(Texte français disponible ici)
For the past two years, the Parti Québécois has been signalling a shift to the right.
It’s worth taking a quick inventory, because not everyone is convinced.
Its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has rejected the existence of systemic racism (or systemic discrimination, if you prefer), which he previously acknowledged.
He has adopted polemicist Mathieu Bock-Côté’s vocabulary, talking about the Canadian federation’s “colonialism,” “wokeism,” and mass “immigration.”
He has endorsed Donald Trump’s claims about migrants and drugs coming from Canada, which were, of course, false.
He campaigned on cutting the gas tax, a bad fiscal policy that he himself had previously denounced.
He also campaigned on making government more efficient, promising to shrink Quebec’s public service.
That’s not necessarily a bad idea (though it may prove easier said than done), but it’s hard to associate with the left, especially when public services already can’t keep up.
In a masterstroke of subtlety, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon also recruited a model right-wing trash-radio blowhard as a candidate for his party, in an attempt to poach votes from the Quebec Conservative Party, which is very popular in my native Quebec City region. (No, we’re not all like that.)
Finally, this week, PSPP took the time to publicly assure President Emmanuel Macron of his support against the “far left,” amid protests sparked in part by conditions at French universities.
There are organized groups of rioters in France, but it is false to claim that the current protests are exclusively the work of the radical left, any more than it would have been true of the protests of the past 50 years. French authorities, for that matter, refuse to make that connection.
PSPP makes it, though, because he wants to score points on the right, just as he did before and during the recent election campaign.
And yet, in another era, the leader of the Parti Québécois marched alongside students at a protest.
(Photo: Radio-Canada)
Different times, different PQ.
The shift is as much about substance as it is about strategic positioning. Someone tallied support for the various parties, took the public’s temperature, looked at the combined political weight of the Coalition Avenir Québec and the Quebec Conservative Party, and concluded that the PQ’s future lay a little further to starboard.
For anyone willing to see it, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.
Sometimes, it was said outright.
Alex Boissonneault, a former journalist who, before that, took part in global justice protests, ran for the Parti Québécois last year in Arthabaska-L’Érable.
(Mr. Boissonneault is now the Parti Québécois’s director of communications.)
During the 2025 by-election, Mr. Boissonneault explained that he had become “someone on the centre-right.” Perhaps his politics really had evolved. That’s fine. Still, it’s funny that he felt the need to say it out loud.
“WE’RE FURTHER TO THE RIGHT THAN WE USED TO BE, AND WE WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU’VE NOTICED, DEAR CAQ AND QCP VOTERS.”
Surprisingly, many PQ supporters refuse to acknowledge the party’s shift to the right.
Perhaps they’ve drifted a little further right themselves without noticing. Perhaps it makes them uncomfortable after supporting a centre-left party for so long. I don’t know. Ask Freud.
In social media comments and conversations with friends, the same arguments often come up as proof that the PQ hasn’t moved to the right.
“Yes, but they just promised $28 million to tackle homelessness.”
I should hope so. The situation has become as embarrassing as it is inhumane, and we can hardly deport our homeless people to the Far North. (Personally, I think tackling it seriously will cost a lot more. Say, an extra zero.)
“Yes, but René Lévesque cut public servants’ salaries.”
True, but Mr. Lévesque hadn’t campaigned on it. Faced with an economy in crisis, high interest rates, and battered public finances, he was forced to act. It’s also worth remembering that, at the time, Quebec public servants earned more than their private-sector counterparts, on top of having job security.
“Yes, but Lucien Bouchard was pretty right-wing.”
A word of advice here. If you run into Mr. Bouchard, I’d avoid telling him that. A few years ago, a host was sharply put in her place by the former premier, who shot back: “Universal prescription drug coverage, subsidized daycare, and parental leave are hardly right-wing!”
But listen, we’re just talking here. Being on the right isn’t some shameful disease. I once worked with a right-wing think tank. (I regretted it, but that’s another story.)
Good public policy comes down to circumstances, best practices, and better results. Northern European countries tend to combine highly market-oriented economies (on the right, then) with particularly strong social safety nets (on the left). That strikes me as a good balance.
Like others, I nevertheless believe that the current incarnation of the Parti Québécois is further to the right than its predecessors, both in its fiscal rhetoric and in its rhetoric on identity. But I have never gone so far as to equate PSPP’s PQ with the reactionary, conspiracy-minded, authoritarian, and generally idiotic right embodied by Donald Trump and his MAGA cult.
Yes, there is sometimes a whiff of Trump in the PQ’s messaging, some of it coming from its leader’s own mouth.
Yes, PSPP has a temper, is prone to rhetorical excess, and doesn’t exactly suffer from low self-esteem.
But PSPP has never tried to overturn an election result. He has never spread pro-Putin propaganda. He has never suggested that vaccines could cause autism or other conditions. He has never promised to dismantle public health or our environmental laws, accepted gifts from corrupt dictatorships, openly encouraged insider trading, used his office to enrich himself, planned buildings or monuments in his own honour, suggested that Quebec become the 51st U.S. state, and so on.
And I don’t believe he will.
I’ve always thought that equating today’s Parti Québécois with the MAGA movement discredited the argument from the outset and only gave PSPP ammunition in his symbolic battle against the “radical left.”
It’s just too much. There’s plenty to criticize about the Parti Québécois without resorting to cheap exaggeration.
Then came Jacinthe-Eve Arel.
Here she is.
On Thursday evening, media outlets reported that Ms. Arel had been appointed chief of staff to the Minister Delegate for Government Efficiency and Regulatory Relief.
Ms. Arel’s political résumé is eclectic: a CAQ candidate in 2018, a QCP candidate in 2022, and a PQ chief of staff in 2026. But that’s not the problem.
For years, Jacinthe-Eve Arel has been an unapologetic purveyor of disinformation and a conduit for MAGA propaganda.
Donald Trump is a respectable politician whose motives are unfairly maligned. Ukraine is to blame for the aggression it continues to face. Robert Kennedy Jr.’s appointment to oversee public health is an excellent thing. And, of course, beware our servile media.
That sort of thing, over and over, seven days a week.
Some Quebec media outlets, out of a misplaced concern for journalistic balance, helped build her public profile by giving her a platform, as though toxic disinformation were a legitimate point of view.
I’d love to show you her X account, but she prudently deleted it.
Because, unlike some of the hopeless conspiracy theorists recently elected under the QCP banner, Ms. Arel is perfectly aware of the crimes against the truth she was committing every day.
You could fill a book with the lunacy she’s posted over the past few years. Fortunately, the internet has a long memory, and some of the evidence has survived.
I’m sharing a few examples here to show that this wasn’t a one-off lapse after one drink too many.
The following video is a classic example of the Arel method: deny the obvious with a smile, defending the indefensible by manufacturing alternative facts.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump said he wanted the kind of generals Hitler had. Kamala Harris called him a “fascist.” Could it be any clearer? “Absolutely not, that’s really twisting words, and the American system doesn’t allow for a dictatorship.” And, of course, with Donald Trump, it’s all just “irony.”
And here’s another, a little more obscure but telling. The arguments of a completely unhinged conspiracy theorist are described as “nuanced” and “rational,” words that bear no relation to reality.
You see what you see, but that’s not really what it is. There’s a word for that: gaslighting.
Now for a few screenshots.
Here, “President Trump isn’t threatening our economy, he’s just strengthening his country’s economy.” That’s wrong on both counts (the U.S. economy is taking a beating from the tariffs), but it’s rhetorically effective and in line with MAGA talking points.
Here, Canada is the arrogant one, so we more or less deserve what’s happening to us.
Here, Ms. Arel simply denies that Canada is under economic attack. (The original post is by a federal Conservative MP denouncing that very attack.)
Here, she agrees that Mark Carney is a “British foreign agent.”
Here, she objects to Donald Trump being called a “bully” and doesn’t think he is one. He’s just “critical, combative, provocative.”
Here, appointing RFK Jr. (an anti-vax crackpot and an all-around crackpot) as health secretary is an excellent thing that should benefit Canadians too.
Here, she considers MPs who cross the floor a greater threat to democracy than a defeated president who refuses to accept the election result and instigated an attempted coup.
Here, she agrees the news media are lying when they blame Donald Trump for the effects of the tariffs.
Here, she presents Kremlin propaganda as reliable information. Vladimir Putin claimed that the invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if Trump had been president.
Of course.
Here, she endorses a propagandist’s view that it would be normal to hear Russia’s perspective on the war in Ukraine more often.
Here, she shares debunked MAGA propaganda about Ukraine, presenting it as “serious stuff.”
Here, she describes Ukraine as the world’s third-most corrupt country, but makes no mention of Russia. In 2025, Ukraine ranked 104th out of 182 in Transparency International’s index. That’s an unenviable position, one of the worst in Europe.
Russia, meanwhile, ranked 157th. But that doesn’t bother Ms. Arel.
Here, she compares the European Union to paedophiles luring children with candy.
Here, she endorses anti-gay propaganda.
Here, she wants Elon Musk appointed to lead a Canadian DOGE.
In the United States, DOGE proved to be an institutional disaster that delivered mostly injustice and incompetence.
Of course, Ms. Arel “always stands by her statements.”
She stands by them so firmly that she deleted her X account.
On Friday, journalists asked Deputy Premier Catherine Gentilcore whether she was comfortable with Ms. Arel’s appointment as chief of staff in one of her government’s ministries.
Ms. Gentilcore believes we should “give her a chance” and “judge her by her results, not by what she’s said in the past.”
Even if everything Ms. Arel says in public amounts to nothing but lies, propaganda, disinformation, and deception.
+++++++
The Parti Québécois has just crossed a red line. Unapologetic purveyors of disinformation, peddlers of propaganda from MAGA and Vladimir Putin, and manipulative conspiracy theorists are welcome in the party.
This is no longer a question of left or right. It’s a question of intellectual honesty, respect for the truth, and honour in public service.
We wouldn’t be surprised if the Quebec Conservative Party, with its collection of sorry clowns, conspiracy theorists, and unprincipled agitators, had hired Ms. Arel.
We expect better from the party of René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard, Bernard Landry, and Pauline Marois, which currently forms the government and claims it wants to make Quebec a country.
This week, PSPP snubbed a dinner attended by six former Quebec premiers, including two from the PQ, saying he didn’t want to be there to “serve shrimp.”
It’s an interesting image, because shrimp are scavengers that feed by scraping the bottom.
Instead of serving shrimps, Quebec’s new premier has chosen to imitate them.
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My name is Patrick Déry. I’m a French-speaking Québécois who writes for a living, and I’m trying something different here. If you enjoyed reading this article, you can support me by buying me a coffee. You can also subscribe to this publication (free or paid, your choice).
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I didn't need to read the whole piece to get a clear picture.