Month: January 2026

With Francois Legault gone, two Quebec parties will be choosing new leaders for this fall’s election, offering Québécois a unique opportunity to make a new choice for our collective future. 

Every election is a chance to shuffle the deck – but not every election carries the same potential for real change. François Legault’s surprise announcement yesterday that he is stepping down as party leader was greeted as (variously) “seismic” “a shake-up” or “a shock” depending on who you happened to catch during yesterday’s all-day media blitz of political commentary. 

Read more: Québec’s Change Moment

With no incumbent premier, and no obvious successor in view, suddenly anything seems possible again. Short days ago, it looked as though Parti québécois leader Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon (PSPP) dominated centre court, standing alone amid the shambles of parties in various states of decline or reconstruction as he readied his team for a third referendum, veux, veux pas. 

Today, the playing field looks very different as our horizon of options has suddenly opened up. The PLQ managed to quickly turn the page on their pre-holiday debacle and can thank Pablo Rodriguez for having the good graces to not allow his bogged-down leadership drag on into the new year. And now the CAQ, which had been barely polling as still having a pulse, will launch their own leadership race — meaning that not just one but two major Quebec parties will be choosing a new leader and with them, a new direction.  

Mission Drift

It’s worthy of note that the CAQ was a thinktank before it was a party, founded as an alternative to the federalist-sovereignist stalemate. They proposed a new way forward, focusing on five main objectives: education, access to healthcare, reduction of the wealth gap with our Ontario neighbours, preservation of Québec language and culture, and public integrity. 

We’ve had a chance over the past few days to rehash how several of these objectives fell to the wayside. There was of course a pandemic that pushed all other considerations temporarily aside, simultaneously revealing the weaknesses of our health care system and the strengths of the individuals who do their best to hold it together through sheer effort and dedication.  

But more than anything else, it was the party’s obsession over identity issues and its dogged pursuit of tenuous vanity projects (Northvolt is one, Québec’s “troisième lien” is another) that caused the party to drift, reflecting in their performance in the polls and personally on François Legault’s leadership. 

Leadership transition is challenging for any organization hoping to outlive its founder, but especially when, as with the CAQ, that founder has left an indelible mark after decades as leader. It will be difficult for the next leader to emerge from Legault’s shadow and revitalize the party in the short time remaining before the election in the absence of a Carney-like “savior” waiting in the wings. 

It is of note that Legault’s departure as leader is yet another element signalling the final years of the reign of the Baby Boomers (although they don’t like to hear it). His departure from the political scene underscores a generational shift in Québec to the Gen X’s and Y’s, and with them a very different type of leadership. 

Turn of the wheel

The main reason this could be a capital-m Moment in Québec politics has to do with epoch. The social, economic, environmental and geopolitical context in which François Legault and Charles Sirois founded the CAQ in 2011 is very different from that of today. And while the foundational idea of superseding the federalist/sovereignist divide still resonates, it’s no longer the CAQ’s sole domain; other parties now offer their versions for a vision of territorial, cultural, and linguistic pride, a strong economy, robust and efficient health services and education system.

The CAQ’s political moment was crucial for proposing a new and neutral option posited on its unique brand of cultural nationalism; that moment has passed, replaced by another, marked by new opportunities and new challenges. Today, the Québécois nation faces threats to Canada’s sovereignty and an increasingly unstable geopolitical situation; the risk of collapse of our public institutions due to system overwhelm; the accelerating impacts of catastrophic climate change; and a decline in public trust which, along with growing social divisions, is jeopardizing our social model.

A party mired in identity debates is poorly positioned to offer solutions to these issues and a vision of hope to Quebecers in these uncertain times. What is needed now is a leader who understands the challenges of our time and is ready to propose a way forward. Now is a turning point, our change moment when Quebec has the opportunity to make a new choice for our collective future. 

Welcome to the era of speed politics, where every event, from resignations to rebirths seems to happen in a flash.

If you’re coming into 2026 feeling that this past year was unusually frenzied, you’re not alone. Anyone involved in, or following, the political scene can’t help but to note the accelerated pace in 2025 at which scandals, like bubbles in New Year’s Eve champagne, formed and broke, and political careers took abrupt turns, ended, or were brought back from the brink. 

Welcome to the era of speed politics, where every event, from resignations to rebirths seems to happen in a flash —perhaps best exemplified by Conservative MP Michael Ma suiting up for a photo op with Pierre Poilievre at the Conservative’s Christmas party one night to being the literal toast of the Liberal Christmas party the next. Our heads are spinning trying to keep up with the pace of it all.

Read more: Get ready for speed politics

As we wind down 2025 and warily gear up for 2026, we pause briefly to catch our breath and ask: Why so fast? First, a look back over some recent key events.

Hero to Zero in 6 Months Flat

From the time Rodriguez was chosen June 14th to lead the PLQ to the first hint that something had gone wrong with the firing of chief of staff Genevieve Hinse November 17th, five months had elapsed. It was his first crisis as party leader. 

As we followed the breadcrumb trail from mysterious (and, let it be said, atrociously ungrammatical) text messages referencing “brownies” in exchange for votes, to a garden party where envelopes were distributed to reimburse guests’ donations, an unrelenting cumulative body of fact and public speculation took hold. Like rubber-necking drivers stopping to gawk at a roadside pileup, we watched Rodriguez’ leadership unravel, waiting for the moment when, backed into a corner, he would shout “Enough!,” lay down his arms, and agree to deliver his resignation. 

Although to some it seemed to drag on forever (especially for those within the PLQ) the entire unravelling took only four weeks. The politico-media system hasn’t the patience to wait for the results of an investigation — the mere whiff of one demands decisive action, at the risk of the party’s reputation. 

Similar, But Not the Same

The Charbonneau commission was launched in October of 2011, and it was over a year later, on November 5th 2012 that Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay announced his resignation, while continuing to deny knowledge of the corruption schemes within his administration. 

As he addressed Montrealers, Tremblay harkened back to a warning from his father: “When I was a young man, my father told me never to get into politics because it was dirty and would destroy me.” 

Pablo Rodriguez had shared a similar early warning from his father in a video posted on his leadership campaign website. “My son, Canada is a land of opportunity, you can do whatever you want. But please – no politics.” 

In both cases, each man’s love of country and zeal for public life drove them to ignore fatherly advice. At the time of their resignation, both recalled the fateful words of warning.  

Did Pablo Rodriguez deserve to carry the blame for the financial misdemeanors and ethical wrong-doings of some of the people connected to his campaign? In politics, “deserving” and “undeserving” are irrelevant criteria by which to judge a politician; only public perception and party ambition matter. As party leader, Rodriguez was responsible to ensure that the former would not hinder the latter as Québec moves into an election year in 2026. 

The difference is the lightning speed with which his leadership scandal breached, broke and concluded, carrying off in its wake the budding prospects of an otherwise talented politician. 

Bye-Bye Steven, Bye-Bye Christian

Two other major pillars of Québec politics didn’t wait for the Christmas break to take a walk in the snow. 

Federal minister Steven Guilbeault left cabinet (while still remaining a member of the Liberal caucus) in protest over the Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which promises to increase production of Alberta oil and gas and build a new pipeline to the Pacific. Provincial minister Christian Dubé went one step further, walking away from his role as Health Minister while also leaving his party to sit as an independent over the CAQ’s inability to achieve the health system reforms laid out in Bill 2.   

Both men were living under the strain of disappointment and the cognitive dissonance that comes with towing a party line that goes against one’s principles — and is in contradiction with the mission with which they had been charged in their respective ministerial roles.

But here’s the rub: both Dubé and Guilbeault are seasoned politicians who have weathered their fair share of political storms. As Environment Minister under Justin Trudeau, Steven Guilbeault bore the brunt of criticism for the Trans-Mountain expansion, a project in contradiction with Canada’s ambitious carbon-reduction targets. Christian Dubé struggled and survived the many hardships of a Health Minister during the pandemic period —the Heron hecatomb, vaccine supply chain hurdles and unpopular curfews. 

Having made it this far, why throw in the towel now? Many will be tempted to point to the impetuous on-again off-again temperaments of our Southern neighbour, who seems to have single-handedly thrown global geopolitics into a panic. However, Trump’s Presidency is a consequence, not a cause, of the accelerating political climate. 

It’s not the change, it’s the pace of change

Change is a constant in all aspects of life, not just politics. The second law of thermodynamics states that all systems are constantly changing (increasing in entropy) and that no system stays static. Governments rise and fall, as do countries and fortunes, and it is part of our collective curiosity to follow these adventures. 

Sociologist Hartmut Rosa introduced the concept of “social acceleration,” to describe the phenomenon of the increasing pace of change that is both felt and observed in all spheres of modern life. Advances in technology and communications have made possible increases in productivity and information dissemination; this in turn has impacted our perception of time and space, making us simultaneously both more impatient and more haggard by all previous standards. 

If we feel things are going too fast it’s because they are, Rosa postulates— at least in terms of what we as humans are wired to be able to adapt to. Rodriguez, Guilbeault and Dubé are on the leading edge of our amped-up era of political churn, one in which new narratives are pushed at the speed of 15 second reels on a teenager’s Instagram feed. 

There is no time to wait out the results of an inquiry, nor to negotiate through long stretches of uncomfortable confrontation before reaching a hard-won but satisfying compromise. Inquiry and negotiation: these are the tools of another time and another pace. The politician of the future is learning, or perhaps she already knows, how to navigate at the fever-pace of polls, riding with the fickle hubris of algorithms. 

Our democratic system, which relies on the plodding human pace of consultation, debate and voting, will undoubtedly suffer new pressures and strain as we enter the era of speed-politics where the pace is set not by what we can reasonably manage but by what our advancing technological capabilities will impose.