CAQ Congress in Sherbrooke: François Legault will submit to a vote of confidence
Posted May 12, 2023 11:57 am.
QUEBEC CITY – Will the Premier and leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) François Legault armour be scratched at the end of the national convention held this weekend in Sherbrooke?
The Caquist leader must pass the test of the vote of confidence of the delegates, for a second time in his career. In 2014, François Legault received a staggering 97.2 per cent.
The 2020 confidence vote was cancelled due to the pandemic.
Friday, the CAQ had its worst polling since 2018, after the abandonment of several of its flagship promises- including the one to build a third road link between Quebec City and Levis has caused a stir.
Will the 850 or so members of the CAQ gathered in Sherbrooke on Saturday and Sunday be tempted to express some grumbling?
One thing is certain, the bar is high: the person who is benefiting from the CAQ’s decline in the polls, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, obtained 98.5 per cent of the support when delegates voted on his leadership last March.
In recent history, the confidence vote exercise has sometimes been painful, even fateful, for political party leaders.
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In Ottawa, Martine Ouellet, then leader of the Bloc Québécois, was shown the door in 2018 with 32 per cent support.
In 2016, Thomas Mulcair of the New Democratic Party scored 48 per cent, well below his target of 70 per cent. However, he remained in office until his successor was named in 2017.
In Quebec, in 2005, Bernard Landry, then Leader of the Opposition, resigned after receiving the surprise support of 76.2 per cent of convention delegates.
In addition to Landry’s shock departure, Parti Québécois (PQ) conventions have been perilous ordeals for other leaders as well.
In 1996, Lucien Bouchard, despite the aura surrounding him following the 1995 referendum, won 76.7 per cent of the votes cast by PQ militants. But Jacques Parizeau, in 1992, won 92 per cent of the votes of his troops.
In 1982, after threatening to resign, the founding father of the PQ, Premier René Levesque, obtained a score of 95 per cent.
The caquistes who will meet in Sherbrooke will debate 32 proposals, many of which deal with energy. “The energy transition is the challenge of the century,” reads the proposals booklet.
They want to build new dams, improve the energy efficiency of buildings in Quebec, and require the installation of an electric charging station in any gas station with more than six pumps.
For young people, it is proposed to offer $1,000 to the parents of each child born in Quebec, in the form of a payment into a registered education savings plan (RESP).
They also want parents to be able to withdraw an amount from their registered retirement savings plan (RRSP), exempt from provincial tax, to contribute to a down payment for their child’s first principal residence.
In addition, some Caquists are calling on Ottawa to give them full control over the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
Some will also use the convention to call on the government to end the monopoly of the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ). Finance Minister Eric Girard, however, has closed the door on this idea.
– This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 12, 2023.
