Pauline Marois is an unpopular leader heading a party whose raison d'être - sovereignty - does not appeal to the vast majority of Quebec voters.
Afraid for her own political future, Marois turned on the weekend to the politics of fear. Without a glimmer of shame, she bet the house on the linguistic/identity card.
The weekend meeting of about 500 Parti Québécois members from across the province rang with warnings of renewed language wars and the need to impose Bill 101 at every educational level, from daycare to college.
Marois accused the Charest government of doing nothing while Montreal falls to the pernicious influence of anglophones. Rising to the challenge of "making Montreal French again," Marois set out her version of the Hérouxville manifesto.
But where the citizens of that small community set out to teach allophones how to be a proper Quebecer, Marois just airbrushed the foreigners out, along with their hijabs and unfamiliar customs. Instead, in their place, she stuck the stock evil figure of the anglophone.
English daycares, schools and colleges are leading to the "erosion" of French on the island of Montreal, Marois charged. This is demagoguery, unworthy of an important elected official in Quebec.
The statistics are clear: In 2002, 43 per cent of of allophones who came through the French-language school system switched into an English-language CEGEP. Five years later, that percentage had dropped to 40 per cent. In other words, the trend is headed the right way, if the goal is increased francization.
There is no increase in the proportion of Montrealers who speak English. In 1996, we made up 25.6 per cent of Montrealers ; 10 years later, that figure had dropped slightly. There was, it's true, a small drop among Montrealers who spoke French at home.
But the slack was taken up, not by anglophones, but by immigrants. This should not be news to a would-be Quebec premier. Even with its currently strong birth rate, Quebec's population growth - and economic vibrancy - is partly fuelled by immigrants.
Francophones are not being driven away. They head off-island in search of lower property taxes and bigger backyards. If Marois wants them to stay in Montreal, she should stop playing to the regions and give Montreal the help it needs to remain attractive to its residents.
And more than anything else, she should stop pandering to ignorance. Ninety per cent of Quebec francophones think French is threatened. It isn't.
An outbreak of hostilities on the language front is the last thing Quebec needs. The PQ might be desperate, but it will be the whole province that pays.