Front Burner - Is it over for Quebec’s Francois Legault?

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Quebec has introduced a new bill that would ban prayer in public spaces. It’s the latest in a series of recent moves by the province to reinforce Quebec’s secularist values. It comes as Premier Francois Legault is embroiled in a spending scandal and polls that show he’s the least popular provincial leader in the country. Will falling back on Quebec values and stoking anti-immigrant sentiment work in his favour? And if Legault and the Coalition Avenir Quebec are on the outs, is it time for the Parti Quebecois and the separatist movement to make a comeback?Martin Patriquin, Quebec correspondent for The Logic, takes us through the province’s state of affairs.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

I never thought the enemy would be inside my own ranks. Hi, I'm Sandra Perra. I was Canada's first female infantry officer, and being the first man, I had to fight some pretty tough battles on and off the battlefield. You know they're going to use this to say women can't be in combat arms. If this picture gets out, it would damage the men who are bravely serving this country. Discover my true story on screen for the first time. See Outstanding, only in Canadian theaters on September 26th.

This is a CBC podcast. Hi, everyone, I'm Jamie Poisson. Just over a week ago, the Quebec government announced that it would table a bill that would ban prayer in public spaces in the province. It's the latest in a series of moves by the leading party, the Coalition Avenue, Quebec, or the CAQ. to reinforce the province's policies around secularism, including tabling a bill to expand the controversial religious symbols law. But at a time when Premier Francois Legoe is embroiled in a corruption scandal involving the province's auto insurance board

and seeing the lowest popularity out of any premier in the country is doubling down on secularist values an attempt to shore up support. And if Legoe and the CAQ are on their way out, are the party Quebecois and Quebec independence making a comeback? To make sense of the current state of affairs, I'm talking to Martin Patrick Quinn, Quebec correspondent for the logic. Martin, hey, thank you so much for coming on to the show. It's really great to have you. Thanks for having me. So first, let's talk about this new bill banning prayer in public, the second.

secularism minister, Jean-Francolle-Rober, said that, quote, the rise of street prayers is a serious and sensitive issue in Quebec. And this first came up in December last year, right, when Legault a ban on prayer in public streets and in parks to, quote, send a very clear message to Islamists. So take me through what they're referring to and why this is being tables right now. I mean, so the law basically is exactly, it's sort of self-explanatory. it bans public prayer in general.

The issue, of course, it didn't come about for any other reason than it was high profile, and everything's high profile. It's all on social media. Call to prayer in the streets of Montreal, specifically Muslim prayer, both just in and of itself, but also as sort of seen as like a protest as a result of things that are going on well outside Quebec's borders, you know, Israel and Palestine and whatnot. There you go. That's the main reason as to why the impetus for it was.

specifically that. That's the news I've lot to say about it, but that's sort of how it came about. Take me through some of the many, many objections that we have seen from various groups, Muslim groups, but many more people in groups. Yeah, Archbishop from Montreal. Archbishop Christian Lepin pointed out that freedom of religion

was a constitutional right, Restricting prayer to the private sphere would amount to reducing the space of freedom for all society, he wrote. You have unions in there and you have constitutionalists who are all saying the same thing, roughly speaking, that it goes against the charter rights of freedoms, both of Canada and Quebec, which actually supersedes Canada, came before. Just as the law is self-evident, the opposition to it is self-evident. It is a blatant violation of charter freedoms, and it's that reason that they're using. using the notwithstanding clause is going to make it harder to challenge in court. This is old hand for, for Francolla Go, because he's invoked at the notwithstanding clause before.

He's doing it again, and I would argue that he's doing it for political gain. And so tell me, tell me why you think he's doing it for political gain. Why right now? Because he's unpopular. And, you know, identity issues and religious issues and issues and issues of secularism, etc. are never far from the service here in Quebec. And so every time he's been in trouble, he has sort of invoked some sort of ire, legislative or otherwise, against quote-unquote the other.

So in in 2023, he lost a by-election in Jean Talon, which is a Quebec City area riding. And that was sort of like the d'Arceau, as he say in French, it's like the cradle of the CAQ's power base. He lost there to the parts of Quebecois. What did he do in the weeks following? He cracked down on the supposed decline in French as a result of the universities of McGill and Concordia. You know, upped increased tuition fees and said that they are the reason that English is prevailing in Montreal.

Quebec says it will stop subsidizing students from other provinces, most of whom attend English universities in order to boost funding to its French institutions and protect the French language. It's important for me to keep McGuette. in Quebec. And I think that what we are asking for is reasonable. We have to stop seeing French going down in Montreal. So we need their help. They are apparently absurd, but that's what he does. That's what he revokes to. The fact that we're sort of seeing some of this stuff come up now,

granted the law, the public prayer law question comes before this, but he has ramped up, I hope, after the recent by-election loss in Arthabasca, which is another place that they lost to the PQ and is another sort of cradle of CQ power. And so he's come out again and is what does he, what does he revoked to? Where does he turn to? He goes to identity issues. He goes to the issues of temporary foreign workers. He talks again about public. He talks about the decline of French.

This is basically the playbook of this government. And I suspect you're going to see a whole lot more between. between now and the next election. In addition to the banning prayer stuff in public spaces, there was also this advisory committee that's now recommending and banning Bill 21, right? The controversial religious symbols law. And so what would they like to do there? So basically what they want to do is they want to extend the ban on religious symbols in public spaces to daycare and daycare workers with grandfather claws for existing workers in there that wear some sort of religious symbol.

So, you know, hijab, what have you. I mean, we're talking here about any religious symbol, but fundamentally, much like the public prayer thing, this is targeting Muslims. And so they want to do that in this sort of publicly funded daycares in Quebec. I did some reporting on, because there was a prospect of doing this. It's been sort of like something that they wanted to go to or the political class here in Quebec has considered for a long time. And one of the things that I found is that the number, one of the one of the main. sources of employment for recent immigrants, particularly Muslim women, is teaching. They go into, they teach. So what are you doing with this? You're basically saying that these women

have to stay home. It's brutal. I mean, I remember I interviewed a teacher who was a recent arrival here, who was a convert. She was, she was a Muslim convert. And she actually left Quebec for it. She went to Alberta because she just wanted nothing to do with it. So it has all sorts of detrimental effects, both on human beings and on the economy in the province. And you talked about these parts of the province that are like the cradle of power for the CAQ. Could you just briefly remind me why these issues are so popular in those places? I mean, they're popular because everybody looks, it all happens in Montreal, right? Montreal is, apart from being a very, very important tax base, if not the most important tax base in the province, is home to something in the effect of, I think it's like 86 or 87% of foreign-born people who settle in Quebec, settle in Montreal.

That's changed a little bit. If you go to places like Sherbrook now or Trojave or Drummondville, even Quebec City, you see more and more immigration moving out there. And it's sort of what happens in Ontario is that Montreal becomes too expensive. So by design, they go elsewhere. They move elsewhere. And it's happening slowly here. But the fact is, it remains is that Montreal is the center of all of this for the entire province. And so for a government like the CAQ, which has very, very little power base in Montreal, very little representation here,

Montreal becomes a very, very easy scapego to say, like, look what happens when you don't crack down on things. This is the, this is, Montreal is, this is the boogeyman that we have to fear. Should these things like public prayer and head coverings, et cetera, be allowed to thrive? It's going to take over the entire province. It's literally the politics of fear. I never thought the enemy would be inside my own ranks. Hi, I'm Sandra Perra. I was Canada's first female infantry officer, and being the first man, I had to fight some pretty tough battles on and off the battlefield.

You know they're going to use this to say women can't be in combat arms. If this picture gets out, it would damage the men who are bravely serving this country. Discover my true story on screen for the first time. See Outstanding Only in Canadian theaters on September 26. on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday.

It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexsavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. I want to dig in with you a little more. on why Lego has come to find his poll numbers in the toilet.

Like, why he's having such a rough go lately? I know there's this Sacclique thing, which I understand has to do with the contract to digitize the agency that deals with automobile license is going $500 million over budget. So, yeah, right, double, importantly. And Lego testified in the inquiry last week. What were the takeaways for you there? And, you know, how is that fitting into this narrative that we're talking about? I mean, it's sort of piling on a little bit.

He was unpopular going into this. And the fundamental, I went to his hearing last week. And the funny thing for me is that we had basically a public inquiry into corruption in the construction industry about 13 years ago here. And I covered that one. Charbonneau. The Charbonneau Commission, exactly. And so I covered that at the time. And the hearings were in the exact same room.

It felt like the same cameras. It was certainly the same chairs. Everything was exactly the same. The difference was, is very, very telling for me, though, is that the Charbonneau Commission, which, you know, basically helped bring down John Cherez, liberal government at the time, was really cool, sexy, interesting stuff. Justice Franz Charbonneau sat in her chair one last time to deliver a conclusion that became very clear during the inquiry.

The industry of the construction industry has been infiltrated by the mafia, she said. It was like cash-filled envelopes and, you know, corruption and mobsters and all this really interesting intrigue surrounding Montreal's construction industry. And it had been that way for a long time. You know, fast forward 13 years. And here I am sitting there. And it's effectively a scandal about the provincial DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles. Like it's like, you were just describing it just then.

And I hear it. And I'm just like, man, is that boring? It's literally like a problem with tech support. Like they were, they were, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they're even more telling for me is the fact that he came to testify during it. because he realizes the extent to which this is a political issue for him. He came in and said, you know, this shouldn't have happened. I should have known about it earlier and all this kinds of stuff. I learned about it in February 2025.

Now, should I have known about it? I think so. And basically put himself out there to show, to make a real show about the fact that he cares about this and then he's going to do better next time. At the end of his testimony, Lago stressed the importance of accountability. and that there should be consequences for those involved. In three hours of testimony, he repeated he was kept in the dark about SACC, and blamed officials at the SAAQ for the problems.

I don't think the frost-well ago of 2020 had this happened back then, or even 2002 when he was at the height of the polls, when he was pretty high up. He won like a majority that year, right? Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, a guy who is seen as, as, rightly wrongly, as someone who handled the COVID-19 epidemic fairly well, to which I think there's certainly some merit. I don't think that version of Lugo would have testified last week, but he realizes the trouble he's in and he's got to sort of make a show about, you know, that he cares and that he wants to do something about it. Right. Well, you wrote this piece, which I read with much interest in the logic last week, right?

You essentially said that you think that he's cooked. The CAQ lost his third by-election in a row last month, and by-elections are also not the sexiest thing, but they often serve as kind of bellwethers, right? They told us a lot about the Trudeau liberals, for example. Sure. If you could, like, boil it down for me, how would you explain his fall in popularity

from that 2022 height of popularity? I think his approval ratings were like 85% at one point. He got that majority, as you mentioned. What is it that explains him now being the least popular premier in the country, ultimately? I mean, I think a lot of his fatigue. He's been in power since 2018. And similar to the Trudeau government, you know, if you go back to COVID with Trudeau, the parallel is not that much different.

Trudeau was at his heights during COVID. I think this is just sort of the inevitable hangover. in a lot of cases. And then, and so when something as unsexy, and use that word again, like SACLIC comes along, it's not something that you can just dismiss. It's actually the beginning of a snowball. And or the snowball has already started, put it this way, and this is just, just becomes part of it. And then it becomes, anything that happens, uh, sort of adds to that narrative of decline and the narrative of, well, it's, we really need new blood in here. The election is in 2026, what are we going to see in the next several months, you think?

What are you going to watch out for? I know you mentioned earlier in this conversation that, like, the prayer branding thing is just kind of the beginning, that there's going to be more? I just think he's going to harp on the issue. He did it. He's done it two times during elections. in both elections where these issues came up. And I just, I mean, it's inevitably going to do the same again. I think I think if you look at what his opposition is, which is the parts of Quebec

right now, a party which is more or less saying the same thing as him as far as, you know, religious minority rights, et cetera, et cetera. It's going to be a variation on the theme that we've seen time again here in Quebec, unfortunately. I want to get to the party Quebecqua, but first, might there be, could there be, could there be a scenario where he steps down a la Trudeau? Sure. I think in a weird way, though, he has, there's more skin in the game for him than there is for Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau, for all his desire to hang on to that job, and he did so much to his

detriment. Oh, right to the end. Right, right to the end. Yeah. He had to pry his hands off of it, much to his own detriment. But I mean, that ended up working out pretty well for the Party itself in finding a leader in Mark Carney. Francollago, you know, just and true, the liberal party is going to exist forever, right? The liberal party has existed before it's going to continue living on because it's just one of those immovable objects in Canadian politics. The CAQ is, was literally started by Francolla Go and a couple of his friends. This was a party that came about by saying, look, we need to stop the federalist sovereignist debate

in this province because it's atrophying us. atrophying the political class, and we need a third way. And he was, he led this movement. He ran in election after election, and he finally won in 2018. And he, and he did so, it's impressive if you think about it, because, you know, third parties are a tough sell across the country. Just ask the NDP about that, right? And so there's almost more at stake for Frostwell to go, like if he was to let go, you'd have to, he'd have to find, not only we'd have to sort of assuage his own Hego, understandably, he's put a lot of work into this party, but he'd have to find a leader who can represent both sides of the coalition that is in the Coalitione that is in the Coalition

Avene, that is to say, someone who is who can please both the sovereignist and the federalist side. And there is no, but there is no one there, there is no one that I see that can do that. They, they, there's no bridge. Roswell Lago is the bridge for the party. In that sense, he's like, it's like a one-man party. And if he goes, the bridge goes. Let's do the PQ, the party Kavakwa, before we go. So this is a party that is surging in the polls.

You mentioned earlier that they are kind of on the same page with, we'll go in the TAQ when it comes to anti-immigrant sentiments. How else are they appealing to voters right now, especially young ones? How is it different from maybe where the party sat before? I think in one sense, they're benefiting from the fact that they aren't the CAQ. They're the natural opposition right now. It's very telling that we've had a 15-minute discussion about Quebec politics and haven't mentioned the Quebec Liberal Party yet. And I'll get to that in a second.

but Paul St. Pierre Plamadon, the leader of the PQ, is young, he's telegenic, he's good with a clip, and he is the closest thing to new blood that we have right now. I think that that explains a lot of the reason why he's sort of seen as the alternative to Francois Lago, and sort of seen as the inevitable bastion of change in a place that's been dominated by the CAQ since 2018. And he's also promising a referendum in this first mandate for two years, right? Yeah, that's right. So like how real is the separatist sentiment in the province right now? It's as clear as mud as usual in Quebec.

If you look, again, I'm going to mention it social media, there is a certain amount, there is an uptick in support for it amongst youths. There's a longstanding sort of cliche in the province that the separatist movement here. is a boomer's game. This is something that was popular with our parents and our parents' parents, not us. There's a little bit of evidence to suggest that that isn't necessarily true. That said, I mean, look at the federal election we just had. Donald Trump changed the game. Donald Trump effectively made Mark Carney the Prime Minister of Canada, in part by recruiting, by appealing to Quebecers. And there was this fascinating poll in February 2025 that's, you know,

It's like, how proud are you to be Canadian to win across the country? The percentage of Quebecers proud to be Canadian surged by 13 points. It was the fastest growth or the most biggest growth in the country by far. So it's almost like it's not quite black and white. It's, again, Quebec is sending completely mixed signals as to how they feel about the country. I don't think personally that after, look, the elections about, year away. I don't think that barring something, some vast revival of the Democratic Party in the United States and a complete turn away from Donald Trump, that there's going to be much appetite

in the province of Quebec for further division and further threats to the economy. That's always been the case. They've lost two referendums as a result of that. And I think that's going to be even more so over the next few months and before the next election. Before we go, we would probably be remiss to not mention the other party in Quebec politics for whom we have just ignored for 25 minutes. Yeah, we really have. Where are the liberals in all of this? Do you know the liberal party of Quebec is the oldest, if not the oldest political party in the country? So they've been around for a really long time and we haven't mentioned them, as you said.

It's because they've been leaderless for a long time. The last permanent leader was Dominique Anglatch. She resigned a few years ago. we've had a temporary leader since then, and the conversation has sort of gone on without them. The Liberal Party of Quebec, at the very least, hopes that that's going to change now that they've elected a new leader. Pablo Rodriguez, a former federal cabinet minister, was elected to the party in June, and at the very least, they're hoping that this is going to help bring back the Liberal Party of Quebec's fortunes. There's some evidence that's going to happen.

I talked about that poll before in February. There was like not, it wasn't a, it wasn't like an accompanying poll, but as a poll came around the same time is that the liberal party of Quebec actually saw a bump in support as a result of all the Trump stuff going on down south. And they, they had that bump despite having, not having a leader and despite being completely rudelisk over the last three years. So Pablo Rodriguez was elected in June. he's going to be in the National Assembly pretty soon.

We're literally going to have a three-way, like a proper three-way race in Quebec for the first time in a long time. And it's going to be ugly and messy. It's going to be on all the stuff that we just end up talking about. Okay. Well, thanks for the setup. Super helpful. And it's always great to talk to you. Thank you so much, Martin.

Thanks for having me. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening and talk to you tomorrow.