Who doesn’t remember the boxing match that pitted Justin Trudeau against Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau in 2012? Faced with an opponent more powerful than himself, Mr. Trudeau had begun the fight by parry his blows and waited for him to run out to pass him a K.-O. technique.
This is a bit like what happened during the last campaign. During the first rounds, he had to deal with the crisis in Afghanistan and the difficulty of justifying the calling of the elections that everyone criticized him for. He regained the upper hand thanks to anti-vaccine protests and Erin O’Toole’s hiccups on the issue of guns and child care.
Only he knows if he wants to lead the Liberal troops in the next election, but he will undertake his mandate on the run-up to his end of the campaign, and no one will dare to overthrow him for a while. He will have the elbow room to leave his mark and achieve what he believes is good for Canada. No matter how much he claims to be and always will be a Quebecer, he is nonetheless a Canadian first and foremost.
With his demeanor, his tattoos and his avowed objective of hurting his opponent, it was not difficult to see in Senator Brazeau the symbol of this country “petty, small-minded, closed, anti-intellectual” that Mr. Trudeau reproached Stephen Harper for wanting to make Canada and against which he promised to fight “to his last breath”.
Of course, he will never express it in these terms, but it is undoubtedly what he also thinks of the Quebec of François Legault, even if the latter claims to be of the “effective left”, and he will do everything in his power. power to stand in the way. Mr. Legault decided to intervene in the campaign and he lost his bet. In view of the election results, Mr. Trudeau has no reason to feel disowned. It is better to tie our toques because it could be very windy.
Once again, Mr. Trudeau sees the child care model developed here as a step forward from which all Canadians should benefit. He therefore has no objection to Quebec receiving fair compensation for the sums it has invested in it.
It is quite different in the field of health. He is not the only one to have been upset by the slaughter of spring 2020 in CHSLDs, and he knows that many Quebecers would welcome the imposition of “national standards”, no matter how hard it is. is an area of provincial jurisdiction.
Seeing the Legault government so determined to swallow billions in the third Quebec-Lévis road link, many say to themselves that it may not be such a bad idea to impose certain conditions rather than signing a blank check.
It is true that all the provinces are calling for a massive and unconditional increase in federal health transfers, but Mr. Trudeau knows very well how fragile these common fronts are. The history of these negotiations shows that in the end, Quebec is too often the turkey of the farce. Gaétan Barrette must still have the high five that the Minister of Health, Jane Philpott, was given in the middle of the House of Commons in 2017, after she had signed a series of agreements with the other provinces that halved the increase in transfers.
Mr. Legault is very comfortable in the role of defender of the fields of jurisdiction of Quebec and has no objection to being presented as the heir of Duplessis. To varying degrees, all of his predecessors attempted to counter the encroachments of Ottawa. Occasionally, Philippe Couillard even raised his voice.
The political dynamics in Quebec will be entertaining to say the least over the next few months. The PLQ supported Mr. Legault’s demands on the federal parties, but Dominique Anglade will necessarily have to distance himself from them in this election year. Rather, it will reproach him for misusing the sums that Quebec already has.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois erred in stating that he was not interested in jurisdictional disputes. Everyone understands that QS wants the advent of a socialist republic, but politics is also the art of the possible and the management of the present. Letting the Quebec state shrivel up in its current form cannot constitute progress.
As for the PQ, even the Bloc Québécois now seems to regard it as negligible. Moreover, some are already thinking of 2026, when his disappearance will have cut the emotional bond that prevents many from considering a new vehicle other than QS to achieve independence.