Losing hurts, or why the PQ chose Jean-François Lisée as their leader
How can Lisée rebuild the PQ into a party capable of winning elections again?
Early in the Parti Québécois leadership race, a former adviser to the party took to calling it "a losing machine" in a series of columns in the Journal de Montréal.
The description, if harsh, was based on the party's recent struggles at the ballot box. Since 2003, they have only been in power for an 18-month period, and only with a minority government at that.
Even the Maple Spring and the ethical tribulations of the later Charest years weren't enough to propel the PQ to a majority.
Losing hurts. And it is perhaps that sentiment, more than anything else, that helps explain the party's decision to entrust its future with Jean-François Lisée.
How do you dismantle a losing machine?
The central plank of Lisée's campaign was a promise not to hold a referendum in the first term of a PQ government.
A Liberal party hobbled by ethics scandals, as both past and present Liberal governments have been, could always hold out the fear of a referendum to reel back ambivalent supporters.
Quebec's economy has put up passable numbers in recent quarters. Quebecers, already debt-laden, will jeopardize this fragile growth by voting for the PQ, or so goes the argument of Premier Philippe Couillard.
By removing the referendum question, at least in the short-term, the party is hoping to cover its Achilles heel.
Lisée's strategy looked like a gamble at the outset of the race. But as voting day drew near there coalesced a feeling among PQ members that this made him the most dangerous candidate in the eyes of Liberals.
A cartoon that appeared in Le Devoir when polls opened last week was telling in this respect. It showed Couillard kneeling before a statue of Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.
Couillard is seen praying for the election of Martine Ouellet, the only candidate to explicitly promise a referendum in the PQ's first term. Behind him is Couillard's House leader, Jean-Marc Fournier.
"Second choice: anyone but Lisée. Amen," the Fournier figure says.
The long road ahead
But, of course, taking the referendum off the table doesn't guarantee the PQ victory in the 2018 provincial election. It simply means they won't gift the election to the Liberals.
Going forward, building a winning machine means articulating a coherent alternative. That will take some work.
The party currently holds 28 seats, compared to the Liberals' 70, the Coalition Avenir Québec's 20 and Québec Solidaire's three.
Mathematically, the PQ needs to steal seats from the Liberals and the CAQ, two economically conservative parties.
In Lisée's victory speech, he called the Liberals a party obsessed with austerity. And he repeatedly described the CAQ as a "right-wing federalist party."
For good measure, he accused their leader, one-time PQ cabinet François Legault, of having gone over to the "dark side" for having left the sovereigntist camp. There was no hint of irony in his voice.
It sounded as if Lisée plans to mount his Liberal ambush from the left. Problem is, there's not much ground to be gained there.
The inner workings of the winning machine still have to be worked out.
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