Quebec election: Liberals, Anglade attempt to turn around struggling campaign
With polls suggesting her party could be relegated to third place in the Oct. 3 election, Quebec Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade is trying to turn around her team's fortunes by putting more of herself forward.
Speaking to a lunchtime crowd at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce Tuesday, Anglade discarded prepared remarks in favour of a more conversational, personal tone as she paced the stage.
Anglade said later those close to her have told her they want to see more of the Dominique they know on the trail. And while she says she is comfortable with her party's record, Anglade clearly wants to flip the script on her campaign.
"I am neither Philippe Couillard, nor Jean Charest, nor Robert Bourassa" she said in reference to previous Liberal leaders and premiers. "I am Dominique. That's who I am. And there is no need to compare me with men who have gone before."
Polls suggest the Liberals and the three other main opposition parties are in a logjam for second, with Francois Legault's Coalition Avenir Quebec well ahead in top spot.
The Liberals, who had 27 of the legislature's 125 seats going into the election, have alternated between government and opposition throughout their history. But with the party in single-digit support among francophone voters and seeing their traditional anglophone base eaten away, even official Opposition is not longer a sure thing.
Valerie-Anne Maheo, a political science professor at Universite Laval, said the COVID-19 pandemic didn't help matters as opposition politicians were largely sidelined. Some parties have been better at crafting an image of their leader, whereas Anglade has heard a lot of questions about previous Liberal leaders about her time as president of the CAQ.
"For the opposition, it's been hard for them to have a voice in terms of Quebec's governance and for the leaders to be known, to be heard, for Quebecers to know their style,who they are, what are their ideas," Maheo said.
"So I think she's trying to regain the narrative on who she is and what she represents and showing herself as a personable, relatable person is something that will help her on election day."
But Maheo said the Quebec Liberals have struggled to find a platform that is distinct from the other parties, no longer having the threat of sovereignty and the economy to fall back on.
David Heurtel, a lawyer, political commentator and former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister, said that while other parties have a clear identity, the Liberals haven't been able to rebrand.
Heurtel said the rise of Legault's party, created in 2011, has robbed the Liberals of their claim to be the party of the economy, so it leaves the question: "Who are they?"
"Dominque Anglade, the leader has been unable to answer that question, and on top of that, she's been responsible for a lot of self-inflicted wounds during this campaign," Heurtel said.
"She's very good on policy. She's had a lot of trouble connecting on the ground with voters, francophone and anglophone, on what I call kitchen table issues."
Anglade has been dogged by a sluggish campaign start which saw the party struggling to find candidates for all 125 ridings, including typically safe Liberal seats. Ahead of the first leaders debate last week, the Liberal team was forced to admit the debt figures in its costed platform were off by $16 billion.
Some good news came late Wednesday when a Liberal candidate in Matane-Matapedia who was rejected by a local election officials saw Quebec Superior Court overturn that decision, meaning the party will field a full slate across the province.
Going into the campaign, the party was dealing with anger from the anglophone community over how it handled the adoption of Bill 96, a the CAQ government's language-law reform.
Anglade said this week she is still confident she can win and will stay on as Liberal leader, although her own Montreal riding of St-Henri-Ste-Anne is considered a tough, three-way race.
Poll-aggregator website QC125.com most recently had the Liberals winning 16 seats, enough for second place.
"We're talking about a major political party, one that's been part of the bipartisan system for so long in Quebec," Maheo said, saying it doesn't bode well they could end up with as many votes as Quebec solidaire, which has been a third-place party and is nipping at its heels.
Former Liberal cabinet minister Luc Fortin, who was in the audience for the luncheon, said renewal is essential to the party's future.
Fortin says it's clear that austerity measures brought in between 2014 and 2018 by the previous Liberal government displeased voters. "I was a member of that government and we received, let's say, a very clear verdict from the people of Quebec in 2018, so, I think that things could not have continued in the direction in which they were going," Fortin said.
He said he's not worried about the Liberal party's ability to mount a comeback, and he believes Anglade's progressive platform is the right approach, but she hasn't had enough time to become known since becoming leader in 2020.
So as all other party leaders hunkered down Wednesday preparing for the final debate Thursday night, Anglade was out campaigning, making an announcement and granting a few media interviews.
"For sure I'm going to go full steam until Oct. 3, there's no question about that," she said in the Montreal suburb of St-Lambert.
"What you see is the Dominque I would love to see written (about) somewhere .... I would love to see this level of energy that we have in our campaign reflected in the media."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 22, 2022.
-- With files from Jacob Serebrin.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Guilty: Trump becomes first former U.S. president convicted of felony crimes
Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
Can Trump come to Canada now that he's a convicted felon?
A Canadian immigration lawyer says now that Donald Trump is a convicted felon, he is technically barred from crossing the border into Canada.
Montreal tech billionaire charged with several sex offences
Robert Miller was charged Thursday with several sexual assault charges after Montreal police reopened an investigation into the tech billionaire.
Police: 3 killed, including suspected gunman, in Minneapolis shooting
Three people, including the suspected gunman, are dead after a shooting Thursday at a Minneapolis apartment complex, police said.
'Why didn't they stop?' Mom asks of driver in hit-and-run crash that killed son
The mother of a 13-year-old boy who was killed in a hit-and-run in Edmonton is begging the driver to come forward.
The northern lights are returning to night skies across Canada this Friday
If you missed the brilliant displays of the aurora borealis over North America on May 10, you may have another chance to see them on Friday night.
A pair enjoyed pricey meals and bolted when it was time to pay. Their dine and dash ended in jail
A Welsh couple who dined out on pricey meals and bolted when the bill came is now paying the price, behind bars.
$400K in damages for B.C. woman who had unnecessary mastectomy was 'inordinately high,' court finds
A jury's award of $400,000 to a woman who had a mastectomy after being misdiagnosed with breast cancer has been substantially reduced by B.C.'s highest court, which found the damages were "wholly disproportionate."