The Coalition Avenir Québec was founded because a huge number of Quebecers wanted something neither the Parti Québécois nor the Quebec Liberals could give them.
uncertain
Québécois → found → them
They were nationalists, but they did not want another referendum.
asserted
they → want → referendum
They wanted to protect French, defend Quebec’s identity and autonomy, and elect a government willing to stand up to Ottawa.
asserted
They → want → Ottawa
They were tired of an oversized state, suffocating bureaucracy, and governments that seemed to believe every problem could be solved with another program, another regulation, or more intervention in the market.
uncertain
problem → seem → market
The merger with the conservative Action démocratique du Québec gave that part of the coalition a political home.
asserted
merger → give → home
And it worked!
asserted
it → work → ?
The CAQ shattered the old Liberal-PQ duopoly and delivered François Legault two consecutive majority governments.
asserted
CAQ → shatter → governments
Then, somewhere along the way, the CAQ stopped being the CAQ.
asserted
CAQ → stop → way
This election completed their transformation.
asserted
election → complete → transformation
The CAQ has effectively become the francophone wing of the Quebec Liberal Party.
Let’s start with the economy.
asserted
’s → become → economy
What is actually left of the original CAQ proposition?
asserted
What → leave → proposition
The party that promised to shake up the establishment became the establishment.
asserted
that → promise → establishment
The party that absorbed the ADQ tradition became the defender of a massive, expensive, interventionist state.
asserted
that → absorb → state
Talk of fiscal discipline, reform and efficiency ended up just resulting in another round of record spending, bureaucratic expansion, and an even more bloated administrative state.
asserted
Talk → end → spending
Put simply, the CAQ did not reform the “Quebec model,” it ended up completely surrendering to it.
asserted
it → Put → it
The political genius of the CAQ was understanding that Quebec contained an enormous nationalist electorate that did not necessarily want independence.
asserted
that → understand → independence
These voters wanted to defend French, Quebec identity and provincial autonomy without dragging the province back into another referendum.
asserted
voters → want → referendum
Now it has almost disappeared.
asserted
it → disappear → ?
In this campaign, the CAQ has increasingly reduced itself to being the safe, managerial, anti-referendum alternative to the Parti Québécois.
asserted
CAQ → reduce → Québécois
A party created to escape the old Liberal-Péquiste divide has somehow managed to recreate it, except this time with itself playing a worse version of the Liberals.
asserted
itself → create → Liberals
The PQ has reoccupied the nationalist pole while the CAQ has reduced itself to occupying the francophone territory of the federalist status quo.
asserted
CAQ → reoccupie → quo
It morphed into the very thing it was created to replace.
asserted
it → morph → thing
This has created an existential problem: its voters have somewhere else to go.
asserted
voters → create → somewhere
Nationalists are returning to the PQ.
asserted
Nationalists → return → PQ
Economic conservatives and former ADQ voters have turned to the Quebec Conservative Party.
asserted
conservatives → turn → Party
Centrists and federalists who simply want the traditional anti-PQ option are going back to the actual Liberals.
asserted
who → want → Liberals
That is why the party’s collapse cannot simply be dismissed as ordinary voter fatigue after eight years in government.
asserted
collapse → dismiss → government
The CAQ once occupied an enormous and distinctive political space: too nationalist for the Liberals, too hostile to another referendum for the PQ, and more economically conservative than either.
asserted
CAQ → occupy → either
One by one, it abandoned those distinctions.
asserted
it → abandon → distinctions
They’ve had the worst deficits in Quebec history, wasted billions on failed investments in companies like NorthVolt and government initiatives like the botched online rollout for the province’s auto insurer, SAAQclic, and they’ve also restarted a fast-tracked immigration program, and support higher immigration levels than the PQ.
And now, in this campaign, it has retreated to the oldest argument in Quebec politics: Vote for us because the alternative is the PQ.
asserted
alternative → have → us
That was never supposed to be the CAQ.
asserted
That → suppose → ?
That’s the offering of the Liberal Party.
asserted
That → ’ → Party
The coalition that built the CAQ is therefore breaking apart and returning to more natural political homes: nationalists to the PQ, the right to the Conservatives, and some centrists and federalists to the Liberals.
asserted
that → build → Liberals
The CAQ was created as a nationalist, centre-right insurgency against Quebec’s tired political, but it has now devolved into little more than the francophone wing of the Liberals, which no one in Quebec ever wanted.
asserted
one → create → Quebec
The Aporia
