At Issue - What the PQ's return means for Carney and Canada

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

What does the Parti Québécois's win mean for a federal government now facing separatist challenges on two fronts? The Liberals' major projects bill faces stiffening pushback. And the PQ’s uphill battle to abolish the monarchy from Quebec politics.Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

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Paid content with Desjardin. Now streaming on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on at issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, October 8th. There'll be no referendum until the Trump administration is in the White House, in which case we've got time and we've got plenty of urgencies, situation and problems to solve.

We'll see how it goes, and we hope that it's going to lead to the highest level of collaboration possible. Building a strong Quebec within a strong Canada and a strong Canada that means more independent, more sovereign, more prosperous, obviously. But also, so we can live our lives as we choose in Quebec, in Canada, that respects our languages, our culture, our way of life. This week, we're asking what's to be made of the new government in Quebec, the new political landscape there, what challenges might it present for the federal government in Ottawa, and what hurdles remain for the Liberals Bill C-39?

So what's been made of the new government in Quebec? What challenges could it present for Ottawa? I'm Rosemary Barton. Here to break it all down tonight. Chantilly Bear, Andrew Coyne. Althea Rush. Okay, it was a pretty wild election in terms of shifting the political landscape. How big a win?

It is a minority government. How big a win is it for the PQ, Chantal? And what do you think it changes in terms of the dynamic of the country? Not a big win when you win with 28%. That's the lowest score, I think, in Canadian history. history that anyone has ever had. And especially when you win with 28% a minority government and you are looking to have a plebiscite on your option where 70% of the people are saying were not interested. And obviously that showed in the 28%. I have never really covered the

campaign where the frontrunner starts at 28% and ends at 28%. Which basically means. means that all that happened for the entirety of that campaign was the CAQ, the incumbent, fell apart. Its votes went all over the place, but the PQ didn't pick up very many of those votes. They went to the conservatives. They went to the liberals. Both of them, by the way, federalist parties. So what does it mean for the relationship? Well, whatever this new government wants to do, It cannot escape the law of political gravity. And the law of political gravity tells you that the minority government's first goal is to get a majority. The way to a majority for the Patsky-BQua does not run through conflicts with Ottawa.

That is basically the message that was delivered with that low score. So how you go about that and how you thread this needle is going to be interesting to watch. And to that, something that was not in the picture, for instance, in 1995, last referendum with the Parts-Khebecoen in power, the Prime Minister then of Canada, Jean-Critzine, was wildly unpopular in Quebec. In this case, the current Prime Minister is twice as popular as the person who was elected to lead the government. So, Andrew, do you think that means they, you know, they join hands? and give that cooperative federalism a good old try together? Or what does it look like that? Well, we're in for more than the usual theatrics.

I don't think it's entirely untrue that sometimes you can exploit conflicts with the feds to your political advantage. But it doesn't always work. It doesn't work, as Chantal says, necessarily when you've got a federal interlocutor who's much more popular than you are. And it doesn't work if you're not particularly a droid player of that game.

The game, of course, is to make yourself look like the soul of good reason and only the intransigence of my opponent's op-ed are the reason why we have this conflict. Well, you've got to be very good at the political game to do that, and Paul Saint-Pierrelandant is not really very good at that. He's adroit at taking things that ought to be easy wins and turn them into losses. So he's got to be careful. You know, Quebecers are not interested in conflict for conflict's sake any more than anybody else in any other province. And so if he's on the wrong side of that, if he seemed to be just trying to pick a fight for no good reason, then he will pay the price. And so what do you think the Ottawa is

going to be wary of here than El Thea on that front? I think they were worried about what Monday's result would lead to, and they escaped the worst case scenario. And I don't know that they expected things to be as positive as they appear to be in the last two, three days. And what I mean by that is, first of all, Pais St. Pierre de Pard de Mondeau, I agree with Chantal. I mean, his main goal, I would say, is to stay premier as long as possible. And he took a very conciliatory tone on election night, even suggesting that he would take pieces of his opponent's electoral platforms and put them in his budget. And you, you know, he only needs one dance. partner and their natural dance partners on some of the things he wants to do with the

Conservative Party in Quebec, with Quebec Salidaire on some more social issues. And then he had a call with Mark Carney. And in that call with Mark Carney, you know, there are natural flashpoints that were kind of talked about during the election campaign, immigration, culture, language. And I thought it was interesting that the incoming premier basically said, well, he asked about Mark Carney about the immigration. And he said, oh, well, that's not for now. Like, there are no immediate plans.

he could have chosen to still be concerned about it or express an opposition to the idea that the government would in the future move in that direction, but he chose not to. And there are flashpoints on the horizon coming. It will be, you know, it's clear that the liberal government in Ottawa does want to have a deal with Donald Trump. And there will possibly be some language and culture issues and some supply management issues. And there will be things to be careful about. There will also be a Supreme Court decision on the notwithstanding clause and Bill 21, which could be testy. So, you know, it's not that it's trouble-free, but I was surprised to hear Paul Saint-Péard-Malan say that he had a very good call with the Prime Minister, and he looked forward to working with him. And already his list of demands, infrastructure, homelessness, Ottawa is listening and pay attention. And they both seem to want to help each other win.

And why does Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon need to be careful? I'll bring you back to Lucien Bouchard, who won an election, won a majority government after the referendum, lost the popular vote, not by much, but did, and then believed that the Clarity Act would actually give new life to the sovereignty movement. The opposite happened. Jean-Critzain did better in Quebec after the Clarity Act in the election. and Lucien Bouchard left, which kind of suggests that you can't bank on a Supreme Court ruling or some conflict over who's going to do what on immigration to get a big rise in support for sovereignty.

And if there ever was a message there, past history suggests that Quebecers will sit back and say, okay, I'm not happy about this, but that they will not necessarily translate it into more support for sovereignty. And that is a lesson that the sovereignty movement has learned at its expense over the past two decades. I wonder if governing well would help appeal to more people. I don't know. By the way, we always take good government.

Whoever is willing to offer it. And the PQ over its history has offered good, relatively scandal-free government, giving Canada a lot of the policies that are in place now. National Child Care Program was born through a PQ government. political financing, as it stands now federally, started in Quebec under a PQ government. So the notion that Quebecers do not associate the PQ with good government is a misguided notion. For sure. Andrew, last word here. You may also see E. Tapes, but you may see moves on the chessboard to try to assert more powers for Quebec on the theory that the feds don't want to be seen to be pushing back on that.

So you put the ball in the feds court to be the bad guys. You're just simply asserting Quebec's distinctiveness. You're asserting its autonomy. It's up to the feds to decide whether they want to have a fight over it. So I wouldn't be surprised to see more of that kind, whether they are strictly constitutional gambits or unconstitutional. 20 seconds or so, Althea. I just want to say that I was sure Andrew is going to bring up first past the post

electoral reform, and I cannot believe he did. Well, that's because it was so obvious. are so obvious. We can't. No, no, we can't. We got to leave it there. Many people are. We've got to leave it there. Another time, when we return, we'll take a look at the pushback towards the Liberals Bill C-39, the government's major economic and labor bill, the Bill Canada Act. So how have other parties responded to the legislation? What challenges could it face in the House and beyond? That's next. Conservatives will let this week watered down long-delayed bill go to committee where we will put

forward amendments that will get the government out of the way to get Canadians building. This bill is flawed to its core. It's got to be scrapped. This Prime Minister's office is more contemptuous of parliament and less concerned about transparency. All right, here to break down some of the challenges ahead for Bill C-39, Chatelle, Andrew, and Elthea. Althea, why don't you start us off on this? So it passed its first vote, but not without some contention and some controversy. Yes, that's true. I was like, where do you want me to go with this?

So C-39 is the big bill that the government has been talking about basically all summer that they were going to introduce. And it has so many different parts. It actually amends 20 different pieces of legislation and introduces a new act. And it does many things that its critics feared, especially on the environmental front. It basically makes C-5, that very controversial bill from June of 2025. permanent. That was sold as like, we need these temporary crazy powers to allow things to move fast, but don't worry, it's just temporary. Now that process is going to be permanent. And it creates these zones with very loosely defined criteria that basically give cabinet

the ability to decide what environmental assessments, if any, would apply to projects. And some of the things that I'm going to say sound maybe over the top and crazy, but that is actually what the legislation does allow for. And I was shocked listening to some of the liberal debates in the House of Commons this week because I'm not sure that some liberal MPs have actually read this piece of legislation. They are saying things that are simply not accurate.

In addition to that, there's also the labor strife. The country's unions have come out against this bill because they believe that it waters down their right to strike. Basically, it further codifies the government's ability to intervene and cause the Industrial Relations Board to have the parties sit down together and have imbiting agreement. So there are a lot of contentious parts to this bill. The government has decided to move it to a special committee where it will decide who sits on that committee. And because it's a special committee, the conservatives typically like to filibuster won't be able to filibuster. What it all means is for the Liberal Party, there are divisions.

I don't know that I would say they are deep. Some people who hold opposite views hold them very firmly. They're not that many of those individuals. Will they be allowed, that's the only question really at stake, will they be allowed to actually amend some parts of the legislation? On transparency, perhaps, on allowing for more of the criteria to be listed so that these power is at, cabinet would have or one of the ministers would have would be defined or that there would be some

sort of gatekeeping around removing conditions because the way the legislation is written out, any condition on any project could just be removed. So there are, hopefully, this will be serious work that will go through a committee process that is much more thorough than what C5 went through. And at the end of the day, there is better legislation out of it. That is what the government is worried about. that is what some MPs would like and have said to the government, I don't know where they will land.

Chantal? I believe that the parliamentary battle is already won by the government, not just by virtue of its majority, but I mean, you talk about not without controversy. It was adopted in principle when almost 300 MPs voted for this bill, conservatives and liberals. What that tells me is that I believe the government's hope to get this on the books by Christmas will probably be realized. And that the battle against it will not be taking place in the House of Commons as much as it may be taking place in the courts through litigation and challenges.

And also possibly, and that's a worst case scenario on the street. you've got a trifect of Labor, First Nations, environmentalists who are feeling that they are not necessarily going to be getting a fair discussion in the House of Commons. That doesn't necessarily bode well for the so-called social peace afterwards and how the bill applies to specific projects going forward. Andrew? This should be seen in the context of the decline of Parliament generally.

This is not unusual that we've seen omnibus bills, things push through committee without very much in the way of scrutiny, all the things that people are complaining about now, they could have complained about with previous legislation, only they happen to like the legislation a little more than this one. So people need on the right and the left to understand that what goes around comes around, the kinds of shortcuts that you approve of when it's the legislation you like are going to come back to bite you when it's legislation you're not so keen of. I've seen a lot worse in the way of honorable bills, including from this government. At least there's something that hangs together in terms of the general principles involved in this bill. But look, I hope in committee, I prefer the bill was split,

I hope in committee people can look at some of the criticisms that Althea has been raising on this. We do want, particularly in a situation like we're in right now, to build as much consensus and as much popular support and as much buying as we possibly can, notwithstanding that we are in something of an emergency. And I do think we have to bear this in mind. We are facing unprecedented challenges, both externally and internally, all of which add up to we've got to get the country moving into get. We've got to show that Canada works.

We've got to get diversification of our trade. We've got to get our economy moving. And there is widespread consensus that our regulatory process for these things has been far too cumbersome and far too many layered. So there was a pretty strong consensus that we needed to do something to streamline it. I'm sure we can look at it and say are there measures that go further than are necessary to do that. But let's not lose sight of the overall objective that's involved here because it's extremely important. I only have like 40 seconds.

Chantal 20 and Althea 20. Go ahead. But at some point you need to pick a lane. If it's emergency legislation for a specific situation, then it needs to be reviewed or have an expiry date. and if it isn't, then you're basically sideline parliament in many more ways than one for all times, including for whoever is in government that is not the liberals. 22, Othew.

Even the environmentalists believe that some of the things in this bill, like reviews at the same time as opposed to one after the other, are good things. There are some principles here that everybody can kind of agree with, I think. The problem is the government is using the excuse to do things like remove the ability for judicial review of government decisions.

There is such a huge creep that you're wondering like how, what, like, how is this allowed to pass Parliament? And the conservatives are not saying anything because they're like, well, we would not get away with passing this bill. So at least the liberals will give us eventually when we come in power, we will have this piece of legislation that will prove helpful for the projects that we want to get done. Okay. You're going to take a short break here. When we come back, about the PQ's goal to abolish the monarchy in Quebec and the legal challenges that move will face. That's next. We're still going to go through this legal expertise to make sure that what is a democratic will

and a very widely supported idea that we shouldn't spend money on the representation of the King of England here in Quebec. that democratic will be applied in the most clever and adequate way possible. All right, here to break down this battle over the monarchy in Quebec, Chantal Andrew and Elfia. I feel like I don't even have to ask anything. I could just say, go. Chantelle, you can go first and then everybody else. Well, first, if you listen to that statement by the premier designeur,

what you heard is probably backing off this notion that he will single-hand. candidly get rid of the monarchy in Quebec, legal advice, etc. And it came up, in case people believed that Quebecers were just waiting to have a debate on the monarchy, the idea was thrown in the mix by the PQ in the last week of the campaign and the hopes that they would raise its fortunes. It did not. But back in the previous National Assembly, a bill was passed that allows people to, not swear a note to the king, it's optional. You swear some other oath. Now there has been a court challenge launched over that, and the person who launched the court challenge is asked for an

injunction saying, well, when I started this legal battle, there were only less than 10 people in the National Assembly that didn't swear a note to the king. Now, it may be that everyone doesn't swear a note to the king. And over time, that means that all their legislation is going to be moot. When I finally get my case heard, it's going to be found, and he's probably right, that it's not possible to rewrite the Constitution single-handedly on a napkin in the National Assembly. So this is what the injunction is about. But before you get too excited over its success, Let me remind you that there is precedent in Manitoba, Andrews Province, a case over French and English in the laws, had the Supreme Court cited all of the laws passed in Manitoba for a century were unconstitutional,

but the court also said we will maintain all of them until there is a remedy. So we are not into huge drama, but it's kind of a big distraction. and that's kind of fascinating to watch. Yeah. Also, my province, just to be fair. Andrew? Well, it's potentially huge drama, though. It's going to depend upon how people decide to play this. It is black and white law that you have to take the oath.

I don't think there's any room for interpretation on this. It's in the Constitution. It's hard to see how any court could rule otherwise. And similarly, it's hard to see how the peak you could back down in this having already done it. It's one thing to say, oh, well, we didn't mean it. it about abolishing the monarchy. But having already gotten rid of the oath, it's going to be interested to see how they could finesse that. Now, if Chantal's right that the courts are unlikely just to throw the whole province into legal anarchy, but they are going to, most

likely say, you have to, over time, bring it back. So we're in for some kind of confrontation. Now, this is one among several measures that have been enacted in the Quebec legislature that basically are sending the message that the Constitution of Canada doesn't really apply in Quebec, that if we feel like it, we can pass legislation, whether it's Bill 21 or Bill 96, that just flagrantly oversteps Quebec's jurisdictional bounds or what have you, and nobody's really going to push back. This guy, this law professor is taking on a challenge that perhaps should have been better taken on by the government of Canada. But instead, the government kind of just basically stays mute on these questions. And what does that send?

It tells Quebecers, well, you know, the Constitution is kind of optional. Why is that important? Because if it ever comes to a referendum, Quebec, it's not going to be, if it is a yes, it's not going to be by the orderly, lawful way set down in the Clarity Act and the secession reference. The PQ is quite on record in saying they're going to do it by unilateral declaration of independence, which is a complete step outside of the constitutional order. Usually you'd think, okay, that's a pretty scary prospect for people, but not if they've been conditioned over the previous years to think, oh, well, it's just another step along the way.

And sorry, but conditions in two referendums to know what the stakes are. One, two by the time a court pronounces on the substance of this monarchy thing, the PQ might be out of power for another decade. Fair, fair. But it's also a political trap that they're setting, right? So I don't know, I don't think Ottawa would walk right into it, as you're suggesting, Andrew. Yes. No, absolutely.

Ottawa should not be going anywhere close to this. No, God forbid. No, it's really, no. The courts are much better to do it. Yeah, okay. Let's let Althea weigh in because she hasn't done that yet. Go ahead, Althea. No, I just, I think this is a total sidebar issue.

I'm sorry, Andrew. I do not see it as like a meaningful for the Canadian constitution and whether or not Quebecers want to respect federal laws or I don't see that anywhere close to that. I think this is just like a tiny little sidebar issue where the incoming premier said he didn't want to sound like a hypocrite and he doesn't think that Quebec. should be elected representatives should be swearing an oath to the king anyways.

The monarchy, in his view, has no place in Quebec. And that is his right to believe that. And if he wants to work towards that direction, I mean, frankly, the process is unfolding as it should. The courts will decide. And he does have the liberty to say, if he doesn't want the lieutenant governor to have a big role in the province, he could trim her budget. So, you know, that's totally up for Quebec.

to decide for themselves. This is not a constitutional crisis in my view whatsoever. No, but it could be, I guess, is what Andrew's saying. Andrew and then Chantel and then I got to go. Tempest in a teapot, in my view. Well, mark that, you know, clip and save that comment. We'll see. Okay, last word there, Chantel, then I got to go. I think many Quebecers discovered there was a lieutenant governor over the past 10 days. That's basically where we're at. Okay, I got to leave it there.

That's at issue for this week. What do you think about the PQ's battle with the monarchy? Are you worried about Canada's unity ahead of that win and the Alberta referendum? Let us know what you think. You can send us an email. Ask at cbc.ca is the best way to reach us. You can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live. That's Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern.

See you in your podcast feeds next week. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.