Without actually doing anything, Francois Legault, former Parti Quebecois minister, has upset the Quebec political chessboard and thrown his former party into turmoil.
A hypothetical new party led by Legault is the most popular party in Quebec provincial politics. A recent CROP poll for La Presse gave it 39 per cent of the vote, to 22 per cent for the PQ and 21 per cent for the Liberals.
Great. Now all Legault needs is a party.
And a party needs people -to run as candidates, to collect and contribute money, and to form campaign organizations.
But people are noticeably missing from the proposed centre-right, soft-nationalist movement that Legault has talked about launching and maybe, eventually, turning into a political party.
Since word first got out a month ago that Legault had been talking to people about forming a movement, a lot of names of prominent potential supporters have been mentioned.
Trouble is, almost all of them have either turned down Legault's invitations to get involved, or, after initially showing interest, backed off. The only one who has publicly expressed interest in following Legault is entertainer Gregory Charles.
Now even Joseph Facal, a former PQ cabinet colleague of Legault who had been reported to be the co-founder of the movement, has publicly distanced himself from it.
After weeks of conspicuously avoiding the subject in his blog and his regular column in Le Journal de Montreal, Facal finally addressed it in a speech to a nationalist audience on Friday evening.
Rarely in recent times has there been so much interest in a Friday-evening political speech.
Facal delivered an analysis of the current state of the sovereignty movement that Legault is believed to largely share.
Describing himself as "a citizen without a membership card in any party," he said Quebec sovereignty remains desirable, necessary and feasible, but is not likely to obtain the support of a solid majority of Quebecers in the foreseeable future.
"The idea remains too strong for us to conclude that it will never lead to anything, but too weak to think that we will get there rapidly."
The Quebec people had "lost confidence in their elites, and maybe even a bit in itself." Quebecers also knew that sovereignty would mean "more work, more responsibility and more self-denial," and were "far from wanting it at any price."
And there was little that sovereignists could do to change that. Without mentioning them by name, Facal criticized one by one the positions in the current debate on sovereignist strategy taken by former premiers Bernard Landry and Jacques Parizeau and current PQ leader Pauline Marois.
He said sovereignists had to lose their "obsession" with the timing of another referendum.
Instead, they should occupy "the whole field of Quebec identity" with a "new Bill 101," new policies to integrate immigrants, an "explicit rejection" of Canadian multiculturalism and a "clarification of our rules of living together."
And they should use all the "non-negligible" powers that Quebec already has within the Canadian federal system to achieve "tangible collective successes in the areas that concern our citizens the most."
This would restore Quebecers' self-confidence while making them aware of the limitations of Canadian federalism and "once again receptive to settling the national question."
As for himself, alluding to his possible involvement in a new movement led by Legault, Facal said he has taken "no decision relative to my future" and felt "neither pressed nor even obliged to take one."
He was enjoying life after politics, and while he had also enjoyed being in politics, he was not "burning to return to it."
And asked by reporters after his speech about Legault's reported intention of forming a constitutionally neutral alliance of sovereignists and federalists, Facal said it was an interesting idea, but "extremely difficult" to achieve.
So Legault's movement appears to have lost its co-founder. And while the phantom party maintains its lead in the polls, it's starting to look like a party of one.
dmacpherson koL montrealgazette.com