By Daniel Béland

January 8, 2025

When Steve MacKinnon, Justin Trudeau’s minister of employment, was asked two days after Trudeau announced his intention to resign whether he’d be entering the race to replace him as Liberal leader, it wasn’t so much what MacKinnon — the MP for Gatineau — said but the way he said it that telegraphed his thinking. MacKinnon was asked the question in English but responded in French; a Canadian political tradition that becomes — like impromptu trips to Iowa as a tell of US presidential ambition — more common at certain moments of the leadership and electoral cycles.

Hours later, Minister of Public Services and Procurement Jean-Yves Duclos, when asked “as a Québecois” about who the next leader of the Liberal Party should be, stated that this person should be someone bilingual, who recognizes the importance of Québec within Canada and the specificity of Québec’s contribution to Canada. At the time, Duclos was not considered a likely leadership hopeful, so these remarks are probably not a self-serving attempt to legitimize his own hypothetical leadership race.

In fact, the sentiments Duclos expressed are shared by many Québécois, especially francophones. This means that, when they select someone to replace Trudeau, Liberals will have to keep in mind these realities while balancing them with other regional and political considerations.

Added to that context, the looming threat of a renewed sovereignty battle based on the Parti Québécois’ recent poll standing and promise to hold another referendum if elected — an element bound to factor into the Bloc’s, and the PQ’s, political framing of the linguistic skills of the next federal Liberal leader.

At this writing, MacKinnon is considering running. Finance Minister Dominic Leblanc has announced he is not. His recent predecessor, Chrystia Freeland (the current frontrunner per most polls based in part on her resignation from cabinet), is widely considered to be tilting toward running, as is former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, ditto Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne. Other potential contenders include Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Transport Minister Anita Anand, former Housing Minister Sean Fraser, former BC Premier Christy Clark and Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. Many potential candidates are waiting to find out what the Liberal Party’s rules for the campaign will be (including whether cabinet ministers must vacate their posts in order to run).

Former West-Island MP and Montreal businessman Frank Baylis is the only candidate who has officially announced his candidacy.

Regardless of who runs, selecting a leader who is not fluent in French would be a major problem for the Liberals in Québec, the second-largest province in the country and relatively infertile ground for the Conservatives, with the exception of the greater Québec City area.

The Bloc Québécois has been the main competition for the Liberals since 1993 and selecting a leader who cannot speak French fluently would provide powerful political ammunition to Yves-François Blanchet, a native French speaker who, unlike the other federal party leaders, only needs to campaign in one province. This gives Blanchet a double advantage, linguistic and logistical, on his home turf.

The notable exception was the Orange Wave in 2011, when the late NDP Leader Jack Layton, an anglophone born in Montreal but long based in Toronto, was able to transcend the French-fluency convention by the sheer power of personality

Beyond the Bloc, the exacting Québec media — some of whom found Trudeau’s fluent French wanting when he arrived on the political scene — would be likely to stress the lack of French-language skills of a new Liberal leader unable to properly answer questions and debate in French.

Liberals may also recall the backlash Justin Trudeau faced in francophone Québec after Governor-General Mary Simon, who is fluent in English and in Inuktitut but not in French, was appointed in July 2021. The fact that Governor General Simon still has limited fluency in French has created ongoing optics problems for the Liberals in Québec, a situation that the Bloc has exploited to its advantage.

In contemporary Canada, if you want to become the leader of a major political party, some level of French fluency is expected. The notable exception was the Orange Wave in 2011, when the late NDP Leader Jack Layton, an anglophone born in Montreal but long based in Toronto, was able to transcend the French-fluency convention by the sheer power of personality and lead the NDP to a dramatic surge in Québec by taking seats away from the Bloc and the Liberals.

The most efficient way to find the fully bilingual Liberal leader that Duclos is requesting would be to look primarily at potential candidates from Québec. The two most recent Liberal Prime Ministers who served for long periods, Jean Chrétien and Justin Trudeau, were both Québec-based MPs. Still, many Liberals might think that the time has come for them to select a leader from Ontario, the Atlantic, or the West — a variation on the longstanding Liberal tradition of alternance between anglophone and francophone leaders.

Considering how Ontario and, especially the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), are crucial electorally for the Liberals, selecting a leader based in Ontario would make sense at this stage but this person would need to pass the “bilingualism test” and, to paraphrase Duclos, fully recognize the contribution of Québec to Canada. The same remark would apply to a potential Liberal leader from the Atlantic or the West.

Some readers might think that this focus on language is excessive and that francophone Québécois, like other Canadians, are primarily concerned by economic and social policy issues such trade with the United States, housing affordability, immigration, and health care. The reality is that most francophone Québécois are both concerned about these issues and focused on the future of the French language and the recognition of Québec’s “specificity”, or distinct nature, the two issues that Duclos alluded to in his remarks.

Liberals are facing an uphill electoral battle, as they have been in power for more than nine years and many voters are unhappy with the status quo, a situation that helps explain why the Conservatives are well ahead in the polls, though that is likely to change at least somewhat once a leadership campaign is fully underway.

At this point, with so little time to prepare and improve their public standing, finding a way to stay in power beyond the next federal election looks daunting for the Liberals. If they want to have a shot, they would be well advised to take seriously what Duclos is telling them, as you cannot succeed electorally in Québec if you don’t take the French language and the identity of the province seriously.

This is the case even if the next federal election campaign focuses largely on economic issues and/or the statements and policies of Donald Trump, who is likely to remain a major topic during the campaign across all of Canada.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director (on leave) of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.