Inside the Stunning Collapse of the Quebec Liberal Party

Quebec Liberal Party leader Pablo Rodriguez following his resignation as party leader. (Christinne Muschi / Canadian Press)

This story was originally published on thewalrus.ca

By Caitlin Walsh Miller

After two-and-a-half years without a permanent leader, the Quebec Liberal Party finally elected one last summer. Now, they’re leaderless again. A week before Christmas, Pablo Rodriguez resigned amid allegations of vote buying, plunging a once-dominant political machine back into crisis. The Liberals are now polling around 20 percent and scrambling to rebuild trust with a base that’s fed up with the disarray and fleeing. Meanwhile, support for the governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) has collapsed; according to recent polls, François Legault is Canada’s least popular premier.

In this vacuum, the Parti Québécois (PQ) has surged ahead, dominating the polls for the last two years, even as it pledges a sovereignty referendum that most Quebecers say they don’t want. All this with a provincial election scheduled for October. “I say this without hyperbole,” says poll analyst Philippe J. Fournier, “but this election has no precedent in Quebec history, at least in the last fifty years.”

At stake is more than one party’s fortunes. The Liberals have been Quebec’s federalist anchor for generations, but their collapse comes precisely as the PQ is positioned to win a majority and trigger that referendum. If the Liberals can’t rebuild by October, voters will be left with a tricky choice: a vote on sovereignty most don’t want—at least not now—a governing party they’ve soured on, or a smaller party that hasn’t been tested. When the referendum comes, it’s not clear who will be left to make the case for Canada.

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It hasn’t been a stellar millennium for the Quebec Liberal Party, as Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, says. After governing for much of the 2000s, the Liberals entered the final years of former premier Jean Charest’s tenure deeply weakened. Despite winning three successive mandates, Charest’s approval had sunk to 27 percent by 2012.

That collapse accelerated amid two destabilizing shocks: the Maple Spring—months of mass student strikes sparked by Liberal-proposed tuition hikes—and the Charbonneau commission, which exposed widespread corruption and illegal party financing across Quebec politics, staining the Liberals in particular. The party