The first debate of the campaign didn't produce many new promises. For the most part, the five leaders defended proposals we were already familiar with.
And that's a good thing.
A debate is not meant to be a collective press conference. Its purpose lies elsewhere: to place five visions of Quebec in the same room, to deprive the leaders of the comfort of a carefully prepared press release, and to see what remains when an opponent responds.
For two hours, Christine Fréchette, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, Éric Duhaime, Ruba Ghazal, and Charles Milliard had to debate their ideas rather than simply recite them. The debate was officially divided into three sections: the economy, taxes and services, and the future of Quebec. However, the outcome went beyond these three themes.
Three fault lines run through Quebec politics today.
The first contrasts continuity and change.
The second concerns the size and role of the state.
The third, despite all those who had buried it a little too quickly, remains the national question.
Fréchette: "I am not Legault." Okay. And then what?
Christine Fréchette probably had the most troublesome contradiction to drag around on set.
She leads a party that has been in power for eight years, but must convince voters that a government led by her would be different from that of François Legault.
She chose to tackle the problem head-on:
"I am not François Legault."
Alright.
The following question almost naturally arises: What's changing?
Her opponents have constantly brought her back to the CAQ's record. On spending, in particular, the promised break with the past is not so clear.
Last May, her own Finance Minister, Éric Girard, had already felt it necessary to remind her of the limits of her portfolio. In an email dated May 2, he wrote that Quebecers wanted a responsible premier who wouldn't spend "recklessly" and expressed concern about the number of announcements being considered.
When your own finance minister starts tightening the handbrake a few weeks after you arrive, the idea of a new culture of austerity still needs some demonstration.
Some expenses can obviously be justified. That's not the point.
If Fréchette wants to convince us that the Fréchette era will truly be different from the Legault era, she will have to show where the break lies, not simply assure us that it exists.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon naturally exploited this vulnerability, while Fréchette attacked the PQ's financial credibility in return.
This duel pretty much sums up the first division.
The CAQ wants to present the election as a choice between stability and uncertainty.
The PQ wants to use this as a judgment on eight years of CAQ government.
PSPP: Govern before only talking about referendums
The challenge of PSPP is almost the opposite.
His opponents want every conversation to end in the same place: the referendum.
He is trying to speak more like a potential prime minister than like the leader of a sovereignist movement.
Public financesHealth, homelessness, the economy: the message is quite clear. The PQ wants to convince people that it is capable of governing Quebec before asking Quebecers if they want to make it a country.
On homelessness, for example, when asked if a "super-minister" is needed, PSPP essentially replies that it will be him: he wants to personally take on the issue as prime minister.
It is a political response as much as an administrative one.
She said: look at me as a potential head of government, not just as the organizer of a referendum.
The CAQ, of course, has every interest in preventing him from getting out of this box. Fréchette therefore regularly brings the PQ back to the referendum.
PSPP accuses him of bringing out the old federalist rhetoric.
Perhaps. But a cassette usually continues to play as long as part of the audience still wants to hear it.
Second point of contention: how many states are needed?
It was probably in the confrontation between Éric Duhaime and Ruba Ghazal that the ideological differences were easiest to distinguish.
Duhaime doesn't just say that the CAQ is mismanaging the Quebec state. He questions parts of its size, its functions, and its interventions.
Ghazal assumes almost the opposite logic: when Québec solidaire identifies a problem in public services, housing, the environment or certain markets, it is generally more willing to have the State intervene directly.
The exchange about public grocery stores was almost a laboratory experiment.
Ghazal begins with a diagnosis: the grocery sector lacks competition and remains highly concentrated. She argues that a new public player could help lower prices and support local producers.
Duhaime responds with Cuba, SAAQclic and this question: if the State is already struggling to manage a transactional site, do we really want to entrust it with our vegetables?
The reply is restrained.
But it leaves a much more interesting question on the table.
If the problem is a lack of competition, why are there so few new competitors?
The Competition Bureau of Canada essentially asks the same question.
In his follow-up report published on September 3, he notes that most Canadians still buy their groceries from just five groups: Loblaw, Sobeys, Metro, Costco, and Walmart. He recommends, among other things, helping independent grocers expand, reducing barriers to entry for international players, and limiting real estate controls that can prevent competitors from setting up shop.
In other words, before asking the State to become a grocer, it would be useful to understand why our market produces so few new grocers.
If Ghazal says, "There isn't enough competition, let's create a public grocer," another possible response is:
"Not enough competition? Then let's start by removing what's preventing competitors from entering."
Same diagnosis.
Two completely different remedies.
The debate quickly shifted to Cuba and SAAQclic. The issue of entry barriers, however, remained unaddressed.
We will come back to this in another article.
This debate goes far beyond grocery stores.
The same divide can be found elsewhere.
In childcare services.
In healthcare.
In public administration.
Even while traveling.
Should we create or strengthen public structures further, or give more choice and latitude to citizens and suppliers?
Fréchette defends a good portion of the existing institutions.
Ghazal generally desires a more prominent public role.
Duhaime wants to reduce certain interventions or introduce more competition.
PSPP and Milliard occupy different intermediate positions depending on the cases.
This is a much more fundamental debate than who had the best soundbite.
When something is not working properly, do we need more public resources, a different organization, more competition, or a mixture of all three?
Quebec certainly did not resolve this issue on Tuesday evening.
But at least the debate made it visible.
Third division: Quebec within Canada
The national question remains very much alive, but it is no longer simply a confrontation between federalists and sovereigntists.
Charles Milliard clearly wanted to occupy the federalist space.
When PSPP stated that a Parti Québécois government would collaborate with Mark Carney and the other provinces when Quebec's interests converge, Milliard jumped in:
"That's new!"
Good formula.
The reality is a bit more complicated.
PSPP already argued that a Parti Québécois government could negotiate with Ottawa and build leverage when Quebec's interests demanded it. In the debate, he made it particularly clear that this leverage could coexist with cooperation.
A sovereigntist is not obliged to hang up when the Prime Minister of Canada calls.
The point of PSPP is rather that cooperation does not mean membership.
He can work with Ottawa when interests converge, while viewing federalism as a political framework he may eventually wish to leave.
Milliard's "That's new!" worked well in thirty seconds. It doesn't describe the nuance of the position as well once the stopwatch is stopped.
Milliard's problem: being a federalist is not enough
The real challenge for the Liberal leader lies elsewhere.
To say that the PLQ is federalist answers a question.
This does not fully answer the following question:
Why a Liberal government?
The Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) has long relied on the national question to structure a large part of its identity. If Milliard wants to rebuild the party, he will have to offer more than just opposition to the referendum.
He begins to outline a response based on budgetary realism and economic management.
Paul Larocque's very simple question about tax cuts clearly demonstrated this.
Duhaime wants a significant reduction in income tax.
Ghazal wants a reduction for the majority accompanied by a new tax on very high wealth.
Milliard is refusing a general cut for the time being, citing the state of public finances.
Fréchette postpones it until after the balance has been restored.
PSPP prefers certain tax reductions to a general decrease in personal income tax.
Surprisingly, this very simple question was one of the most revealing of the evening.
"Do you want to lower taxes?"
And suddenly, five priorities emerge.
This just goes to show that sometimes a six-word sentence can achieve more than a twenty-page speech. The experiment should be repeated.
Three divisions, not a single fight
The trap now would be to reduce the campaign to Christine Fréchette versus Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.
The face-off revealed something more interesting.
On the government's record, Fréchette and PSPP are vying for the right to embody the future after eight years of CAQ.
Regarding the role of the state, Duhaime and Ghazal illustrate two very different conceptions of how to solve economic and social problems.
On the national question, Milliard is trying to rebuild a federalist space, the CAQ is claiming autonomy and the PQ wants to demonstrate that a sovereignist government can nevertheless administer its relations with Ottawa normally.
These three fault lines do not overlap.
And that's probably the most useful thing the debate has taught us.
The questions that remain
Christine Fréchette will have to show where the Legault era truly ends and where her own "way of doing things" begins. Regarding spending, for now, the line remains to be defined.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon will have to explain how day-to-day government, pragmatic relations with Ottawa and preparation for a possible referendum would coexist.
Éric Duhaime will have to continue to translate his critique of the Quebec model into concrete policies beyond the formulas of debate.
Ruba Ghazal will have to explain why the public interventions she proposes constitute the appropriate mechanism for the problems she identifies, and how they would work in practice.
Charles Milliard will have to give the PLQ a political identity that transcends its historical federalism.
The Face-to-Face interview did not answer all of these questions.
He did something almost as useful.
He made them much harder to dodge.
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