How a debate question got Justin Trudeau and Erin O’Toole fighting for votes in Quebec

QUEBEC CITY – Late summer skies turned peach and pink over Montreal’s south shore as crowds of liberal supporters waited. And I hope. And he waited for leader Justin Trudeau.

When he finally arrived two hours later at a trendy bistro in Longueuil, after cramming into a downtown interview with a popular Quebec TV show, the liberal leader with his wife Sophie in tow apologized and urged about 80 supporters not to give in.

Now everything revolves around the ground game: the fight to motivate party workers and volunteers to get the vote in key districts. And in Quebec, all of a sudden, the race is much more of a wild card. Really wild.

Tours of the Liberal and Conservative leaders reached Quebec this week, where both had hoped to win three to five, perhaps more seats at the expense of the Bloc Québécois.

The campaign of the bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet had collapsed at first. But it was given new life after what the majority of Quebecers (62 percent) perceived as an inappropriate question for Blanchet about systemic racism and “discriminatory” laws in Quebec during the English debate. The other leaders were not asked.

It infuriated Quebec pride and nationalism, and virtually nullified the impact of Prime Minister François Legault’s public backing of a conservative minority just hours earlier.

And now, in the space of a week, voter preferences are changing in ways that make the outcome difficult to predict.

The poll released by the Leger firm this week showed that the Bloc “rose three points in Quebec after the events of the debate last Thursday, showing little hope for conservatives in Quebec and threatening the potential for gains from liberal seats,” according to Christian. Bourque de Leger.

In an interview, Bourque said that if the question about systemic racism and “discriminatory laws” in Quebec had come from another federal party leader, Quebecers “would have had someone to point to.” But because it came from a moderator leading a debate in English sponsored by the debate committee, with questions approved by the English media consortium, Quebecers “are targeting Canada … and they see it as a way of attack on Quebec by the rest of Canada. “

You hear it on the radio waves. You hear it on the streets.

“Two solitudes, huh?” says a woman in Trois-Rivieres, not impressed that Trudeau has arrived to do a bit of “mainstreeting” in town.

In the dark Longueuil, Suzanne Leger is walking with her friends. They all say they went and voted immediately last week in early polls. Your vote could have been for the Liberals or the Greens, but “what happened in the English debate I found very, very insulting, honestly. I couldn’t understand why the other leaders didn’t speak. “

Isabelle Daigneault and Claude Roy agreed. Daigneault voted for the Liberals because “they handled the pandemic well” and, while climate change is important to her, “I don’t want the Conservatives in.”

Roy, whose main concern is global warming, said the debate was a turning point for him.

“My choice was between the Greens and the Bloc Québécois, but what I found is that Quebec needs to be represented in Ottawa to be defended,” he said.

He was shocked by the debate question to Blanchet which he saw as defamation of Quebecers, and “insulted” by how the rest of Canada seemed not to care. “Come on, how come there are still people who think that about us, ‘racists’? It doesn’t make any sense at all. “

Across the street, awaiting Trudeau’s arrival, liberal candidates and strategists say privately that yes, the campaign took a strange turn seven days ago. One admits that it would have been better if Trudeau had immediately intervened to protest in defense of Quebec. Blanchet increased his outrage and demanded an apology. All the other leaders did so in the following days.

But high-ranking liberals in Quebec believe that liberal votes will not spill into the Bloc as a result. Rather, they say, conservative votes will.

“Some Quebecers, and rightly so, are crazy about what happened during the debate, but at the end of the day, they have to reflect and decide who (they) want to rule the country, especially to end this pandemic and move on. other things, ”said Trudeau’s lieutenant in Quebec, Pablo Rodríguez.

So when Trudeau appeared at Longueuil-Saint-Hubert, a cavalcade supported by the Bloc, it struck both the Conservatives and the Bloc.

In the span of 15 minutes in French, Trudeau invoked “Stephen Harper” seven times, describing O’Toole as a throwback to the Conservative Prime Minister and the Bloc Québécois as ineffective in stopping a government that went against “all our values. “.

At the same time, O’Toole was on the Orford stage in the eastern townships of Quebec shaking off Harper’s mantle and being hailed by another former Conservative and Quebec native Brian Mulroney.

The irony was hard to miss. That same day, O’Toole had gone to Quebec’s nationalist heartland, the Saguenay region, to prop up his own Quebec lieutenant, Richard Martel, and told Quebecers: “We are no longer your father’s conservative party.” .

Now here was Mulroney, the Progressive Conservative who built the “big blue tent” nearly two generations ago and won two majorities, urging Quebecers to see O’Toole as his successor and a pending prime minister. It was a Mulroney classic and O’Toole’s conservative team was happy to have his backing.

However, he may not play with the reformist wing of the Conservative movement in the west, and at this point, although the Conservative leader has promised more power to Quebec in matters of health care, culture, language and immigration, it is possible that the Mulroney’s endorsement didn’t help him in Quebec. .

McGill University political science professor Antonia Maioni said Mulroney’s appearance “polishes a tool to the degree that conservatives will be happy, and perhaps progressive conservatives too. But I don’t think it will beat anyone else. “

If anything, Trudeau is now launching into O’Toole’s association with another Conservative leader, Alberta Prime Minister Jason Kenney, to suggest that his main rival lacks the leadership ability to beat the pandemic.

When Trudeau embarked on an all-day sprint through five bypasses (three constituencies controlled by the Bloc and two run by Liberals) along the north shore from Montreal to Quebec City, he repeatedly appointed Harper and his former lieutenant Jason Kenney. as O’Toole role models.

At Trois-Rivieres, Trudeau stressed that Kenney, forced to reinstate vaccine restrictions and certificates for certain non-essential businesses, had taken pleasure in the anti-vaccine element in his party and “that’s exactly what Mr. O’Toole is doing. doing too. “

O’Toole insisted Thursday that he will always support the provinces, a play that generally attracts in Quebec. “I will have strong relationships with all prime ministers, regardless of their band. And the federal government should partner and support prime ministers, not fight them in an election like Trudeau. “

But where conservatives hoped to win seats in Quebec, as in Trois-Rivieres or Beauport-Limoilou in the Quebec City region, it suddenly seems much more difficult.

Will it be enough to save other threatened liberals, like Jean-Yves Duclos, Chairman of the Treasury Board, in Quebec City, where Trudeau landed to increase his chances, also meeting with the popular mayor of Quebec, Régis Labeaume? That is far from clear.

Antonia Maioni said, “It is so complicated … how the progressive vote is broken in Quebec, and since the NDP is not really a factor, you have to wonder where it goes if people are dissatisfied with the liberals, and that dissatisfaction is quite high in Quebec ”.

In the end, he says, at the federal level, “the question on the ballot in Quebec is always the same: which party in Ottawa can be the interlocutor of Quebec’s questions, right? That is the question.”

In the end, the Quebec wing of Parliament may not change that much.

“And guess what,” says Bourque. Election night, “We will all be looking at Ontario.”