As predicted, it was a landslide victory for the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) on Monday night, with 40.97 percent of the vote going to the party that had 90 elected candidates.
Quebec’s other major parties trailed far, far behind the CAQ, each receiving between 12 and 16 percent of the vote. In total, they received similar results among themselves in terms of popular support.
But the same cannot be said for the number of seats they won.
The Liberal Party (PLQ), for example, received fewer votes (14.37 percent) than Quebec Solidaire (15.32 percent), but almost twice as many seats.
It is a reality that did not go unnoticed by the parliamentary leader of QS, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
Addressing supporters Monday night, Nadeau-Dubois referred to what she called a “broken” electoral system in Quebec.
“Our political system is broken, our democracy is sick. Tonight’s electoral map does not reflect the political will of Quebecers, it must be said,” said Nadeau-Dubois.
Quebec provincial election results 2022. (Quebec Elections) Conservative leader Eric Duhaime expressed similar frustration.
Despite obtaining 11 percent of the vote, no candidate will represent his party in the National Assembly.
“We are, in a way, caught in the democratic distortion of the century,” he said during his post-election speech.
Meanwhile, the PQ received 14.0 percent of the vote, just 9,507 fewer than the Liberals, but only won three seats.
TIME FOR REFORMS?
Nadeau-Dubois asked Quebec’s re-elected premier to address the issue of vote counting and how they are reflected (or not) in the National Assembly.
“We need Francois Legault to recognize the problem and to work with us and with all the other parties to solve this democratic problem in Quebec,” he said.
The CAQ was one of the many parties that signed an agreement before the 2018 elections that promised to reform the electoral system in Quebec.
The prime minister has evidently changed his tune since then.
Legault voiced his opposition to the reform during his campaign, stating that it is a concern for “intellectuals,” not Quebecers in general.
“It’s not a priority for Quebecers, but we’ll see how they vote on October 3,” Legault told reporters.
Speaking to CJAD 800 radio Tuesday morning, political analyst and former NDP leader Tom Mulcair criticized the current system used in Quebec.
“This is undemocratic,” he said. “There is no other way to say it”.
He acknowledged that the current system offers relative government stability, unlike Italy, for example, which adopted a proportional representation model after World War II.
“But you don’t have to be totally proportional,” Mulcair said. “There’s something called a mixed member [representation].”
Under this system, a proportion of seats (a dozen, Mulcair offered) would be determined by the percentage of votes a party receives.
“There are ways to avoid the distortions we saw last night.”