Slogans have meaning. Elections have consequences. Results matter. Ultimately, you get what you vote for. Pierre Poilievre’s mantra that “everything is broken” in Canada is toxic on every level. The consequences, should he become Prime Minister, are severe and long term, especially when it comes to the unity of Canada itself.
With the message that Canada is a broken country prevailing in the next election, the stars would align for another kick at the referendum can for Quebec’s separatists. In the post-Brexit, Trump-uncertain era of pervasive foreign interference, it is far from certain that Canada would survive. Certainly, the Putinist backers of the former would see advantage in assisting in the destabilisation of the United States’ northern neighbour.
The great Canadian uniters of the past are no longer there to lead a ‘no’ side to victory; one can hardly imagine a convoy-backing “Canada is Broken” Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre — there without significant electoral support from Quebec — being the unifying force of the No side in such circumstances.
Sitting around the Quebec caucus table in the spring of 2019, there were two worlds trying to communicate with each other at cross purposes about the upcoming election. One side, the strategists and leaders of the campaign; the other side, those from outside of greater Montreal who were reporting back on the increasingly negative mood toward our government on the ground, warning of a looming threat.
We were told, repeatedly, that the separatist Bloc Québecois was a non-issue in Quebec. Martine Ouellette had been ousted as leader a few months earlier after, under her guidance, the party had all but collapsed. 7 of the 10 members of their caucus had split off to create what they called “Québec Debout”, Quebec Standing. In January of 2019, Yves-François Blanchet, who had briefly served as a provincial cabinet minister under Pauline Marois, but who was unheard of in federal circles, won the leadership, and had quickly reunited his caucus. The change was not noted by the Liberal party’s brain trust.
By spring, those of us from off the island of Montreal were feeling a change in the mood in the field. Justin Trudeau was becoming profoundly unpopular, and with the 2011 Orange Wave having receded, rural and suburban Quebeckers were looking for an alternative to the Liberal government. At the door and in the community, I was hearing, on a daily basis: “we want you — but we don’t want your leader.”
For many of us, the risk was obvious. We were hearing about the Bloc again on the ground. TVA, the province’s popular Quebecor-owned French-language television station that propagandises to a nearly Fox News level, was talking it up. But for those in the big city, they weren’t hearing it; they still believed that the previous year’s turmoil was going to finish off the Bloc and relegate it to the history books for good. The Liberal party had brought in Sylvie Paradis as a campaign co-chair, a top provincial strategist, and she assured us that our fortunes would improve in Quebec that fall and that the Bloc was a dead issue. Many of us protested but she assured us she had the data and the Bloc was done.
Needless to say, she was wrong, and the Bloc more than tripled their caucus from 10 to 32 seats, including my own, with the simple message “le Québec, c’est nous”, which roughly translates as “Quebec — it’s us”, an unmistakable message that if you were not their base, you were not a real Quebecker. On election day, the weather forecast on TVA told viewers that it was a beautiful day to vote Bloc, and they did in droves, forcing me and many others around that table out of office in exactly the way we’d warned but had been laughed off only a few months earlier.
Pablo Rodriguez, our “Quebec Lieutenant” at the time, responsible for that master strategy in the province that has seen us go from having a majority of the seats in the province to losing Paul Martin’s old riding to the Bloc, is running for leader of the provincial Liberals. As far as a gently-nationalist government that tries to do a decent job of governance, Pablo would probably be an acceptable premier were he to get there.
If he had a solid understanding of the regions of Quebec outside of Montreal, the Liberals would have the majority of seats promised by his team in 2019 and the Bloc would, in fact, be a dead issue rather than the dominant party in the province. It is not clear that he could win the parts of the province necessary to bring the provincial Liberals back to power. In spite of resigning to sit as an independent federally while running provincially, he is, of course, inextricably linked to Justin Trudeau.
Moreover, as leader of the Parti Libéral du Québec, should the PQ win a majority in the 2026 election in the face of a collapsing CAQ and hold a referendum some time around, say, the fall of 2027, Rodriguez would be the de facto leader of the No side, responsible for selling an inclusive vision of Canada to a population being told how to vote by their television weather forecast. Justin Trudeau, in spite of Eddie Goldenberg’s recent missive, isn’t likely to effectively serve the role of elder statesman in such a campaign, either. It will be a few more years before Canadians will be ready to hear from him again.
In the last referendum in 1995, Daniel Johnson, who had briefly served as premier the year before, was the leader of the provincial Liberal party in Quebec and served in the role of chair of the No committee. He was completely ineffectual, and by the end of the campaign it was clear that the federal leaders would need to intervene. Jean Chrétien was Prime Minister at the time and there is no doubt that his efforts contributed to the (narrow) defeat of the referendum, along with major contributions from other federal leaders like Progressive Conservative leader Jean Charest.
American President Bill Clinton, days before the referendum vote, also made an impromptu public statement expressing a hope that Canada would continue to be a great model for the rest of the world, an unsubtle but not explicit endorsement of the No side. Clinton was popular in Quebec and his intervention, too, no doubt had an impact.
The situation were there to be another referendum three years from now risks being dramatically different. In a worst case scenario, were a referendum to happen with a Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre and a President Donald Trump in office, Quebeckers on the fence of whether to stay in Canada would have little incentive to oppose the effort to leave.
With both leaders premising their leaderships and governance on their respective countries being broken and dysfunctional, and the Canadian electorate outside of Quebec having endorsed that premise in the 2025 election, what could Poilievre possibly say to encourage Canada to stay in one piece? Would he even care?
Not having Quebec in confederation would allow him to consolidate his power by losing the parts of the country that oppose him most vociferously. Without Quebec, one can imagine that a Poilievre government would make little effort to retain the Atlantic provinces, who would fall into both an economic and existential crisis. A Conservative government of a reduced Canada, stretching from Ontario to BC, would see opportunity to move the nation’s capital to Calgary rather than sharing the current capital region with Quebec as a foreign country. Whether Ontario would stay in such a deconfederation is anyone’s guess.
In short, far from the Jean Charest of the past, the current crop of Conservatives would not see a lot of value in fighting to keep Quebec within Canada.
If Trump said anything in such a referendum, whether for or against, the level of disgust in Quebec with his mere existence would be so pronounced as to drive votes in the direction of separation.
The opportunities for foreign interference in such an endeavour can not be overstated. For adversaries of the West, an inexpensive opportunity to break Canada would be an attractive investment. It would have consequential impacts to NATO and the G7, and prove distracting to the United States, as Canada, their largest trading partner, fought for its very survival. The Brexit referendum’s unexpected success offers important lessons.
The results of the next election are far more consequential than Canadians realise. Gerry Butts’s article in the Walrus linked at the start is dead on: The Quebec Secession Crisis Is Coming, and Canada Isn’t Ready.
You brought back some powerful memories of that second referendum..ie; the Yvette Rally at the forum and the busloads of people coming in from Ontario! It was also a nasty fight on the ground. I remember my dad telling be that he had to instruct some of Quebec's top business owners and CEOs to go down on the shop floors to tell their employees their side of the story. He didn't mince words; "It's your %^&$# company, the unions have no right to keep you from being there! Grow a pair and fight!" We will need this kind of leadership if indeed we face another referendum in the future.