A Party of One

While Quebec’s institutions are in free fall, premier François Legault basks in his party’s admiration.

Illustration: Jay Walker

Did anyone else cringe when they read about François Legault scoring a 98.61 per cent approval rating from his party?

I did. 

Not just because the number makes you want to call him Comrade and let him pour vodka down your throat until he rides you around his dacha like a pony.

“Onward, comrade Curtis, you are carrying his excellency Pyotr Alekseevich, emperor of all Russians and Tsar of Kazan! We must take back Sebastopol!”

No, I think the real reason I worry about the 98.61 per cent is because it’s bullshit. 

I’m not saying the votes aren’t real, the CAQ is a party of yes men. Of course they lined up to kiss the boss’ ass. Because right now Legault is the party and the only way to move ahead in that world is to show him cult-like loyalty. Just look at every minister that ever gets mentioned as a possible successor to the big man.

Bernard Drainville left a $300,000 a year radio job last year, joined the party and leapfrogged his way up the order of succession. Since then, he’s been battered by scandals — almost entirely of his own making — and his most memorable moments as a cabinet minister were a pair of public apologies for speaking out of turn. And the CAQ doesn’t do apologies.

Bernard Drainville. In meme form.

Ditto for Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault, once considered Legault’s heir apparent, who is now best known for failing to deliver on the CAQ’s $10 billion boondoggle of an infrastructure project, le Troisième Lien. Her other noteworthy contributions to this session of the legislature: she was caught playing a video game on her phone during a budget hearing and happened to be in Paris while the license bureau turned into a dumpster fire last winter.

Guilbault’s gaffes were surely a source of joy for Simon Jolin-Barrette, her fellow cabinet minister and, sources say, bitter rival. But the Justice Minister, once Legault’s favourite egghead, recently got himself into trouble by appointing an old drinking buddy as a judge. It takes a special kind of arrogance to appoint a 36-year-old friend to the bench and this may be the final nail in the coffin that used to be his political aspirations.

With no internal threats and with the opposition trailing by double digits in the polls, Legault is firmly in control of a party whose instinct is to centralize power and quash dissent. But despite his 98.61 per cent rating, the consensus on Legault is starting to show some cracks.

Last week, former CAQ backbencher Émilie Foster published a scathing rebuke of the CAQ’s leadership structure in Policy Options magazine, comparing it to a marketing agency whose only goal is to prop up the boss and hoard power. Backbenchers are given scripted questions to ask their own cabinet ministers in committee as though they were actors in a commercial rather than citizens elected to represent their peers in the National Assembly.

“The average (politician), crushed under the weight of the party line, is losing more and more power in our democracy,” Foster wrote, adding that even though elected officials are free to speak their mind in private, few actually do so for fear of hurting their careers. In fairness, Foster’s piece includes examples from the House of Commons and other legislatures but it’s telling that this criticism is coming from a former CAQ insider.

And just as dissent is rooted out, party loyalists can expect lavish rewards for falling in line. 

Martin Koskinen, Legault’s chief of staff and personal attack badger, just snagged himself a $71,000-a-year raise despite (or perhaps because of) him being the most hated man in Quebec City. Outside of his role protecting Legault from journalists and plebeians, Koskinen is a master at dog whistle politics. 

Imposing loyalty tests on immigrants? That has Koskinen written all over it. Turning Muslim women into second-class citizens for political gain? The badger had a hand in that too.

Every party needs a mean son-of-a-bitch and Koskinen has been handsomely rewarded for assuming that role. He makes over $300,000 a year to know where the bodies are buried (and make sure they stay underground). That’s nearly twice what the highest paid cabinet ministers earn.

The rank-in-file, meanwhile, got the green light from Legault to give themselves a $31,000 a year raise — making them the richest politicians in any Canadian legislature outside the House of Commons. While the loyalists gorge themselves on public funds, Quebec’s teachers and healthcare professionals are among the worst-paid in the country. 

To justify this decision, Legault spelled out his worldview in chillingly bleak terms. Politicians, he said, have a responsibility to make as much money possible to give to their children. By now, Legault has given up on the pretense of trying to make Quebec a better and more caring society.

Get rich, get your friends rich, hoard wealth, win elections and cut down anyone who gets in your way. If this were a 50 Cent album, it would be denounced by the CAQ’s white columnist friends as crass. But when Legault does it, it’s smart politics.

While my inner werewolf admires the CAQ’s discipline and Legault’s cartoonishly high approval rating (even the Soviets would shave a few points off the top to preserve some semblance of reality), I can’t help but wonder if this government could use a little dissent. Because out there, in the real world, people are suffering.

At a time when our hospitals are coming apart at the seams, we just found out Quebec lost 21,000 healthcare workers in the past two years. While Quebec’s public schools are among the worst in Canada, the province massively subsidizes the private schools that cater to Legault’s upper middle class base.

And the CAQ’s immigration fear-mongering is starting to backfire spectacularly. An investigation by La Presse recently found a dramatic rise in French speaking immigrants choosing to settle in Canada rather than Quebec. This, the report notes, is largely tied to the CAQ’s barrage of “negative messages” on immigration and the structural ways in which the government is making it hard for skilled, French-speaking immigrants to join our ranks.

It takes six months for a French speaking immigrant to fast-track their road to permanent residency in the nine other provinces. In Quebec, that process takes two years and costs an extra $1,000.

The province’s institutions are in free fall, homelessness has exploded under this government and the rental crisis is literally forcing people to live in their cars.

But who fucking cares, right? 

Before Legault, the last premier to win consecutive majority governments in this province had a street named after him in Montreal. Before Legault, Quebec voters had spent a half century seesawing between the Liberals and Parti Québécois. I cannot, for the life of me, remember a Quebec premier who so effortlessly made the prime minister look like a novice the way Legault does.

He’s a winner. And if he has to burn down Quebec and rule over the ashes just to keep his streak alive, he’ll take the W. If that’s good enough for 98.61 per cent of The Party, it’s good enough for me.

Merci François.