At the Parti Québécois, times are terribly hard. On its decline for 25 years and at 10% support among Francophones, its end promises to be imminent. In the October 3 ballot, Pascal Bérubé, the highly respected MP for Matane, is likely to emerge as the only survivor.
Understanding this, including the non-realization of sovereignty, like many other former PQ members before them, former Bloc member Caroline St-Hilaire and Bernard Drainville joined the CAQ.
If the trend continues, the Bloc Québécois will therefore have survived its own PQ flagship. Who would’ve believed that ?
However, it is one thing to see what is obvious and to analyze it. It’s a whole other story for one of his former bosses to struggle to refrain from applauding.
In interviews following the unveiling of the statue of former Prime Minister Jacques Parizeau, this is what Lucien Bouchard did.
In an interview with Patrice Roy, he said of the PQ that “if the vehicle is worn out and people no longer want it, we will choose another one”. Even adding that he “deserves not to be well”.
And the project of a country? It will transform, but “it may not be a sovereignist, separatist project, as they say”. What an understatement.
Save the QLP
We already knew that Mr. Bouchard, even when he led it, never carried the PQ in his heart. That he always considered it too “radical”. That he is the political mentor and close friend of François Legault. That he was also very favorable to the creation of the CAQ.
But from there to shoot the “vehicle” that he himself drove after the departure of Mr. Parizeau, it is to lose his Latin. Especially since in the same breath, Mr. Bouchard’s heart was bleeding profusely for the PLQ.
“In the future, he said with emotion, this party, a great party, must be reconstituted”. He therefore called on the Liberals to reform their historic coalition of Anglophones, Allophones and Francophone federalists and nationalists.
However, “it takes a goldsmith to manage a coalition,” he added. They had it with Robert Bourassa. They would have had it with Mario Dumont. In other words, good riddance to the PQ, but to save Quebec democracy, according to him, the PLQ must pull itself together so that there is at least one alternative to the CAQ.
Saddened and shocked
The Liberals, crumbling under the exodus of several deputies, must pinch themselves with joy. At the antipodes, in a muscular letter that she addressed yesterday to Mr. Bouchard, Mrs. Alice Lévesque, sister of René Lévesque, did not mince her words.
(Mr. Bouchard also chairs the Year Lévesque commemorating the centenary of the birth of René Lévesque, former Prime Minister and founder of the PQ.)
Disconcerted by his double standards towards the PQ and the PLQ, Ms. Lévesque wrote to him that he had “the right to no longer believe in the Parti Québécois of 2022” and to “criticize it”.
“But, she adds, I was very saddened and shocked that you condemned the party of the one you are honoring this year, the party that always carries its option loud and clear. This party has suffered many blows in its history, I did not expect yours, so scathing. »
In other words, as a former leader of the same party and ex-prime minister, Mr. Bouchard would have been wise to refrain from firing so hard on the hearse of the PQ.
Please do not send flowers, as they say in obituaries. Wouldn’t that have been enough?
