CAQ or Coalition Ramasse-Tout

Elections in October announced a historic number of deputies for the coalition Avenir Quebec.

Since then, and not surprisingly, all the ambitious meet there and are willing to make many compromises with their beliefs of yesterday to find a place there.

We saw this recently with the arrival of Christine Frechette, a candidate in Sanguinet.

Nationalism

A man who left Maurice’s government because of the Charter of Values, he is running for a party that took over the charter by slightly modifying it to make it the centerpiece of its nationalism.

The promise of power has always enabled men and women to overcome many problems of conscience.

To those who question its stability, the CAQ consistently replies that it is a coalition.

It’s a bit short.

Especially since there is a fundamental difference between a coalition and a party, which chooses everything that exists only through the personality of its leader.

I was looking for similarities between Sonia Lebel and Simon Jolin-Barrett and I couldn’t find them.

I looked for them between Pascale Dery and Bernard Drainville and I found them even less.

I couldn’t find them between Shirley Dorismond and Caroline St-Hilaire.

There are limits to mixing pro-secularism and anti-secularism, ultra-federalists and latent separatists in the same bed.

And there are limits to believing that the word “nationalist” is sufficient to erase all the contradictions between these schools of thought.

This should take into account the nature of the CAQ.

When it was created ten years ago, the CAQ presented itself as an alliance of federalists and former sovereigns, united to enable Quebec to envision its collective future rather than through debate over its political status.

Ten years later, CAQ has changed in nature.

It became a major vehicle for Quebec nationalism as the question of identity became central and tensions arose with Canadian rule.

Consequently, the treatment it reserved for sovereigns was madness.

Why is Pascale Dery eligible to join the CAQ as an unrestricted federalist when Bernard Drainville and Caroline St-Hilaire have to hide their sovereignty?

Sovereigns

Has the CAQ forgotten that there are so many sovereigns among the nationalists they want to unite that they have nothing to gain by turning them into an invisible stream?

Can it offer them another future in its ranks than rejection?

No one is asking for a referendum.

But she can admit that there are supporters of independence out there, even if they conclude that it is not a short-term agenda.

One thing is for sure, this unbalanced coalition needs a watchdog to order.

Without the presence of the PQ in the National Assembly, we may fear that the CAQ will be completely swallowed up by its federalist wing and its nationalism will be no more than a slogan without consequence.