L. Ian MacDonald

May 9, 2023

As the once-mighty Quebec Liberal Party continues to sift through the entrails of the worst electoral showing in its 155-year history, it has turned to a white knight at once surprising and entirely logical.

On Monday night in the Unitarian Church hall in Westmount — Montreal’s leafy bastion of Liberal solidity both federal and provincial — a Town Hall addressed the question of how to rebuild from the rout of last October 3rd, which reduced the party of Robert Bourassa and Jean Lesage to 21 of 125 seats and 14.4 percent of the popular vote; less than half its previous low point.

The discussion was about values, specifically the party’s brand as the defender of minority rights, the minority in this province being Liberal-voting anglophones.

“Collective rights,” said André Pratte — former editor-in-chief of La Presse, former independent senator and legendary veteran of the federalist trenches — “do not apply when individual rights are not respected.”

Language rights have made a major comeback here since nationalist premier François Legault passed the province’s latest polarizing language law — Bill 96 — one year ago. As the author of too many editorials on the subject to count, Pratte is as well-versed an authority as anyone in the province if not the country.

Respect for individual rights?

“That,” Pratte said, “is the Liberal way of doing things.”

The audience, including Liberal MNAs Desirée McGraw (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce) and Jennifer Maccarone (Westmount-St.-Louis) and former provincial and federal cabinet minister Raymond Garneau nodded in approval.

Pratte recently took on what is effectively the role of special rapporteur on how to resuscitate the party. In this mission he serves as co-chair, with MNA Madwa-Nika Cadet, of the Committee to Revive the Quebec Liberal Party. The “ideally before the next provincial election in 2026” goes without saying.

Some have suggested Pratte himself as a potential leader. After a stint taking the party’s pulse in the wilderness, he could emerge the prohibitive front-runner, whether he likes it or not.

In a recent Montreal Gazette op-ed, Pratte and Cadet laid the general groundwork for their listening tour:

“As a nation, as a democracy, Quebec needs Liberal ideas, among others: the conviction that Quebec is best able to develop through dynamic and autonomous participation in the Canadian federation; the determined preservation and promotion of the French language and culture, while respecting the fundamental rights of all Quebecers; a belief in economic development, particularly the prosperity of Quebec’s regions, as a driving force for social justice, while respecting the environment; the conviction that the Quebec state must be human, decentralized and at the service of Quebecers, while respecting their ability to pay.”

The question of political succession looms over this process. The Liberals managed to remain as the official opposition last October only because of their share of the popular vote in the Montreal region. The party’s leader, Dominique Anglade, resigned five weeks later. Anglade had run an excellent campaign of ideas that were of little interest to Quebecers beyond the reach of the Liberals, especially off the Island of Montreal. The first question is, who will fill the job now? The second question is, who would want it?

Some have suggested Pratte himself as a potential leader. After a stint taking the party’s pulse in the wilderness, he could emerge the prohibitive front-runner, whether he likes it or not.

With the Parti Québécois, founded in 1968 by the formidable René Lévesque,  father of sovereignty-association, also a husk of its former self, the province’s defining debate has moved beyond “la question nationale” as McGill Institute for the Study of Canada Director Daniel Béland recently wrote in Policy, to questions of religious and cultural diversity and human rights.

And that debate, as much as the one that roiled the province and the country for four decades, is right in André Pratte’s wheelhouse.

L. Ian MacDonald is Editor and Publisher of Policy Magazine.