Marc-Olivier Fortin: The CAQ’s fear-of-Trump campaign starts to crumble

For the first time in a generation, Quebec voters were presented this week with fundamentally different visions of the province’s future.

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The framing for two televised election debates on Tuesday and Wednesday was a good environment for Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon (PSPP) and Quebec Conservative leader Eric Duhaime, who both want to fracture the status quo: the former wants to separate from Canada, while the latter wants to break away from the Quebec model. And both of them offer a clear change and a real contrast to eight years under the Coalition Avenir Québec.

Before the debates, the Qc125.com polling average had the PQ at 28 per cent, the CAQ at 23 per cent, the Liberals at 22 per cent and the Conservatives at 16 per cent. The PQ looked like the favourite to win a minority government.

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In recent weeks, CAQ leader Christine Fréchette was successful in using the tariff war and the constant presence of U.S. President Donald Trump in the news cycle to make stability the central issue of this campaign. She was able to recover from the disastrous poll numbers under her predecessor, former premier François Legault, especially among older voters. The debates were an opportunity for her to transform this momentum into durable gains.

Instead, the debates gave opposition leaders a chance to finally remind voters why the CAQ fell behind in the first place, exposing its damaging record. While Fréchette tried to borrow Prime Minister Mark Carney’s playbook and present herself as a fresh political figure, her opponents were quick to highlight that she held key positions in Legault’s government as immigration minister, where the province recorded historically high migration levels and later as economy minister, where she was left managing the fallout from the Northvolt fiasco.

The opposition did more than attack the CAQ’s record. They almost framed her as being responsible for leaving Quebec vulnerable to the economic uncertainty created by the tariff war. While it was cacophonous at times, Fréchette, for the first time in the campaign, had to face the music.

Fréchette’s other problem was that she sounded scripted and out of context on multiple occasions, clearly trying to create clips to be used online afterwards. Viewers could see the strategy unravel in real time. For example, during a cost-of-living exchange during the TVA debate on Tuesday, while Duhaime was talking about tax cuts and putting more money back into people’s pockets, she awkwardly forced a play on his campaign slogan and claimed that financial autonomy under Duhaime would end with women. Rather than creating a memorable moment, the exchange highlighted how scripted parts of her performance felt.

The second debate gave Fréchette a chance to recover. After a difficult first night, she acknowledged, at the earliest occasion, the CAQ government’s mistakes before pivoting to the need to move forward and avoid a referendum. It was a better performance, but unfortunately for her, the Noovo/Crave debate was not her target audience considering it skews younger.

In that context, the PQ’s PSPP did not need a knockout. He needed to rise above the noise and go back to what made him the favourite going into this election. While he looked defensive at the beginning of the campaign and the weeks leading into it, voters again saw a confident and direct PSPP who embraced his convictions and defended Quebec sovereignty with assurance. They saw the leader who had taken the PQ from three seats to first place in the polls. The debates may have breathed new life into his campaign.

If PSPP reconnected with his base, Duhaime kept expanding his. He was prepared, disciplined and offered the clearest contrast with the other parties. Duhaime’s influence could be seen in the questions themselves. One question in the first debate explicitly asked whether Quebec’s social-democratic model should be preserved or reformed. The fact that the question was asked at all suggests Duhaime has shifted the Overton window. A debate on the future of Quebec’s model would have sounded odd just last election. A recent study shows that Quebecers are ready to question the traditional paradigm of higher taxes in exchange of public services. Duhaime is using this dissatisfaction to his advantage by forcing the discussion about competitiveness, a smaller role for the state and greater private-sector involvement.

While the Quebec Conservatives currently do not have a shot at governing, Duhaime made a strong case as to why his party could hold the balance of power in a minority parliament and be an efficient opposition to move the government to the right and help break with the status quo.

As for Liberal leader Charles Milliard, he set the bar high by saying the debates would be a turning point for his campaign. In both debates he landed a few good jabs and avoided mistakes. One of his best lines was when he asked Fréchette that if she was that good at managing the economy, how come her record is so bad. He was much more energetic and caught many opportunities in the second debate. Overall, he had two decent days. With one final debate next week, Milliard can still hope as he might be able to recover voters from the CAQ after Fréchette’s performance allowing him to rally federalist voters under his banner.

PSPP entered the week looking for oxygen while Duhaime sought to broaden his voter base. Both emerged from the debates re-energized. Fréchette comes out weakened as she was unable to escape the harsh reality of the CAQ’s record. The debates were the occasion to complete a comeback. Instead, they reminded voters why the CAQ needed a comeback in the first place.

More importantly, Quebec might be on the verge of part ways, after more than sixty years, with the current governing model. Whereas it is through sovereignty or a redefinition of the province’s social model, the conversation has shifted to a deeper conversation about Quebec status quo. Quebecers are increasingly willing to question assumptions that have long gone unchallenged. The fortress of the Quebec model might finally be about to crack.

Marc-Olivier Fortin is the former national Vice-President of the Conservative Party of Canada (2016-2018) and campaign manager for the CPC in Quebec (2021). He is now a regular commentator at RDI and on COGECO radio and works for Transfert, a firm specialized in social acceptability in mining, energy and heavy industry sectors.

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