily interested in. Not in making an honest effort to act in accordance with the expectations, objectives, or promises made to Quebecers, but taking advantage of every moment in power to carry out their ideological agenda, with as few constraints as possible. Other governments have done this before them. But the CAQ has been more effective and relentless.

What goes around comes around. If elections were held today, the CAQ would be wiped off the Quebec political landscape: with 14% of the vote, it would not win a single seat. After having won 90 seats in 2022, the CAQ would cease to exist.

Next October, we could witness the biggest political meltdown in Quebec’s history.

The irony is that if Legault had implemented a mixed proportional voting system, as he had promised, his party would be assured of keeping 15 to 20 seats.

+++++++

The last time a party obtained a parliamentary majority after winning a majority of the vote was in 1985, with Robert Bourassa 2.0. Guy Lafleur had retired from hockey for the first time. He would return three years later.

The time before that was in 1973, with Bourassa 1.0. Lafleur was starting his third season in the NHL. He had scored 55 points the year before, and people were wondering if he would become the player everyone hoped he would be.

Then we go back to 1962 and Jean Lesage. Lafleur was 11 years old and made heads turn with his scoring prowess at the Quebec City Pee-Wee Tournament.

Over the past 60 years, Quebec has held 16 general elections. That has given us 14 majority governments and two minority governments.

Of the 14 majority governments elected since 1966, only two have received the support of at least 50% of Quebecers: Robert Bourassa in 1973, and again in 1985. (Bourassa also came very close in 1989.)

All other times, the “majority” was only in name: the party in power had a majority of seats in the National Assembly, but only a minority of Quebecers had voted for it.

René Lévesque’s iconic victory in 1976? 41.4%.

At the time, it was the third-smallest “majority” in history. In other words, it was an anomaly, due to the resurgence of the Union Nationale: under normal circumstances, a party that obtained 41% of the vote formed the official opposition.

Jacques Parizeau’s big comeback in 1994? 44.8%.

Jean Charest’s “two hands on the wheel”? 42.1%.

Philippe Couillard’s “vraies affaires” (straight goods) of 2014? 41.5%.

François Legault’s historic victory in 2018, which ended 50 years of QLP-PQ duopoly? 37.4%.

Each time, a majority of Quebecers lost their elections. That’s not healthy, democracy-wise.

Sometimes it was downright ridiculous. In 1998, Lucien Bouchard’s Parti Québécois won 42.9% of the vote and formed a majority government. Jean Charest’s Liberals, who had won the election night with 43.6% of the vote, found themselves in the opposition.

Daniel Johnson had done the same thing to Jean Lesage in 1966. And Maurice Duplessis to Adélard Godbout in 1944. (Some kind of Quiet Revolution could have started 15 years earlier…)

The results in terms of public policy were not always bad. In hindsight, pretty much everyone recognizes the competence of the first Lévesque government. But in a democracy, the process also counts.

And, in the long run, the process always ends up influencing the results. The current government has understood that it can do whatever it wants until it is voted out of power. Its legislative action is beginning to be clearly abusive if one believes in the principle of a parliamentary democracy existing within a system of checks and balances.

The chart below illustrates quite clearly when the democratic fracture happened in Quebec. Before 1966, in 27 general elections, the party that formed the government won more than 50% of the vote 22 times. The other five occasions included four majority governments and one minority government. It wasn’t perfect, but most of the time, it worked.

In 1966, something broke down. There have been 16 elections since then, which have produced 14 majority governments, as I mentioned earlier. And these “majorities” have reflected a majority of the votes only twice.

(Note: the scale of the graph starts at 30%, not zero. The colours of the bars correspond to those of the parties. You can click to enlarge.)

This decline in Quebec’s representative democracy has been going on for decades, so we didn’t really notice what was happening as we got used to it, a bit like a lobster falling asleep before the water starts boiling. (Contrary to popular belief, frogs jump out when the water gets too hot. So, Quebecers aren’t really frogs after all.)

Today, a political party can hope to hold the levers of power for four years as long as it manages to get the support of 30 to 35% of voters. Instead of rallying a large majority around a truly unifying project (such as the survival of a society in the face of our immense demographic challenges), all one ambitious politician has to do is make enough people angry about a polarizing issue by appealing to their resentment.

It’s easier to divide than to unite. It’s also more tempting and more profitable, politically speaking.

No wonder immigrants are being targeted. The CAQ is more populist than previous governments. And today’s PQ is considerably more populist than the PQ of Bouchard, Parizeau, and Lévesque. The trend is clear. The issues at stake, in terms of demographics, the sustainability of our public services, and our society’s ability to function, are existential. But the public debate is dominated by scaremongering that calls for increasingly divisive and simplistic solutions because that remains the easiest way to gain power.

Imagine you are going on a trip, a group of ten in a minibus. As soon as four passengers agree, the doors are locked, and they decide for the other passengers.

That has been the state of our democracy for the past 30 years.

Next time, the doors could be locked as soon as three passengers agree. The seven other passengers will just have to buckle up for the next four years.

Did you vote for that?

Perhaps we have reached the point where we need to demand an upgrade of our democratic machinery.

-30-

This text is 2,799 words long, or about 12 pages of a book. The research, writing, and designing of the charts took me about two days.

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living, and do my best to Quebecsplain in English in this space. I also enjoy making numbers talk and putting together charts that you won’t see anywhere else.

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It may look like another clickbait headline. It’s more than that. A full-scale attack on the rights and freedoms of Quebecers, the power of the courts, and the ability of civil society organizations to effectively counterbalance the power of the ruling party is underway.

This has been going on for years and has just escalated. At first, it was “them” who were targeted. So it was rather popular. But now it’s “us.” And the not-so-subtle implication of the whole maneuver is that Quebecers who disagree are traitors.

It started with Bill 21. A majority of Quebecers agreed. But they may have a different idea about the method used, everything that followed, and what is coming.

Go get some coffee, and let’s dive in together.

Phase 1: Bill 21

In 2019, when it passed Bill 21 on secularism (or laïcité, as we say here), the CAQ exempted it from charter review.

Throughout the debate, which focused almost exclusively on “veiled” women—who, in fact, wear headscarves and are almost never the ones doing the proselytizing—, three important things were overlooked, which go beyond the idea of secularism.

First, most Quebecers do not realize that not only the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was put aside, but Quebec’s own Charter of Rights and Freedoms too. The Canadian Charter was imposed on Quebec through the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution, so there’s some rationale for the government using the notwithstanding clause when a Quebec law could be struck down by the Canadian Charter.

But the Quebec Charter of Rights protects essentially the same rights and it even has a larger scope (it also applies to interactions between private individuals and businesses). It was, until now, the law that came closest to a Quebec Constitution, and had been a source of pride under Robert Bourassa, René Lévesque, and all other premiers before François Legault. The CAQ decided that Quebec’s Charter of Rights had to be moved out of the way.

Second, the CAQ applied the notwithstanding clause preventively, rather than after a legal challenge to the law, as was previously the case. They did not want Bill 21 to be tested. (One wonders why).

Third, to prevent its conception of state secularism from being challenged, the CAQ used a legislative bazooka, rendering sections 1 to 38 of the Quebec Charter inapplicable to Bill 21.

This is no small matter. These articles protect, notably, the right to life, and to personal security, inviolability and freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, the right to the safeguard of their dignity, honour and reputation, to respect for their private life, to the peaceful enjoyment and free disposition of his property, to non-disclosure of confidential information, to full and equal recognition and exercise of his human rights and freedoms, without distinction, exclusion or preference based on race, colour, sex, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, sexual orientation, civil status, age except as provided by law, religion, political convictions, language, ethnic or national origin, social condition, a handicap or the use of any means to palliate a handicap, of petition to the National Assembly for the redress of grievances, to be a candidate and to vote at an election, to a full and equal, public and fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, to not be subjected to unreasonable search or seizure, when arrested or detained, to be treated with humanity and with the respect due to the human person, to be promptly informed, in a language he understands, of the grounds of his arrest or detention, to be promptly informed of the specific offence with which he is charged and be brought promptly before the competent tribunal or released, to be tried within a reasonable time, presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law, to be represented by an advocate or to be assisted by one before any tribunal, to a full and complete defense, etc.

Was it really necessary to suspend all these rights and freedoms as a preventive measure?

No Quebec government had ever acted in this way, including the Parti Québécois in 1977, when it passed Bill 101. René Lévesque, like the politicians of his time, believed in and understood the importance of respecting fundamental rights.

Lévesque and others remembered how, in the past, the rights of French Canadians, and later Quebecers, had been trampled upon. In short, letting the Quebec Charter having the last word was as much a matter of basic justice as it was of consistency.

But the CAQ had found its method, and it would not hesitate to use it again.

Phase 2: Bill 96

The attack on Quebecers’ rights and freedoms continued with Bill 96, whose full name is An Act respecting French, the official and common language of Québec. With a title like that, who could be against it?

But Bill 96 has little to do with Bill 101. While the latter aimed to make French the common public language in Quebec, notably by regulating business signage and making French school attendance mandatory for the children of immigrants, Bill 96 includes several nitpicky and vexatious measures that seem less aimed at preserving French as the common language than at annoying English-speaking Quebecers or recent immigrants, regardless of their basic rights or simple decency.

For example, the Quebec government prohibits civil servants from communicating with immigrants in any language other than French after they have spent six months in Quebec. Six months to be comfortable enough to discuss tax returns or health insurance registration in French? Really?

It is understandable not to require all Quebec civil servants to speak English or a third language, but many do already. And it’s just mean to prevent a government representative from being accommodating to a newcomer if they are able to do so. The children of immigrants attend French schools. Can we give their parents a break while they learn a new homeland and its rules?

Another example of the vindictiveness of Bill 96 is the prohibition of requiring English language knowledge for judges sitting in English-speaking parts of Quebec.

No English speaker will learn French because of this—although nearly 70% of Quebec anglos already speak French—but it will complicate access to a fair trial for thousands of Quebecers. I could introduce you to some (very sovereigntist) judges who could explain it better than I can, but the issue can be summed up as follows: would you want to be judged in another language than your own? I know I wouldn’t, and I’m bilingual. But even then, I’m aware than when I’m having a conversation in English, I may be missing some nuances, of falling short of explaining them. I’m also a lot more prone to making mistakes. That may be problematic when being on trial. In short, Bill 96 almost certainly violates a fundamental right, but, as with Bill 21, the government preventively suspended sections 1 to 38 of the Quebec Charter. Problem solved.

In the wake of Bill 96, the Ministry of Health also issued a directive (later amended) stating that English-speaking Quebecers who wanted to receive care in their language had to provide a certificate proving that they were eligible to attend English school. This is a far cry from Lucien Bouchard, who reassured English-speaking Quebecers by telling them that, “When you go to the hospital and you’re in pain, you may need a blood test, but you certainly don’t need a language test.”

In short, both Bill 21 and Bill 96 are assertive identity policies that a Parti Québécois led by Lévesque, Parizeau, or Bouchard would never have considered, accompanied by a desire and measures aimed at silencing those who might oppose the dictates of the ruling party. And now, buckle up, because things are about to get a little more intense.

Phase 3: The Last Legislative Stand

The CAQ is dying, and it knows it. If elections were held today, the CAQ would get 15% of the vote. The most likely scenario is that it would not elect any MNAs. Politically, it has a little over six months to live.

But the CAQ has not said its last word. Despite multiple resignations from its caucus, 79 MNAs still fly the CAQ flag. That’s enough to pass all the bills it wants, but time is running out. And before it is shown the democratic doorway, it will force down our throats its majoritarian, even authoritarian, conception of the exercise of political power, hoping that Quebec will be changed in a lasting way.

I may sound dramatic, but in a few minutes, you will find that I am not exaggerating enough.

In early fall 2025, the CAQ introduced a series of bills that not only limit rights guaranteed by the Quebec Charter, but also make it virtually impossible to challenge the limits imposed on those rights. In other words, in addition to adding a legislative lock on certain rights, the CAQ is throwing the key into the river.

The most notable of last fall’s flurry of bills are Bill 2, on physician remuneration; Bill 3, on union democracy and governance; and Bill 9, on strengthening secularism. All of them have in common the heavy hand of the state and a surprising disregard for the exercise of our fundamental rights. The cornerstone, which projects this invasive and constraining conception of the state onto all the components and counterbalances of Quebec democracy, remains the Québec Constitution Act, 2025, or Bill 1.

It’s worth taking them one by one, without going into too much detail. After all, we are talking about the foundations of Quebec’s parliamentary democracy.

Bill 2: Bringing Doctors Into Line

Bill 2 aimed to reform doctors’ remuneration. While the objective was legitimate, the implementation was so botched that the government backtracked on just about everything substantial in the bill, which led the Premier of Quebec to tell some very big lies in an attempt to save face.

Bill 2 also provided for fines of up to $20,000 per day for individuals, $140,000 per day for representatives of groups of doctors, and $500,000 per day for organizations participating in “concerted actions” that would have had the effect of reducing a doctor’s participation in a professional committee or working group, or even simply encouraging it (see section 131 et seq.). Don’t agree with the law? Better don’t say so.

Even more outrageous, the law established a whole system of task and schedule management for every health care setting where doctors practice, as well as an obligation to report those who did not comply fully (see sections 141 et seq.). Protesters were subject to a 40% reduction in pay for each day of dissent. Are you starting to see a pattern?

Bill 3: Bringing Unions Into Line

Bill 3 aims to improve “transparency, governance, and the democratic process of various workplace associations.” In other words, unions.

At first glance, it’s hard to argue against greater accountability. However, the bill goes further than that, severely limiting the use of union dues to finance advertising campaigns, organizing demonstrations, or appearing in court for matters that do not relate to the usual activities of a union, such as negotiating working conditions.

To be clear, the bill provides that this applies to a legal case concerning “constitutionality or validity of a provision of an Act, a regulation, a government order or a ministerial order” (see section 7 of the bill). Keep the italicized passage in mind.

Public campaigns or legal action would still be possible, but they would be funded by optional dues, the authorization of which would be subject to mechanisms that seem designed to discourage unions from using them.

I would like to take a minute to say that I have never been a fervent union activist and that I am always in favour of improving the democratic process, both in unions and in general. I remain uncomfortable when a government seeks to muzzle important countervailing power, and unions are certainly one such power.

By the government’s own admission, unions use only between 3.5 and 4.5% of their dues for “optional” activities. And historically, what unions gain for their members generally ends up benefiting the general population. Also, union membership has been stagnated for 20 years in Quebec, and would have declined had it not been for recent hiring in schools, hospitals, and the civil service.

So where is the problem? The Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE), a teachers’ union, is challenging Bill 21 in the Supreme Court, in particular the “ease with which parliaments suspend our fundamental rights by making excessive use of derogation clauses.”

The CAQ did not take kindly to this, so it is seeking to cut off funding to unions to discourage the FAE and others from trying again, whether it be Bill 21 or other legislation. (You will see shortly that the CAQ is nothing, if not persistent.)

The Quebec Bar, which is not exactly a bastion of leftists, has come to the same conclusion. According to the Bar, the goal of improving transparency and union democracy in Bill 3 “serves as a pretext for reducing the ability of unions to intervene in political and social debates (…), thereby reducing their importance and impact on civil society and diminishing their influence as a counterweight to the government, despite their essential role in a state governed by the rule of law.”

Bill 9: Bringing Women Who Wear Hijabs Into Line

Bill 9, or the “Act to strengthen secularism,” aims to ban the wearing of religious symbols by employees of early childhood centres, employees of family daycare coordinating offices, employees of subsidized daycare centres and subsidized private schools, and people who provide integration or francization activities to immigrants. So, not just educators. (Which would still have been a bit of overreaching, but less so.)

This follows Bill 94, which extended the ban on wearing religious symbols to all staff at school service centres and those who provide services to them. So, the janitor, the cafeteria worker, the library volunteer, or even the administrative assistant who never sees any students.

We are starting to stray quite a bit from the original objective.

In 2008, in the wake of the “accommodements raisonnables” crisis, Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor – two foremost Quebec intellectuals – produced a report proposing to ban religious symbols for government employees representing the authority and coercive power of the state, namely judges, prosecutors, police officers, and prison guards. It was not based on any evidence, but there was at least some rationale and a very broad consensus supporting it.

Bill 21 added teachers to the list. While I did not agree with it, I was able to recognize a semblance of rationality in it. My view, then as now, is that this was a smokescreen and that the real objective was to target the hijab, which some people wanted to see disappear, even though no one has never demonstrated a link between wearing a hijab and being prone to proselytizing. The recent bills confirm that this was indeed the objective all along.

Today, employees who have nothing to do with teaching are being targeted, as if the mere sight of a sign of religious affiliation was contagious—or dirty. All this in schools, hundreds of which are named after Christian Saints. And, as if admitting that we are witnessing a flagrant and unjustifiable violation of universal and fundamental rights, the application of the Quebec Charter is also suspended, as it was for Bills 21 and 94.

But these are other people’s rights, and many Quebecers may not be concerned. Not for long, because the pièce de résistance is coming. Because it always starts with other people’s rights. Then, eventually, it’s ours.

Bill 1: The Legislative Padlock and the Key In the River

Bill 1, or the Quebec Constitutional Act, 2025, was introduced last fall. It includes the Constitution of Québec, the Act respecting the constitutional autonomy of Québec and the Act respecting the Conseil constitutionnel, in addition to amending other laws and the Constitution Act, 1867, the latter being part of the Constitution of Canada. (It is possible to unilaterally add certain provisions to the Constitution of Canada, and Quebec has done so recently, but I will not go into that here for the purposes of this article.)

The Constitution of Québec formally outlines a certain vision of Quebec society within a legislative framework. Subject to what others may find and without having studied it in detail, it generally amounts to legal apple pie. Perhaps not unanimous apple pie, but relatively consensual apple pie. One could say that the Constitution, as written, is more Ricardo than Richard Martineau. But the Constitution of Québec is only one part of the legislative arsenal provided by Bill 1.

And things quickly go downhill with the Act respecting the constitutional autonomy of Québec (see section 2 of Bill 1).

Section 5 of this Act provides that:

“The Parliament of Québec may declare in an Act that the Act or a provision of the Act protects the Québec nation as well as the constitutional autonomy and fundamental characteristics of Québec.”

Currently, the legislature’s intention is that this applies to five laws: the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101, amended in particular by Bill 96); An Act respecting the laicity of the State (Bill 21, amended by Bills 94 and 9); the Constitution of Québec; the Act respecting integration into the Québec nation; and the Act respecting the constitutional autonomy of Québec.

Strangely, or perhaps tellingly, the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not among these indisputable laws “that protect the nation or the fundamental characteristics of Quebec.”

I’m not sure we should let a political party, or even several, define what Quebec is or should be. Because, by definition, anything that is not explicitly defined is not part of it. And since a constitution cannot be amended every two weeks, it may quickly become stale.

But that’s far from the worst part.

Phase 4: Legislative and judicial lock

The final phase is not temporal, but rather an additional step in Bill 1. It is the keystone of everything that precedes it, from Bills 21 and 96 to the Quebec Constitution, including the legislative salvos in soft authoritarianism mode fired during the fall of 2025.

This keystone, or rather this lock, is enshrined in the second paragraph of Article 5:

“No body may, by means of sums from the Consolidated Revenue Fund or other sums derived from levies, taxes, duties or penalties collected under an Act of Québec, contest the operability, constitutionality or validity of a provision regarding which a declaration is made under the first paragraph or otherwise contribute to such a contestation, except where the contestation is made in the context of the legal representation of or legal assistance to a natural person, where the court orders the state to pay a lawyer’s fees or where the contestation is invoked as a defence in a civil, administrative or penal case.”

In other words, no public body may challenge a law if the government considers that it “protects” the Quebec nation, its constitutional autonomy, or the fundamental characteristics of Quebec. A lot can be included in this, in the name of the nation’s best interests.

Which bodies are targeted? Bill 1 names about a hundred, individually or by category, explicitly at the end of section 2. It covers a wide range, from the province’s ombudsman to the auditor general, including the chief electoral officer, Quebec’s health care and welfare commissioner, its judicial council, the Council of Status of Women, the Office des personnes handicapées du Québec, Quebec’s Bar, the College of Physicians and all professional orders, CEGEPs, universities, hospitals, municipalities, and a ton of others. And, of course, “bodies or classes of bodies that the Government determines.” Why take the chance of forgetting anyone?

With the adoption of Bill 1, all these actors of civil society, who serve as both a counterweight to the government and part of our social and moral conscience, would lose their right to oppose the state, or simply to raise an issue in a law that the government has deemed fundamental.

An exception is provided for a challenge on behalf of an individual, within a specific framework. But no public body could challenge the principle or provisions of a law if the government has decided that it is unchallengeable. The legal battles that are sometimes necessary to clarify or protect the exercise of fundamental rights will effectively only be accessible to individuals who are willing to embark on this kind of legal guerrilla warfare.

+++++++

In principle, state power is divided into three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, each exercising a counterforce on the others, and, in particular, the second and third on the first one.

In practical terms, in our system, which favours majority governments with 40% of the vote and relies on party lines, the legislative branch has long been swallowed up by the executive branch. That was not enough; the judicial branch, and therefore the courts, also had to be neutralized. The CAQ did this initially by limiting the power of judges, either by suspending articles 1 to 38 of the Quebec Charter preventively and on multiple occasions, to the point of becoming systematic. It is now completing this process by handcuffing organizations that have the capacity and means to intervene before the courts.

All the power of the state is thus concentrated in the hands of the few individuals who control the cabinet, with the definition of our rights subject to the political whims of the small group that has taken the wheel. Currently, 15% of Quebecers are prepared to vote for the party in power. But they are the ones flying the plane, the cockpit is locked, and we will land wherever they want us to.

The Quebec Bar has politely stated that several aspects of Bill 1 “threaten the balance of powers, legal predictability, the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, and access to justice.”

I won’t be as polite. From a democratic point of view, Bill 1 is completely insane. You don’t make a constitution against the society to which it applies.

And, much like Bill 2 on doctors’ remuneration, but taking the principle further, the government is ensuring that no individual will want to take the risk of challenging the all-powerful state, as evidenced by the third paragraph of section 5:

“The members or directors of a body having approved the allocation of a sum contrary to this section are held solidarily liable for the restitution of the sum to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.”

You have been warned. Fall in line, or suffer the consequences.

+++++++

Since we are talking about simple laws, passed by a simple majority in Quebec’s National Assembly, isn’t it also simple to repeal them? In theory, yes. In practice, it’s far from certain. The CAQ is not yet completely defeated, and they may yet survive. If a minority government were formed, it could have an influence. A government formed by another party might also hesitate to abolish all or part of a law whose concept is generally popular, even if its implementation is questionable.

In any case, such a move by a future government could be seen in some parts as threatening the very foundations of the Nation (with a capital N). Populists and reactionaries will be waiting just for that. A newly elected Premier who would take on the task of overturning all this had better have a keen moral sense and a strong backbone.

The very fact that we are having a conversation about this is completely surreal.

A constitution should never be politicized. Its drafting should be a defining moment in the life of a society that is coming together around its most widely shared characteristics. And a constitution should never be adopted against the will of a large part of its constituents.

That should go without saying, and it would have been the case until recently, but democratic conventions only exist as long as those who are subjected to them respect them, foremost the party that holds the levers of power, and to the extent that this party exercises that power with the restraint of one who considers that political options other than its own are equally legitimate. If the party that holds the levers decides to use them to push forward a bulldozer, there is not much that can be done.

The new constitution and accompanying laws will instead be part of a legislative power grab, a desperate attempt to exist beyond the date of the next election and to freeze, at least for a time, the legal pillars of Quebec according to the very narrow desires of one party, its narrow conception of democracy and checks and balances, and a vision of Quebec that excludes a portion of Quebecers or denies them the right to be who they are.

Bill 1 provides that the Constitution of Quebec will come into force on June 24, 2026.

It’s going to be a strange national holiday.

-30-

This text is 4,196 words long, or about seventeen pages of a book. The research and writing took me about three days and gave me a slight constitutional headache.

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living. I try my best to Quebecsplain in English here, and give an insight you will not find in most media outlets. If you enjoyed reading this text, you can encourage me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and likes are always appreciated.

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(Cet article est disponible en français ici.)

Two candidates are vying to succeed François Legault. The prize: leadership of the CAQ, but also the position of Premier of Quebec for a few months. The party may cease to exist by the end of election night in October, but that’s not the kind of thing that stops the ambitious.

Since immigration is and will continue to be a hot topic, it’s worth taking a quick look at what the two contenders think about the Quebec Experience Program, or QEP, a program that promotes permanent residency (by the federal government) for immigrants who are particularly well integrated and can demonstrate that they can speak, read, and write French. Many immigrant workers came to Quebec at our invitation, with the government pushing recruiting efforts as far as South American and African countries.

The QEP was abolished without notice last November, leaving in limbo thousands of aspiring Quebecers who had left everything behind to begin a new life here.

The breaking of this moral commitment sparked an outcry across Quebec. Because, in addition to reneging on a promise, we are shooting ourselves in the foot, as has been pointed out by businesses and unions, mayors of large and small cities everywhere in the province, health and education workers, and so on.

The current Minister of Immigration, Jean-François Roberge, is still making the calls and defending the indefensible. His aplomb and his ability to string together lies and contradictions command admiration. But on April 12, Mr. Roberge will have a new boss. What will the new policy be?

Bernard Drainville, one of the two candidates for Legault’s succession, believes that Quebec has taken in too many immigrants in recent years, but he also recognized (belatedly) that immigrants that are working are probably useful. He ended up promising a quasi-grandfathering clause for most QEP candidates. (Drainville is probably also counting his votes in Quebec regions where the departure of immigrant workers would hurt most.)

Christine Fréchette, currently the favourite due to her support within the party, served as immigration minister for two years. She is more moderate than the premier and most of her colleagues, and even managed in early 2023 to convince François Legault to welcome 60,000 permanent immigrants per year, a number he had considered “suicidal” for Quebec only a few months earlier.

Fréchette’s openness to immigration placed her almost in the “radical left” wing of the CAQ, if such a thing exists. After confirming that she was trying her luck at succeeding Legault, Fréchette was asked what she intended to do about the PEQ, which is currently one of the two main issues in the race (the other is the third link between Quebec City and its south shore, which is part of the CAQ’s gospel).

Will Christine Fréchette break with CAQ orthodoxy on immigration, or will she hold the same stance as Minister Roberge, who is also supporting her in the race?

At the end of January, as a prelude, Fréchette relayed on X a statement by Jean-François Roberge, who is adamant about abolishing the QEP.

A week later, on February 2, Fréchette was more explicit, promising to “rapidly increase the pace of invitations” under the PSTQ, the program that replaces the QEP. This amounts to saying that those who are not invited will eventually have to pack their bags, even if they are here at our invitation. This is therefore a continuation of the Roberge doctrine. Fréchette also promised to prioritize temporary workers in health, education, construction, manufacturing, and tourism, aligning herself with her opponent, Bernard Drainville, even if she tried to deny it.

But don’t see this as a grandfathering clause. At least it’s what Fréchette said.

Two days later, on February 4, Fréchette again rejected the idea of a grandfathering clause for QEP orphans, calling the proposal—and therefore her opponent’s proposal—“simplistic.”

(It’s a contradiction, but not quite a lie. It’s more of a case of “it’s a duck, not a chicken,” a common source of confusion in politics. Don’t worry, the big lies are coming.)

On February 7, Fréchette gave an interview on the Politiquement Parlant podcast, in which she detailed her stance and arguments.

Before going any further, please let me reassure you: I’m not going to overwhelm you with 5,000 words of lies and fact-checking, as I did with Roberge. But it’s still worth going into a little more detail into Fréchette lines, if only to see her skating backwards while doing the splits. And the lies become even more blatant when one reads her full statements.

You can hear Fréchette discuss the PEQ here (in French) starting at 25:45 minutes:

“On the one hand, I would start by saying that there are many families, there are many immigrants and their families who are worried [sic] right now, and that really strikes a chord with me.”

Always show empathy and that you are listening, especially when you are really not listening.

“Of course we have to find solutions. These are people who are, how can I put this, crucial to the proper functioning of our economies and our businesses, particularly in rural areas, so we definitely have to come up with a way to solve this issue and alleviate concerns.”

If these people are “crucial,” why was the QEP abolished? And why not bring it back? It would be simpler, and everyone is asking for it, but the CAQ’s dogma forbids it. But let’s hear what Fréchette has to say.

“So what I’m proposing is a humanitarian action plan. I would say that we need to speed up the pace of invitations for the new program, the PSTQ, which is the program we’re directing people who were on the QEP to, because doing so will reduce the waiting time.”

So, now, it’s “humanitarian” to do less than the minimum to keep our word. Nice spin by the political staffer, who’s earned his paycheque. Can you hear the violins in the background?

“And if we significantly increase the number of invitations for next month, then people will have received a response that I hope will be positive, provided they are in fields such as health, education, construction, and I would add recreational tourism as well because we have many resource regions that depend on tourism for their economic well-being, so that’s very important to me.”

Now tourism. The list of areas that the PSTQ will have to cover is growing, as is the list of regions where decision-makers and potential voters are infuriated. But that part is okay, because politics is also about adjusting to reality.

“Basically, people’s fear is because they think their permits will not be renewed by the federal government. That’s what creates significant uncertainty” (…)

This repeats Jean-François Roberge’s messaging about the “bad federal government,” when, in fact, it is Quebec that has created uncertainty by abolishing the QEP, and it is the QEP that virtually the entire civil society is asking to be reinstated.

Fréchette then talks about low population growth and the need for labour to replace the many retirees.

Then there is the question of the grandfathering clause that everyone is calling for.

“But we can’t implement—I was Minister of Immigration for two years—we can’t implement a grandfathering clause. It’s a false promise, in the sense that you can’t say to people who didn’t file an application for a given program, in this case the QEP, ‘if you had had the opportunity to apply, would you have done so?’”

Yes, we could, and should, because we suspended then abolished the program, taking away the opportunity for those people to apply under the QEP, after promising them they could when they met its conditions. Many immigrant workers decided to come to Quebec because of that promise. That’s the whole point!

“At that point, lots of people are going to raise their hands and say, ‘Yes, I would have [applied].’ We could end up with 100,000 or 150,000 raised hands. And then, if we say to those people, ‘Well, if you intended to apply, we’ll add you to the program,’ we’ll reach our immigration thresholds much too quickly. And we’ll have to put the people in the new program—the PSTQ—on hold because we’ll be letting the people with grandfathering clauses first. That would create an injustice (…)”

To sum it up:

• A grandfather clause is a “false promise”;

• We could suddenly find ourselves with 100,000 or 150,000 more applicants for permanent residence;

• Quebec’s immigration thresholds would be reached too quickly;

• In addition, it would cause injustice to PSTQ applicants.

(It would be quite the opposite in the latter case, since it would allow us to respect our moral contract with QEP applicants, but let’s move on.)

In short, forget about the grandfathering clause. And just to make sure the message gets across:

“So, there you have it, unfortunately, it is not feasible to grant a grandfathering clause. I know it sounds good in the media. The concept seems simple, but in reality, the mechanics don’t allow for it. The only mechanism we can put in place is to steer people toward the PSTQ, and then we’ll speed up the process to retain them and invite them on a permanent basis.”

Okay, we understand, a grandfathering clause is unworkable. So, what did Christine Fréchette ultimately do?

Yes.

She promised to grant a grandfathering clause to PEQ orphans.

Here is what Fréchette had to say on February 10 to Patrice Roy of Radio-Canada, just a few days after explaining at length that a grandfathering clause was a “false promise” that was impossible to fulfill.

“If I am elected leader of the CAQ, I commit to reactivating the QEP program for a period of two years, and, therefore, to offer a grandfathering clause to those who were in Quebec when the QEP program closed last November. This will give people predictability. We will take a more transitional approach, which will give people the opportunity to be selected through the QEP or the PSTQ, which is the other program through which permanent residence can also be obtained.”

In just three days, what was impossible became the way forward. In addition, the QEP has been reactivated for two years and will be able to coexist with the PSTQ without creating any injustice.

Obviously, some people had to work incredibly hard to make this happen. Don’t laugh.

And what made Christine Fréchette change her mind?

“I’ve been out in the field too, you know, I’m touring Quebec. It’s very important to me, I talk to people, people write to me, I talk to them, and I heard a lot of concerns out in the field, and it touched me, I’m sensitive to their reality. It’s important for me to offer a way forward that takes into account the concerns that exist on the ground, whether within businesses or immigrant families (…), and therefore also to respond to the needs of businesses, particularly in rural areas, where the need was acute.”

So, essentially, Fréchette said the same thing she had said the week before, but it now led her to the opposite conclusion. Note the skepticism on Patrice Roy’s face.

But that’s not all. Last week, Fréchette raised the spectre of 150,000 additional immigrants, as we saw above. It was less crude than Roberge’s half a million tsunami, but it was still a large enough number to scare people into two choices: either we say no, or it’s an invasion.

Roy then asked Fréchette how many people would benefit from the grandfathering clause:

“Well, we don’t have the exact number, but I can tell you that, in terms of thresholds, it will be respected. So, we have a total of nearly 29,000 workers who will be eligible for selection under our programs, so I imagine that initially we will take a 50-50 approach between the two programs and adjust as the situation evolves.”

The tsunami of unwelcome immigrants is now just a bad memory. And they lived happily ever after.

+++++++++++++

Since Christine Fréchette said several things and then the opposite of those things, she either lied then or is lying now. The fact that she was Minister of Immigration for two years and her reputation as a studious minister make it unlikely that this was an honest mistake. So did the sudden change of heart.

The most likely hypothesis is that she stuck to her guns as long as it seemed more profitable—or less damaging—before returning to a policy that was more politically acceptable and with which she was also more comfortable. Since Roberge’s initial stance was based on false premises and false arguments, Fréchette was swimming in the same swamp.

In hindsight, it is understandable that Christine Fréchette may not have been comfortable with the changes coming to the QEP, and that her departure from the Ministry of Immigration was probably not coincidental. Jean-François Roberge, on the other hand, seems quite comfortable with dirty work.

In the meantime, our likely next premier has told her first big lies.

Did you vote for that?

My name is Patrick Déry. I write (mostly in French) for a living, and I try my best to Quebecsplain in English here. I also like to call out politicians who repeat lies because I believe we deserve better. If you enjoyed reading this text, 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.

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Jean-François Roberge has finally found a way to backtrack on the issue of the now-defunct Quebec Experience Program, or QEP. (PEQ in French media.)

Basically, Roberge, the Minister of Immigration, Francization, and Integration will bow to the wishes of the person who becomes leader of the CAQ and premier at the end of the party leadership race, in April. If it is Christine Fréchette, the program will be extended for two years, giving those who wish to do so some time to meet its criteria.

If it is Bernard Drainville, a grandfathering clause—or acquired rights clause—will be granted to temporary workers in certain sectors, including health, education, construction, and specialized manufacturing. Other immigrant workers who also came here at our invitation and met the program’s requirements will eventually have to pack their bags. Too bad for them.

Before getting inside the minds of politicians and seeing how some of them have a loose relationship with the truth, it is important to review the main points of the QEP program in order to avoid being taken in by Roberge, who is a first-class snoreau, as we say in Quebec.

The Quebec Experience Program, or QEP, is a highly selective immigration program whose objective was to lead particularly well-integrated immigrants to permanent residence via the Quebec Selection Certificate, or CSQ. Once the CSQ was obtained, the likelihood of obtaining residence—granted by the federal government—was very high. The QEP was entirely managed by Quebec.

Since various—and sometimes fictitious—numbers are circulating about temporary immigration, and politicians are deliberately spreading misinformation (as we will see), it should be noted that not all foreign students or temporary workers want to settle in Quebec and apply for the QEP, and even fewer meet its criteria.

Yet, listening to some politicians, one might get the impression that if the QEP were reactivated, half a million temporary immigrants would magically earn the right to remain in Quebec indefinitely. It’s a wave, an avalanche, a tsunami that will soon engulf Quebec. Is this true?

Not quite. Here is the number of Quebec selection certificates issued in recent years to students or temporary workers under the PEQ program, according to data compiled by Radio-Canada and La Presse, which both media obtained from the Quebec Ministry of Immigration, Francization, and Integration:

· 2020: 16,942

· 2021: 24,391

· 2022: 5,915

· 2023: 9,313

· 2024: 20,201

· 2025: 18,532

So, roughly 15,000 to 20,000 per year. Keep these figures in mind.

Over the years, the QEP requirements, which were already high, have been tightened further by the current government. In its most recent version, workers were required to have at least two years of work experience in Quebec. They were also required to have a job at the time of application. Another component of the program was open to students who attended French-speaking schools or universities in Quebec. In both cases, intermediate to advanced knowledge of French was required. This was a far cry from “bonjour-hi.”

So, these were people who had studied in Quebec, who had worked and were still working in Quebec, who spoke French, and who had been living here for some time.

Many of these exemplary immigrants work in fields where Quebec has a permanent labour shortage, as health care, education, and construction.

The fact that these immigrants are francized and integrated did not move the Minister of Immigration, Francization, and Integration, Jean-François Roberge, who axed the QEP last fall after suspending it earlier in the year (and in 2024 for students). See the strategy at work: first, the program is suspended, so it is no longer possible to apply; then, the plug is pulled, and it is too late.

Thousands of people who had not yet applied for the Quebec Selection Certificate never had the opportunity to do so because the rug was pulled out from under them without warning, after they had been invited to come study, work, learn French, settle, and live here.

Those left behind by the QEP do not have to pack their bags—well, not yet—, but they must submit a new application under the Skilled Worker Selection Program (or PSTQ, in French—I will keep using that acronym). The Quebec Ministry of Immigration will then decide whether these people meet the objectives of the points-based new program. There is no guarantee that they will be chosen: the explicit objective of the program change is to limit the number of permanent immigrants. In short, those people are being asked to jump through bureaucratic hoops, take a deep breath, and hope that everything works out for them.

It is not unreasonable for a program that leads to permanent residence to establish certain criteria. The problem is when the criteria change mid-game, after people have made the difficult decision to change their lives, leaving everything—or nothing—behind to settle here on the basis of the promises we made to them. This is more than a broken moral contract; it is a betrayal.

It is also counterproductive from our own point of view, since thousands of these aspiring Quebecers are doing essential work with our sick, our elderly, our young people, and businesses that need them. In short, they are helping an aging society to function.

Regardless of the merits of the new program (the PSTQ), the government could have granted an automatic grandfathering clause to people who already met the criteria, giving them time to apply if they wished to do so. Minister Roberge said no, which led to growing incomprehension and anger from all concerned parties.

Those are the facts. It was important to establish them because your brain is about to start spinning as one minister tries to twist them.

Because when just about everyone ended up saying that throwing essential, integrated, and French-speaking workers into limbo and possibly deporting them was unfair, inhumane, counterproductive, and contrary to our own interests—from unions to chambers of commerce to the mayors of Quebec City, Montreal, and just about everywhere in La Belle Province—Minister Roberge started telling big fat lies.

Because when you know what you’re saying isn’t true, it’s not a mistake, it’s a lie.

This column is not just a column about the QEP. It is also a column about lying in politics. I have already given a few examples with François Legault and Bill 2 on doctor’s compensation (that one is in French). But Minister Roberge could give his boss lessons in political bullshit.

Do you think I’m being harsh? Please judge for yourselves.

On January 23, in an interview with Radio-Canada, Jean-François Roberge attempted his first sleight of hand by saying that there is a grandfathering clause for those who have already applied for the Quebec Selection Certificate.

It’s rhetorically clever, but what everyone has been talking about for the past few months is a grandfathering clause for those who came here at our invitation and met all the QEP requirements but haven’t yet applied. Roberge knew that. But it did not stop him from trying.

Then he went on with his magic act.

“If we said yes to these people, it would mean that—there are almost 550,000 temporary, non-permanent residents in Quebec, the vast majority of whom were selected by Ottawa, by the Canadian government, without Quebec having any say in the matter—, and all of these people could obtain a kind of free citizenship, without conditions, because that’s what the QEP was all about. So, reinstating the QEP like that, without conditions, giving it away as a free pass, is a bit like offering citizenship to people without conditions”.

Poof! All of a sudden, Minister Roberge conjures up hundreds of thousands of additional QEP candidates, including asylum seekers and foreign workers who fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. It’s an Olympic-calibre lie. But 550,000 is a huge number, and using it adds a little more gasoline to the fire of our identity fears, already well fuelled by partisan politics in recent years.

The minister then noted that the majority of temporary residents were “selected by Ottawa.” Ah, Ottawa, again! Vile Ottawa!

Nice try, but no. Asylum seekers—of whom there are about 190,000 in Quebec—were not “selected by Ottawa.” Most of them came here with their suitcases and little else, fleeing war or misery. The federal government has to decide whether to grant them refugee status, based on criteria that comply with international law. An independent Quebec would have the same obligations (or at least it should). In any case, the QEP is intended for immigrants who come here primarily to work. Asylum seekers are not eligible. That’s 190,000 fewer than Roberge’s figure. Of the 350,000 economic immigrants or so who remain, half fall under Quebec’s jurisdiction. So, Ottawa does not choose the majority, but rather one third.

The minister pulls one last rabbit out of his hat by suggesting that reinstating the QEP would be tantamount to granting “unconditional citizenship.” This is also false. The Quebec government does not grant citizenship, but rather a selection certificate. And it is permanent residence that is facilitated, not citizenship, which is another matter. Finally, the QEP has criteria that must be met: having attended French schools or universities, studied in French or worked in Quebec, and having good knowledge of written and spoken French. To paraphrase Cyrano de Bergerac, it’s not a rabbit that Minister Roberge pulled out of his hat, it’s an elephant. And a pink one, at that.

Please note that I had to write three paragraphs to refute a single one, not counting all the context that preceded it. That’s why, most of the time, politicians have free rein to say whatever they want: it takes time to correct them, it’s tedious, and most media and journalists are simply not interested in doing that. And when they do, it gets lost in the flood of headlines, which gives liars a clear advantage, especially since they are rarely seriously challenged on the spot.

I’m going to give credit here to Midi-Info host Alec Castonguay, who does everything humanly possible within a ten-minute segment to avoid constantly interrupting Roberge (Alec is more polite than I am). But Roberge took every opportunity to spin his message, even if it means changing reality in the process.

When Castonguay pointed out to the minister that the rules are being changed mid-game for people who came here based on promises made to them, and that those people often had children born in Quebec and who are now attending French-language schools, Minister Roberge stuck to his script.

“We have to be careful about that. First of all, many people arrived over a period of several years, and the old program changed during those years. Not everyone would have the same grandfathering clause.”

Indeed. The program has been tightened. This means that most of those who are still here and eligible under the most recent criteria have studied or worked in Quebec longer, have had more time to put down roots and speak French better. Next.

“People are worried, essentially, not because the new skilled worker selection program is replacing the old program. People are worried because Ottawa has decided to deport tens, hundreds of thousands of people. Ottawa is the one that issues work permits. In Quebec, we can’t issue or revoke work permits. But since the fall of 2024, Ottawa has decided to revoke work permits, and with each passing week, even today, there are businesses that are seeing their workers’ work permits revoked and being deported.”

The minister is attempting a triple axel here, but he is committing a double fault.

First, people are concerned precisely because the new program is replacing the old one. The new program is by invitation only. QEP orphans know that not all of them will be invited, and they wait anxiously for a response, week after week. That is what worries them, and they are saying so.

Second, it is true that Ottawa is looking for ways to reduce the number of non-permanent residents, but this applies to those who fall under federal programs. Quebec has all the tools at its disposal to keep in Quebec QEP orphans who wish to stay.

At any rate, this is what the CSN, the FTQ, the CSQ (big unions here), the mayors of Quebec City, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Laval, the Union des municipalités du Québec, chambers of commerce, the Conseil du patronat (and employer association), and all experts and lawyers specializing in immigration understood, as well as the immigrant workers themselves, many of whom recently demonstrated across Quebec. Perhaps Minister Roberge knows something that no one else does.

But let’s hear what Minister Roberge has to say.

“What we’re saying is that we shouldn’t be taking in more and more immigrants, especially in Montreal, where we want to reduce their numbers. But when Ottawa comes along and says, ‘I’m going to take away a work permit from a nurse at the CHU (a university hospital) in Quebec City, or I’m going to take away a work permit from a welder in Beauce,’ we say no, no way. A grandfathering clause, that is, a temporary status renewal for these people, while they decide whether they want to apply and become Canadian citizens, while they complete French language courses, if they need to”.

That’s great. Jean-François Roberge is asking Ottawa to grant temporary workers under his jurisdiction a grandfathering clause. Bravo. He also wants these people to be given time to learn French. Bravo again.

In short, Roberge is saying there should have been a Quebec program specifically targeting essential workers, such as nurses or welders, with the condition that they speak or have learned French. We could call it the “Quebec Experience Program,” or “QEP”… Oh, wait…

“The people who are listening [Patrick’s note: note here the control marker for the message and lines that the minister wants to convey] I don’t think they disagree with the fact that we select people based on their language proficiency, based on the fact that they work in a priority sector or a sector that is experiencing a labour shortage. Do we really want to give automatic, free citizenship to people who have a poor command of French, who work in a sector that is not a priority or in a sector where there is no labour shortage?”

The last sentence is fantastic. Citizenship used to be “free” and “unconditional,” now it is “automatic.”

And this “automatic, free citizenship” would be granted to “people who have a poor command of French, who work in a sector that is not a priority or in a sector where there is no labour shortage.”

Wow.

Here, Roberge pretends that he doesn’t know that the fundamental condition of the QEP is that people speak or have learned French. It’s so dishonest that it defies belief. In fact, those immigrant workers’ command of French is so “poor” that they are given preferential treatment by the federal government if they want to settle elsewhere in Canada, to the point where an immigration lawyer recommends that they “leave Quebec”!

Roberge then suggests that all these people are working en masse in sectors where there is no need for them. This is nonsense in itself: they are working, which shows that there is a need, and Quebec is facing a structural shortage of skilled labour for the next few decades (we are aging fast). In particular, more than 6,000 employees in our health care system were affected by the end of the QEP, which worried one of Roberge’s colleagues, Health Minister Sonia Bélanger. (Roberge ended up promising that they would all be saved.)

See also how the immigrant workers that Quebec has chosen but is now abandoning seem completely superfluous, while those potentially abandoned by the evil federal government are essential. In addition to being liars, were the minister and his predecessors incompetent? Should we have left the management of our immigration to the federal government? (It’s rhetorical. Of course not. But still…)

Why stop here? Roberge kept digging himself deeper:

“Some people arrived saying, ‘I’m coming with a temporary work permit, and there’s a program I can apply for in two years, in three years.’ But governments have full control over their immigration, and the old program was relevant insofar as we had 50,000, 60,000 temporary immigrants in Quebec. When you have 400,000, 500,000, 560,000, to say that all these people are going to have automatic residency, automatic citizenship without consideration of where they live, without any idea of regionalization, that changes everything.”

Minister Roberge is not content to repeat the lie about “automatic citizenship.” He claims that all 560,000 non-permanent residents in Quebec, including asylum seekers, including temporary workers who fall under federal jurisdiction, including all those who do not wish to be here on more than a temporary basis—and some are quite content to do just that—would automatically obtain Canadian citizenship if the QEP were maintained.

That’s crazy. Minister Roberge can’t not know what he’s talking about. And if that’s the case, why is the head of the Immigration Ministry?

The interview continues and Roberge repeats his pre-learned lines of communication, and his nose grows longer each time.

Fast forward a week. Jean-François Roberge is invited to the same show by the same host. First, they discuss Mark Carney’s speech on the Plains of Abraham, then Alec Castonguay brings up the QEP again: will he listen to what virtually the entire province is demanding and grant a grandfathering clause, or will he stay the course come hell or high water?

I won’t repeat the interview verbatim this time—both to spare you and myself—, you can listen to it here. There are a few striking passages, including this one:

“We need to set the record straight. Under the old program, the Quebec Experience Program, the criteria was: ‘after two years, you are eligible to apply’. And people understand that, at that time, it was automatic and that after two years, you filled out the form and a week later, it was settled. No, at the time there were still thresholds or caps each year. For example, if we were accepting 25,000 people in the economic category, we would take 25,000, and then we would stop.”

Well, guess what? It wasn’t automatic after all, unlike the automatic citizenship of the previous week! There were even caps. Imagine that! So, no tsunami of half a million asylum seekers, students and temporary workers naturalized against our collective will through a program we had lost control of.

Are you confused? Please don’t feel bad.

And it goes on:

“(…) there was also no automatic [inaudible] that we invite everyone every year. If there were 25,000 places, we took 25,000. After that, it went to the next year, the next year, the next year… And there are more people who want to come than there are places, so this wait, which the lady talks about with great truth and emotion, was also present in the old program. So, I want to clarify things: it’s not the change from the QEP to the Skilled Worker Selection Program [the PSTQ] that is causing this wait.”

So what has changed? You may have guessed: Ottawa.

“And what they’re saying in Ottawa is that the people who are here, working here right now, maybe they don’t have the level of French required to be selected, like Canadian and Quebec citizens, for permanent residence. Maybe they don’t have the required level of French yet; that’s true, fine. Let’s keep them here, let the Quebec government teach them French. We’ll select them when they reach the required level, but in the meantime, renew their work permits, stop threatening to deport them, because there are employers, both in the CISSS and CLSC sectors and in manufacturing, who are saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, there’s anxiety, there’s concern in my workplace, you’re taking these workers away from me’”.

So, on the one hand, Roberge is ending a program that guaranteed that integrated and French-speaking workers could stay in Quebec. And on the other hand, he is blaming the federal government for not being patient enough with workers who do not necessarily speak French. Quebec’s government has also been asking for at least two years that Ottawa reduces the number of temporary workers under federal programs. And when Ottawa complies, Roberge puts on a show of indignation.

A reasonable person might be tempted to conclude that Jean-François Roberge is trying to muddy the waters by blaming Ottawa for indefensible decisions made by Quebec, hoping that the mud thrown at the federal government will stick, and spare him a little.

Still not convinced? You’re a better person than I am. I’ll let the minister finish his argument. Please strap yourself in:

“But when it comes to foreign workers selected by the Quebec government, can we please renew their permits? Even if they are temporary status, can we remove this sword of Damocles hanging over their heads? And eventually, maybe in January this year, maybe yesterday, maybe in February, maybe in September, or in 2027, when they will have reached a certain level of French, we can give them permanent residence. But why this sword of Damocles hanging over their heads? We don’t need that. Neither does the Quebec government in health and education, nor do businesses in the manufacturing sector, nor the tourism sector.”

In case you are confused (I know I am), recall that it is the Quebec government that decides the fate of the workers it selects, not the federal government. No other province has this much latitude. It’s part of the powers that Quebec has long demanded and obtained more than 30 years ago. Ottawa had to remind us of this just a few days ago. And the QEP was specifically targeting people who had “reached a certain level” in French.

Jean-François Roberge knows all this. But he keeps repeating the same lies.

***

When the issue invariably came up again in Quebec’s National Assembly, some of the 550,000 future automatic citizens had disappeared, and Minister Roberge spoke instead of 350,000 people. Apparently, someone told him that adding asylum seekers to the sum was a bit rich.

Roberge even managed to get a motion passed in the National Assembly asking the federal government to renew the work permits of temporary workers. Yet he is responsible for his own misfortune, since it was he who ended the QEP. And the government he serves is responsible for the rest, since it is Quebec that has been pressuring Ottawa for years to reduce the number of temporary immigrants. The federal government is simply acceding to Quebec’s repeated requests over the past two years. The motion tabled by Minister Roberge is extraordinarily cynical and opportunistic.

Jean-François Roberge is not the only one torn between his talking points and reality when it comes to immigration.

François Legault has weighed in, trying to remind everyone that he is still Quebec’s Premier, even if we tend to forget it. Legault also repeated the absurd figure of 350,000 temporary immigrants who could benefit from the grandfathering clause. He also warned that the permanent presence of these people on Quebec soil would threaten the survival of the French language. The fact that proficiency in French was a condition of eligibility for the QEP seems to have eluded the Premier too. But, as he himself has said, when it comes to immigration, he would not have won “Génies en herbe.” Unfortunately, that has never stopped him from speaking his mind.

Legault and his party have a history of making inflammatory, opportunistic, alarmist, and even defamatory statements when it comes to immigration.

In recent years, the premier has attributed “100%” of the housing crisis to immigrants, even though Quebec has been experiencing a housing shortage for more than 20 years.

During the last election campaign, Legault candidly expressed the opinion that it would be “suicidal” for Quebec to admit more than 50,000 immigrants per year. Then his government did it anyway.

His former Immigration Minister, Jean Boulet, said that “80% of immigrants do not work, do not speak French, or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society.” (In fact, almost 80% of immigrants speak French, and their employment rate is slightly higher than that of native Quebecers. Oops.)

The Parti Québécois was not to be outdone.

MNA Alex Boissonneault claimed on X that the CAQ wants between 250,000 and 350,000 temporary workers to become permanent residents of Quebec. The figures do indeed come from Legault and Roberge, as we have seen. But it was a gross lie to justify the indefensible decision not to grant a grandfathering clause. Instead of refuting the figures inflated by populist rhetoric, Boissonneault, a former journalist, decided to use them to suggest that the CAQ could do exactly what it said it would not do. Let’s just say that this does not shine with intellectual honesty.

The leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon—known here as PSPP—, ended up taking a principled position (he also has to count his votes in Quebec’s regions, where elections are won), but he still relayed the figure of 250,000 to 300,000 temporary workers who would benefit from a grandfathering clause under the QEP, even though no one remotely knowledgeable about the issue thinks that this is in line with reality. That was already crude, but PSPP also added to the calculation and waved the spectre of the 190,000 asylum seekers settled in Quebec. These are not eligible for the QEP, as we saw earlier.

It is probably a coincidence that this serves its interests with the more nationalist electorate that the PQ is competing with the CAQ for.

+++++++++++++

Why so many lies and disinformation from people who claim—and should—represent us with integrity?

The first explanation is that they believe what they are saying is true. Even though everyone can make a mistake here and there, this would be surprising. First, because we are talking about intelligent and informed people who have been immersed in these issues for months, even years, and who are supported by an army of advisors and researchers—not to mention ministry staff. Second, because their versions tend to change depending on political or communication objectives.

The second explanation is that they know what they are saying is not true, but they think it is the best thing to do, politically wise. In the case of the CAQ, that would be surprising: the polls speak for themselves. It would probably be better for the CAQ to use the next seven months to do the opposite of what they have been doing for the past seven years. (The PQ, for its part, is playing both sides: it is fiddling with the numbers to scare people, but seems to want to do the right thing when it comes to the QEP orphans. To be continued.)

The third explanation is that CAQ politicians know they are telling lies. They also know that it is unpopular, but they don’t care, regardless of the harm it causes to individuals, businesses, our health care system, patients, parents, children, and civil society as a whole, because it is purely ideological: the majority of CAQ members, including the current premier, want fewer immigrants, whom they consider to be foreigners in the first sense of the word, and also foreign to their romanticized and nostalgic vision of Quebec. Any means are acceptable. And lying is a small price to pay if it is in the best interest of the Nation.

In my humble opinion, this is the explanation that is most consistent with the actions of this government since it came to power, and even more so during its second term.

In short, we are dealing with either incompetent populists, opportunists without morals, or narrow-minded ideologues. And liars, too.

The good news in all this is that the widespread outcry shows that the majority of Quebecers have their heads and hearts in the right place. If only more politicians bet on that.

-30—

This text is 4,711 words long, or about 19 pages of a book. Manually transcribing interview excerpts, tracking down lies, and setting the record straight took me a bit over three days and made me even more disillusioned with our elected officials, if such a thing were possible.

My name is Patrick Déry. I write for a living. I also like to call out politicians who repeat lies because I believe we deserve better. If you enjoyed reading this text, you can encourage me by buying me a coffee. Comments, shares, and likes are always appreciated.

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Since Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s speech in answer to Mark Carney’s own speech on the Plains of Abraham was only available on video, I transcribed it for posterity. I took the opportunity to add a few comments… which turned into a lot of comments.

Politics loves slogans. Reality prefers nuance.

The first part is here. The rest is below.

********

(…)

PSPP: British colonialism is based on the idea of leaving a certain amount of power to the population that is dominated. It will buy off the elites so that they collaborate with the regime’s propaganda and lies. And then it will explain to the population that everything good and prosperous that happens to them is thanks to the British regime. That is the essence of British colonialism. Whereas in reality, colonialism is unjust enrichment. Enrichment based on the domination of others.

Patrick: I see a contradiction in the argument. On the one hand, sovereigntists spend their time saying that federal money goes everywhere except Quebec. Now you’re saying that the regime “buys off the elites.”

Speaking of enrichment, Quebec also receives approximately $20 billion each year in excess payments from public administrations. In other words, what we receive from Ottawa minus what Quebec sends to Ottawa. I don’t know if this represents “unjust enrichment,” but losing that tidy sum would dig quite a hole in Quebec’s finances. For example, Quebec’s education budget is about $24 billion.

PSPP: And it’s true that humanity has always suffered [from colonialism]. And the best person to explain this to us, and to help us understand it in our context, is Gandhi.

Patrick: Gandhi? Where have Papineau and Lévesque gone?

PSPP: Gandhi understood. And he pointed out that, in the case of India, British colonialism did not stop at the possession of territory, it also involved the possession of the mind. Namely, the British tried to make the Indians believe that their civilization was superior and that they had to adopt it, this British civilization, if they wanted to progress. He said, and I quote, “The British rule us because we accept their rule.” They consider us incapable of governing ourselves, and we ourselves have largely accepted this idea. The British Empire is not an empire maintained by physical force so much as by the cooperation, voluntary or otherwise, of the governed. It does not depend on the bayonet as much as on the willingness to collaborate with that regime. He also had another very interesting comment on slavery. He said that there is nothing worse for a people than not to be slaves, but to be slaves while having the slight impression of being free. He said that this is the worst form of slavery.

Patrick: Are we really talking about colonial India and slavery to explain Quebec’s political context in the 21^st century?

PSPP: So, let’s get back to Quebec.

Patrick: Sure hope so.

PSPP: In light of Gandhi’s words.

Patrick: 🤦🏻‍♂️

PSPP: Quebec owes nothing to British rule. What we have achieved has nothing to do with Canada’s supposed benevolence, quite the contrary.

Patrick: Actually, it does. Just bear with me. Other countries, for instance France, chose to suppress languages other than the national language. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t that long ago. Stéphane Dion talks about it here. (Yes, I know, he’s not your favourite, but the guy sometimes makes fairly good points.) In that sense, despite several missteps, the federal government—even the British regime—has at least shown a certain level of tolerance. I’m not saying it was always exemplary. Only that, by the standards of the time, it could have been much worse, as it has been in countries that we look up to.

PSPP: It’s a miracle that we managed to endure and build so much in such a context. But Mark Carney stepped into this tradition of British colonialism last Thursday. That’s what makes him a colonialist. That is to say, he has maintained a very British tradition of falsifying facts and history, of constantly feeding us lies through federal institutions in order to make us believe that it is to our advantage to be subordinate and dominated.

Patrick: We’re talking about one sentence in a speech, which is probably an ill-advised metaphor because Carney did mention the attempts at assimilation and emphasized the resilience of our ancestors. Also, no one “believed” Carney when it came to the plains. The backlash was unanimous. Even the Globe and Mail thinks he messed up.

PSPP: And this isn’t some theory put forward by an independence supporter, because obviously, we might want to put things into perspective. Jean Chrétien himself said as much a few months ago. Jean Chrétien reminded us, in the wake of the 30th anniversary of the 1995 referendum, that he had lied to Quebecers throughout the referendum campaign. That he had no problem with that. That, even if there had been fraud, it would not have changed the outcome. And above all, if despite these maneuvers, the YES side had won, Jean Chrétien had already prepared lies and other tricks to impose his domination on Quebecers.

Patrick Déry: We agree, but we’re not sure Chrétien’s scheme would have worked if the YES side had won, whatever he says. And Jean Chrétien is himself a Quebecer, not a British fifth columnist (or is he?) That being said, would we really have wanted a country that was created by a few decimal points? And possibly having a majority of people regretting the result, as the British are currently experiencing with Brexit?

PSPP: Just like Pierre Elliott Trudeau lied to us during the first referendum when he said, “There will be change.” It turned into a night of long knives.

Patrick: Between you and me, I have a problem with this expression, even though it is well established in Quebec because it refers primarily to a purge carried out by the Nazis in Germany to consolidate Hitler’s power, which resulted in at least 85 deaths, possibly several hundred, and led to the perpetuation of a regime that attempted to conquer Europe in a conflict that claimed tens of millions of lives. Applied to our situation, it feels a bit hyperbolic.

Still, I agree that Quebec should not sign a constitution that has been imposed (even if, in reality, it makes less and less of a difference, as I explain in the first part of this text).

PSPP: Canada is founded on lies, and the problem with passively accepting this environment of colonial lies is that it leads to our decline. It leads to our erasure. It’s boring, it’s sad, but it’s as simple as that.

Patrick: There hasn’t really been a “decline,” as I told you before. I detailed this here. The numbers are generally less prone to soaring rhetoric, but they are unequivocal.

PSPP: So, Mr. Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Leader of the NO camp. You tell us that Canada does not exist because of the United States. Very well. You tell us that medium-sized states should never subordinate themselves to larger states, that they should always choose sovereignty. Very well, we hear you. Mr. Carney, Quebec does not exist because of Canada. In fact, Quebec has survived in its difference and specificity despite Canada. It has survived and accomplished great things despite Canada, despite all attempts at sabotage and assimilation. And these attempts are not just in our distant history; they are recent. They are happening right now.

Patrick: What are these “attempts at sabotage and assimilation” that are “happening right now”? We’ve named plenty that date back several decades, even centuries, but what about ongoing ones? Can you name at least one or two?

PSPP: So no, Mr. Carney, Quebec has never had a partnership with Canada. We need only look at certain key moments: we were never consulted or gave our consent to the Act of Union, the Constitution of 1867, and even less so to the repatriation of the Constitution in 1982.

Patrick: You have a point with the Act of Union. Still, Lafontaine, a former leader of the Parti Patriote, allied himself with Baldwin to eventually obtain responsible government shortly thereafter. There certainly was a partnership between those too. Also, after becoming Prime Minister of Canada East (Quebec), Lafontaine delivered his first speech in French, defying the Act of Union’s ban on the use of French in the legislative assembly. A glass ceiling was broken.

The Confederation was a different story. It’s true that there was no popular consultation, but Quebec politicians were involved, and several of them were among the fathers of Confederation, foremost among them Cartier (Georges-Étienne, not Jacques). Regardless of one’s contemporary political preferences, it was beginning to look like a partnership.

PSPP: And it was certainly not within the framework of Meech or Charlottetown that collaboration was achieved. Unfortunately, it was a rather lamentable failure.

Patrick: Meech came very close to passing. Brian Mulroney worked hard for this, and almost everyone agreed in the end. If it hadn’t been for Elijah Harper…

PSPP: There has never been a partnership for all these reasons. But above all, there is no partnership because a people does not need to be subjugated. It cannot be under the domination of another and then talk about collaboration. It’s the opposite. This domination is unhealthy and must stop.

Patrick: Are you really saying that we are still “dominated”? Even “subjugated”? It’s starting to get a little cringey.

PSPP: And so, the Prime Minister of Canada can choose to invite the King of England to his parliament in Ottawa to open parliamentary proceedings. It is a colonial gesture par excellence. It’s his choice. He can also choose, against our will, to deny our rights, to deny our democratic choices, in particular by using our own taxes against us, by attempting to invalidate our National Assembly laws in court.

Patrick: I suppose you’re referring to the challenge to Bill 21 under the 1982 Charter before the Supreme Court. There’s just one problem here: the Quebec Charter contradicts, or at least contradicted Bill 21, since its application is even broader than the Canadian Charter (the Quebec Charter also applies to private relationships).

The Legault government therefore chose to do two things. First, it amended the text of the Quebec Charter to prevent the rights and freedoms it protects from contradicting Bill 21. Then, to be on the safe side, the government also suspended sections 1 to 38 of the Charter with respect to Bill 21 as a preventive measure.

This is not insignificant because these amendments were made under a gag order, whereas historically, amendments to the Quebec Charter had always been made unanimously by the parties represented in the National Assembly, and always to add rights, never to remove them. René Lévesque was particularly proud of our Charter, which was adopted before the Canadian one.

In other words, if the Legault government had not axed the Quebec Charter, Bill 21 would probably be illegal. The same goes for Bill 96. I would be tempted to add that minority rights should not be decided by the majority, but you probably know that, as shown by this discussion you had with Mathieu Bock-Côté before becoming his BFF.

PSPP: Mark Carney can also choose to disregard Quebec’s areas of jurisdiction and thus disregard Quebec democracy by abusing the federal government’s illegitimate power to spend our own tax dollars. He can also choose to impose a migration policy that makes the survival of the French language and access to housing virtually impossible…

Patrick: In fact, the Carney government has done the opposite by significantly reducing the number of temporary immigrants. The Quebec government even finds this too harsh. That was before the federal government further reduced the thresholds!

PSPP:… while having the nerve to appoint Mark Wiseman, the financier, one of the architects of this insane immigration policy, as U.S. ambassador to speak on our behalf? He can do all that.

Patrick: He does not, as just mentioned, but he could do all that largely because he received 43% of the vote in Quebec. That’s more than any elected government in Quebec has received in over 20 years, by the way. That’s why it’s called “representative democracy.” I have serious reservations about “majority” governments that get a minority of the vote, but that’s how it works for now: people elect a government, then said government does more or less whatever it wants. René Lévesque didn’t worry too much about the fact that he only got 41% of the vote in 1976. You know what we say back home: what’s good for the goose…

PSPP: But, following the principles he himself set out, namely that we must choose sovereignty without ever consenting to subordination, we are going to break with British colonialism and create our own country.

Patrick: Quebec has not been a British colony for ages…

PSPP: History must have meaning. There are generations of supporters who tell me they are happy to still be with us to see this. History must have meaning, and I want to quote, because Mark Carney was in Davos in front of the billionaires of Davos.

Patrick: “The billionaires of Davos” is Pierre Poilievre’s line. Would you have preferred that the Prime Minister of a G7 country pass on Davos?

PSPP: [Mark Carney] quoted an important philosopher, Vaclav Havel [a Czechoslovak dissident who eventually became president of his country after it gained independence from the USSR]. Havel essentially asked the question, which [Carney] presented at Davos: how could such a toxic political regime have lasted so long? What are the mechanisms that lead to this? And what Havel tells us, and what Carney tells us, because that’s what he quoted, Havel’s answer is simple. The reason is that there were citizens who engaged daily in rituals and messages that they knew were false. So Mark Carney was referring to shopkeepers who, every morning, put up a sign in their window saying, “Workers of the world, unite,” knowing full well that it’s nonsense and that the regime is toxic. So Havel, as quoted by Carney, tells us that there is a price to pay for lies.

Patrick: Havel wasn’t talking about the British regime, he was talking about the Soviet Union and the communist regime imposed on his country when Czechoslovakia found itself behind the Iron Curtain. There was no longer any civil or economic freedom, let alone elections. The regime had also been established following the invasion of the country by the USSR and its satellite states with thousands of tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers. The comparison with contemporary Quebec might be a bit overstretched.

PSPP: And if you want a very concrete example in the Quebec context of someone putting up a sign knowing full well that it’s not true, look at how many Liberal Party of Canada MPs and ministers came out in 48 hours to explain to us, each in their own way, that truth is relative. That what Carney said is no big deal. That it all depends on interpretation, that the intentions were probably good. That what matters is Canadian unity. In short, they all found a way to put the lie on display.

Patrick: It’s called controlling the political message. I’m not a fan, but pretty much all parties do it when they realize they’ve screwed up. The Parti Québécois does it too. And it rarely works in a country like ours, precisely because we have a free press, as was demonstrated by Carney’s blunder. Which reminds me: do you still think Trump was right and that we’ve been “bad neighbours”? Because that wasn’t true either.

PSPP: And I’m going to answer them with what Mark Carney teaches us. According to Havel, there is a price to pay for lying. That price is that there are many problems and much suffering that result from tolerating lies because it essentially means consenting to the abuse of power. So, according to this philosopher, we essentially have a choice: to participate in the lie, or to stand up and demand an end to the charade, an end to the abuse of power, an end to institutions that do not represent us democratically and too often work against us. We can demand freedom, justice, and democracy.

Patrick: That includes the freedom to vote for whomever we want, right? I mean, is it completely inconceivable that Quebecers could choose Canada with full knowledge of the facts? We have to be able to accept that. Besides, are federalists also Quebecers? I’m asking for a friend who is the leader of a sovereigntist party in Ottawa (please see here, at the very end).

PSPP: And that’s basically it, to the Quebecers who are listening to us, that’s simply our message. We can choose a healthy democracy, and we can choose to no longer live in institutional falsehood. This sequence begins with this surprising speech, delivered, it should be noted, on the Plains of Abraham.

It’s a starting point, and there will be other steps. I think we will triumph fairly easily over the initial lies because they are so crude, they are so easy to undo.

But there will be other stages. We know this because history repeats itself and we have already been through this before, so we know that, in the next stages, there will be defamation and fear. You are familiar with defamation if we think of Lévesque, Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard, Pauline Marois. They will want us to believe all sorts of things. About the leader or the party. But the goal here is to divert attention and, above all, to avoid having a debate about whether independence is a good idea. We’ve seen this movie before.

Patrick: Who’s avoiding what? We’ve been having the debate about Quebec’s independence for the last 60 years. It’s not going away, whatever Carney or anyone else wants. But it’s possible that the answer may still be no. Will you accept that?

PSPP: We will also fall back into fear; it has already begun, so there are federalists who have already started talking to us about Russia invading Quebec.

Patrick: That was silly.

PSPP: There has also been talk in the media about the very likely invasion of the United States.

Patrick: It’s not “likely” yet, but it’s no longer completely far-fetched. Talk to the Venezuelans and the Greenlanders.

PSPP: They even tried to make us believe that, without Canada’s military shield, we would be in danger.

Patrick: Well, if Quebec was without an army in the aftermath of a referendum, it would still be a little easier to invade than today. I agree, though, that it wouldn’t make much of a difference, maybe a few hours.

PSPP: And so, as we face these challenging months ahead, dear supporters, I think we need to turn to Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela, who told us, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to overcome it.”

Patrick: Oh boy. Mandela? Where did that come from? Overcome what?

PSPP: There will be fear. There will be fear.

Patrick: Since you brought Mandela into this, what about Yoda? Because fear leads to the Dark Side, which may be even worse than colonialism. Or so I’ve heard.

PSPP: We’re going to use that kind of argument, but we are capable of standing up and we are capable of overcoming that fear. When we have a Canadian Prime Minister who is trying to falsify our history, we all collectively have not only a duty to remember and to be rigorous, but also a duty to ensure that this remembrance serves a purpose.

Patrick: Like, for example, not cherry-picking history for rage farming?

PSPP: We are faced with this toxic environment of lies, abuse of power, waste of public funds…

Patrick: If we look at our budgetary history, an independent Quebec is not exactly a guarantee of sound management.

PSPP: …and colonial origins, the lingering traces of colonialism, the responsibility to change the future. Change the future to give more to the next generations. To ensure that they don’t have to live through this. So, we have a responsibility to succeed. It’s a responsibility. We can no longer be content with fleeting indignation on a case-by-case basis.

Patrick: Like evoking the Battle of the Plains eighteen times over a half an hour speech? Okay, too tempting, sorry! It’s about time that this ends.

PSPP: [Short-lived outrage] does us no good; it leads nowhere. The CAQ has just spent eight years proving that to us [actually, it’s seven. Pat]. We don’t deserve decline. We don’t deserve the same decline that the federal government has reserved for all Francophones in every other Canadian province. We deserve better.

Patrick: I know I’m repeating myself, but the situation of Francophones in Quebec has nothing to do with what has happened elsewhere in the country. New Brunswick has not been predominantly Francophone for over 200 years, Manitoba for over 100 years. In contrast, things are going pretty well in Quebec. Really. Please read this.

PSPP: We must recognize that migration, cultural and language policies and all the encroachments on our areas of jurisdiction that the federal government has imposed on us in recent years are what this is all about: planned decline. The duty to remember is, therefore, also a duty to act, because after all, what good is this memory, as our motto says, if we do nothing?

Our great national poet Gaston Miron said, “We will never be human again if our eyes are emptied of their memory.” I told you that the YES camp will be the camp of truth and hope. Let us remember that the truth is sometimes not joyful, and it is not easy. We do not choose our past at birth. We therefore do not choose the past we must face.

When I raised the issue, at another national council, that there had been hangings and deportations in Canada, remember how many people said how radical, toxic, and dangerous I was.

Patrick: Maybe not “dangerous,” but certainly a bit demagogic: the Canadian federation did not yet exist when the Acadians were deported and the Patriots were hanged…

PSPP: Sometimes there is a price to pay for the truth, because the truth, even if it is not rosy, remains what it is: facts.

But even if it is demanding, this reality has value, and Gandhi, like Mandela, would ask us to do so without any hatred. There is a way to serve the truth and then serve the advancement of society, to have conversations that are demanding, sometimes a little dark, but without ever embarking on hatred. And we are capable of that. At least, that is what Gandhi and Mandela would ask us to do.

Patrick: It still feels a little uncomfortable bringing up colonial India and apartheid South Africa when talking about our problems. Gandhi and Mandela might disagree. Also, a note to your speechwriter: the pivot from rage farming to no-hatred-please feel a bit rushed and tacked on.

PSPP: And since they were successful, it might be a good idea to listen to them. So, the truth, but in the spirit of seeking lasting peace. Also, in the spirit that Canadians hear what we are saying and are capable of the same judgment and the same search for truth. I disclose in advance that I am not Gandhi.

Patrick: Thank you for clarifying that.

PSPP: And to my knowledge, we are not related. But I think there are foundations there that we can simply modestly serve to the best of our abilities. So, I offer Quebecers a difficult truth, while Mark Carney offers a comfortable lie. But there is a price to pay for comfortable lies, and I am confident that Quebecers will choose the truth. It is up to us to give meaning to the past, to give meaning to our history, to win and, ultimately, to make Quebec a country. Thank you.

Patrick: My pleasure. See you around!

[Everyone stands up, “Le Québec, un pays! Le Québec, un pays!”]

-30-

This text is a bit over 4,000 words, or about 16 pages of a book. The first draft of the speech transcript was done using software. Editing the transcript, fact-checking, and writing more or less impertinent comments took me about four days, including the first part. It also left me with a constitutional headache.

My name is Patrick Déry. I write for a living. I also enjoy calling out politicians who get carried away by their public persona. If you enjoyed reading this text, you can encourage me by buying me a coffee. Commenting, sharing and “liking” are always appreciated.

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