Is Quebec still a democracy?

Welcome to electatorship.

(Texte français disponible ici.)

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

What defines a democracy?

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

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

When politicians draw the line

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

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

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

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

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

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

The CRÉ should have left the Gaspé Peninsula alone…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Majority, where hast thou been?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Checks put in check

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minority rights in their sights

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

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

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

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

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

What rule of law?

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

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

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

+++++++

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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