It's Time to Mind Your Ps and Qs in Québec – again

Jim Withers

Here we go again.

Fifty years after being first elected, the Parti Québécois is back in the driver’s seat, ready to pick fights with Ottawa, and pour sugar in the gas tank, just to show that the old car (Canada) doesn’t run so well anymore, and needs to be replaced by that shiny, new sports car (Québec independence). With Ottawa fighting a fierce trade war with our erstwhile ally to the south, and MAGA land sneakily trying to support the separatist movement in Alberta, Canadians needed this latest turn of events like a hole in the head. Carney, attache ta tuque!

The (sort of) good news is that the PQ failed to score a majority in the Oct. 5 vote, and says it won’t inflict on us a third referendum on separation until Trump is out of office. (I see this as a tacit admission that Québec is, temporarily at least, better off being part of a united Canada in order to fend off our hostile southern neighbour. If Québec doesn’t need Canada, why not call for a referendum right away?)

While the Péquistes won as expected, Québec Conservatives were literally popping champagne corks after they captured, not only their first seat in 91 years, but 19 of them. Who’s Tory now? And who’s CAQ? After eight years in power, CAQ was wiped off the map.

The fact that the PQ won close to half the available seats with only 28% of the vote, once again demonstrates the absurdity of our first-past-the-post electoral system, and reminds me of what that bulbous-nosed, soused sage W.C. Fields said, “Hell, I never vote for anybody. I always vote against.”

FPTP often leaves Canadians having to vote strategically – not necessarily for the candidate we want to win, but for the one with the best chance to defeat the candidate we most want to lose. It’s time Canada adopted ranked-choice voting. Not to get too nerdy about it, but it reduces wasted votes, encourages candidates to campaign outside their base, and produces results closer to a general consensus of what the electorate actually wants.

I don’t think we got that in this election.