For people in the rest of Canada, Quebec politics used to look fairly simple.
There were Liberals and there were Péquistes. One side wanted Quebec to remain in Canada; the other wanted to leave. Quebec politics was always more complicated than that, of course, but from Toronto, Calgary or Ottawa, the basic choice was easy enough to understand.
François Legault changed that in 2018. His Coalition Avenir Québec offered nationalism without a referendum, a more business-friendly approach to government and an alternative to the old Liberal-PQ rivalry.
And it worked twice.
Eight years later, the old question is back, but in a very different context.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon recently announced that a PQ government would not hold a referendum on independence while Donald Trump remains president. He still promises one during a first mandate, just later.
PSPP does not want this election to become a referendum on the referendum. He wants voters judging eight years of CAQ government instead. And it leads to the real battle. It will be around which question voters will think about when they vote.
Trump, however, is already shaping the campaign in another way.
Quebec businesses are being hit by U.S. tariffs, trade talks between Ottawa and Washington have broken down, and the province is facing another period of economic uncertainty. Christine Fréchette is trying to turn that uncertainty into an argument for stability.
Her case is simple: this is not the time to add constitutional uncertainty to economic uncertainty.
The CAQ can present itself as the government already dealing with Washington and Ottawa and supporting affected businesses. Fréchette can also offer something Legault built the party around: Quebec nationalism without another referendum.
Voters can be unhappy with the government and still decide that tariffs, a leadership change and a referendum are too much uncertainty at once.
But the coalition Legault built is no longer what it was.
The PQ has recovered nationalist voters. Some federalists are looking at the Liberals again. And around Quebec City and in Chaudière-Appalaches, Éric Duhaime’s Conservatives are competing for voters who once saw the CAQ as their political home.
A right-of-centre voter can be tired of the CAQ, opposed to independence and unwilling to vote Liberal, and still have somewhere else to go. In the Quebec City region, that could decide several ridings.
On the other end, PSPP faces a different problem.
His clarity is part of his appeal. He believes in independence and has never tried very hard to hide it. But many of the voters currently putting the PQ ahead in the polls do not share that goal.
Quebec could elect a government committed to holding a referendum with the support of voters who would then vote No.
For those voters, the calculation may be fairly simple: are they more fed up with the CAQ than they are worried about another referendum?
PSPP’s decision to delay it until after Trump is meant to make that choice easier.
For Charles Milliard and the Liberals, the opposite is true. They have every reason to keep the referendum front and centre.
Their pitch is simple: Quebecers can throw the CAQ out without reopening the constitutional question. Milliard has already made clear that delaying a referendum does not make it disappear.
Milliard is new to most voters. His party is not. Among many francophones, the Liberal brand still carries the baggage of the governments they rejected in 2018.
So the parties head into the campaign trying to make Quebecers worry about different things.
The PQ wants them thinking about another CAQ mandate. The CAQ wants them thinking about stability, tariffs and the risks of a referendum. The Liberals want the referendum to dominate the campaign. Around Quebec City, the Conservatives are offering a rejection of all three.
That is why the ballot question matters so much.
This election may not be about which political project Quebecers like best. It may be about which outcome they can tolerate.
The party that wins may not be the one that generates the most enthusiasm. It may simply be the one that appears least dangerous.
Quebec’s election could therefore come down to an uncomfortable choice: another referendum, another CAQ government or another Liberal one.
For now, Quebecers have not decided which future they fear least.
