In his navy-blue suits and with his background as an accountant by profession who became a millionaire in business, François Legault is anything but a stereotypical revolutionary.
Yet it was literally a revolutionary message Legault delivered Friday evening at the opening of his Coalition Avenir Québec party’s founding convention.
Criticizing Premier Jean Charest for joking earlier in the day about student protests (which Charest foolishly denied doing, despite the evidence to the contrary on television), Legault said:
“That guy does not have the credibility, does not have the legitimacy to manage Quebec.”
It was an extraordinary remark. Words have meaning, and Legault’s use of the word “legitimacy” had serious implications.
On a day when students and anarchists had rioted in Montreal against Charest, here was the leader of an opposition party apparently encouraging them and justifying a revolt against a duly-elected government by declaring its head to be illegitimate.
The constitution of Canada and the laws of Quebec contradict Legault.
In fact, Legault contradicted himself not even 24 hours later, when he said in his closing speech to the convention that the premier he had called illegitimate must stay in office rather than resign.
This was so that the “illegitimate” premier could undertake, on behalf of the province, negotiations with student leaders that Legault said could not wait for a 33-day election campaign.
Legault then arguably contradicted himself again, saying the government must maintain the increases in university tuition fees it has announced.
That is, the government must open “negotiations” with the students by again rejecting their key demand, which is the outright cancellation of the increases. Such negotiations probably wouldn’t last long.
Fortunately for Legault, he made the remarks on a Friday evening and a Saturday afternoon. So they would have attracted relatively little public notice even on a weekend not dominated by news of anti-government protests.
But in an election campaign, the remarks could have resulted in a controversy putting Legault on the defensive for days.
Legault was a Parti Québécois member of the National Assembly for 11 years, a cabinet minister for the first five of them, and then one of the most effective members of the PQ opposition.
But he is untested as a leader in an election campaign. And even with his political experience, he still has a reputation for choking under pressure.
A revealing behind-the-scenes report on the launching of the CAQ by journalist Alec Castonguay, in the current L’actualité magazine, notes that Legault not only is a poor public speaker but is also easily rattled by journalists’ questions for which he is not prepared.
“He doesn’t ‘skate’ well,” his senior adviser, Martin Koskinen, is quoted as saying. “He’s incapable of lying. It shows in his face when he doesn’t expect a question and he looks destabilized.”
But when Legault made his remarks about Charest, he didn’t blurt them out under the pressure of a televised leaders’ debate or a media scrum during a gruelling election campaign.
Rather, he made his remark about Charest’s lack of “legitimacy” in the relatively controlled conditions of a speech to a sympathetic audience.
L’actualité also reports that Legault was only his own third choice for leader of the party he was launching, after first Lucien Bouchard, former PQ premier, and then Philippe Couillard, former Liberal health minister, turned him down.
After the CAQ’s weekend convention, it’s not clear whether the leader it ended up with will turn out to be more of an asset in an election than a liability.
dmacpherson MbH montrealgazette.com
Twitter: MbH MacphersonGaz