The CAQ wanted to change Quebec politics. With just days to go before the election, it seems to be mainly looking for lifeboats.
When Charles Milliard gave Christine Fréchette the nickname "Captain Titanic"The phrase had all the makings of a good, killer line in an election debate. Short, nasty, easy to remember.
He probably didn't anticipate that the CAQ would then devote so much energy to making the metaphor credible.
Just days before the election, Léger places the CAQ at 16% of voting intentionsin fourth place, behind the PQ at 30%, the PLQ at 26%, and the PCQ at 18%. A week earlier, the CAQ was still at 20%. Even more revealing, 74% of Quebecers say they want a change of government.
The Titanic, at least, had the excuse of not having seen the iceberg.
The CAQ has polls.
A shipwreck that didn't begin yesterday.
However, it would be too easy to blame everything on Christine Fréchette.
She did not build the ship.
She inherited it when the water was already rising in the holds.
The CAQ came to power in 2018 with an attractive promise: to break with the alternation between Liberals and Parti Québécois, to govern pragmatically and to offer Quebecers a nationalism without eternal referendum crises.
For a while, the formula worked.
Then eight years in power subjected the grand promises to a test that is generally fatal:
the results.
We were promised change.
We have had reorganizations.
We were promised that the healthcare system would be put back on track.
We had contact with Santé Québec.
And when Santé Québec is no longer sufficient, they bring out the organizational charts, the agencies, the new structures and the new administrative boxes.
The old child's contraption becomes a hayseed-like monstrosity.
Perhaps someone should have gone down to see why the floor was tilted after moving the chairs around on the deck.
Frechette at the pump
The CAQ's problems did not begin with Christine Fréchette. They are the product of wear and tear accumulated over two terms.
Fréchette did not create the breach. She inherited a ship that was already taking on water. She tried to plug the hull and refloat it, but soundings suggest that the water is continuing to rise.
So it's not for lack of trying to bail out the building.
But here's the thing: when the water comes in faster than it can be pumped out, the change of captain eventually becomes secondary.
Then someone took out the drill
As if the ship didn't already have enough problems, the CAQ has managed to turn a serious question about possible American interference into a formidable exercise in political self-mutilation.
The situation was already delicate.
Then we learned that Christine Fréchette's team had contacted several media outlets as early as September 12th. Regarding possible interference, several days before the outgoing premier herself said she had been informed of the matter, Fréchette stated that she was unaware of these developments and that she intended to get to the bottom of what had happened within her own team.
This can be called several things.
Accidental scuttling It does, however, possess a certain degree of maritime precision.
The ship was already taking on water.
The passengers were beginning to look at the canoes.
The instruction was simple: do not make any new holes in the hull.
Clearly, it should have been printed in larger type.
Eight years to build the problem
If the CAQ suffers a debacle on October 5, the temptation will be great to blame Christine Fréchette and her campaign.
That would be far too convenient.
The coalition built by François Legault was remarkably broad: nationalists, former ADQ members, centre-right voters, Francophone federalists, voters tired of the old PQ-PLQ duel.
Such a coalition constitutes a formidable electoral machine when it remains united.
When it falls apart, everyone returns to their political home.
And that is precisely what the current campaign seems to show.
Among Francophones, the latest Léger poll places the PQ at 37%, the PCQ to 19% and the CAQ at only 18%.
The problem is therefore not simply that the CAQ is losing voters.
She loses them in several directions at once.
The boat doesn't just list to port or starboard.
It's falling apart.
The club of fleeting encounters
This is where Milliard's quip takes on an almost prophetic character.
Christine Fréchette did not create the catastrophe. She took command at a time when eight years of decisions, promises, compromises and accumulated discontent seemed to be coming to an end.
And if the polls are reflected at the ballot box, her time as prime minister could be remarkably short.
Canada already has a spectacular precedent: Kim Campbell, the country's first female prime minister, took office in 1993 before the historic defeat of the progressive-conservatives that same year.
In Quebec, Pauline Marois, the first woman to hold the position of prime minister, governed from September 19, 2012 to April 23, 2014.
Fréchette therefore risks finding herself in a rather peculiar political club: that of women who have reached the top of the executive branch only to discover almost immediately that the top was built on a trapdoor.
She had been given command with the mission to save the ship.
She is more likely to go down in history as the captain who barely had time to reach the bridge before the evacuation was announced.
The party of change
There are still a few days left before the vote.
Polls are not results. Voters can still surprise analysts, parties, and projections. They have this annoying habit of not behaving like neat little Excel cells.
But when a party finds itself at 16%In fourth position, after dominating Quebec politics for two terms, we are no longer simply talking about a bad week of campaigning.
We are possibly witnessing the end of a political cycle.
The CAQ was born promising to replace the old parties.
Eight years later, she discovers one of the oldest laws of politics:
Sooner or later, the party of change becomes the party that people want to change.
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