With the next election on the distant horizon, the decision to hold off selecting a new leader might not be such a bad idea after all.
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Most political observers, myself included, have criticized the Quebec Liberals for being in no rush to select a new leader to replace Dominique Anglade after her departure in the wake of their terrible performance in the last election. Aislin recently did two cartoons about it; the latest showed a turtle on its back and asked if it’s time that someone woke them up.
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Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, I am starting to wonder whether they may have been smarter than the rest of us in understanding today’s political zeitgeist. There’s no doubt the party can only start to make a sustained impact once a new leader takes charge to stamp their imprint. But timing in politics, as it relates to election cycles (momentum, peaking too soon, political honeymoons) is a critical consideration that must be managed skilfully to maximize chances of winning.
With the pressures of leadership today, the fickle nature of voters, skepticism and fatigue, ushering in a new beginning now — with the election only in October 2026 — may overly expose a new leader to wear and tear and ultimately temper enthusiasm. Thirty months is five eternities, to borrow the often-cited observation of Robert Bourassa that “six months is an eternity in politics.” Getting the timing right is crucial.
At the Liberals’ general council meeting in Bromont last weekend, optimism was brimming with more names of potential candidates circulating. The leadership campaign will officially begin next January, with the winner selected June 14, 2025. Still 16 months before the election, the newly minted leader will have ample time to start planting roots. With the winner unlikely to be a sitting MNA, someone will probably step down to clear a path for them into the National Assembly via a byelection and assume their role as official opposition leader.
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The key, of course, is choosing the right person. Another advantage of delaying is that it allows the field to widen. Many quality candidates cannot just drop everything too far in advance. Very interesting names have now started emerging, including Antoine Tardif, the mayor of Victoriaville; Charles Milliard, president of the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec; and former MNA Karl Blackburn, president of the Conseil du patronat, the province’s largest employers’ group. It would be an exciting leadership race if they all ran, along with others who are “in reflection.”
Meanwhile, the Liberals can also test certain orientations, campaign mantras and trial balloons to gauge reaction before selecting a leader to avoid them from getting burned. In Bromont, for example, they adopted a resolution that, if elected in 2026, they would present a plan to return to balanced budgets while maintaining education, health and social services. The blowback was swift — their last government imposed harsh budget cuts in these areas in the name of austerity, which then hurt them in the election — and an early warning about treading carefully on this issue.
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Former senator André Pratte, who leads the party’s policy commission, affirmed that in 2026 the Liberals will propose a federalist government “springing from the party of the economy, of small- and medium-sized businesses, the regions, the environment, social justice and budgetary prudence.” By focusing on bread-and-butter issues, they hope to move the needle away from language and identity, their Achilles heel. The Liberals are currently mired at six per cent among francophone voters.
With the increasingly volatile Parti Québécois and tired Coalition Avenir Québec potentially splitting the hard nationalist francophone and right-wing vote, there’s hope for the Liberals. There are many “ifs,” but if a solid new leader with strong economic credentials can be a voice of reason from the centre, articulately criticizing policies of the other parties, they could come up the middle and potentially rise again, showing up all of us who questioned their leadership strategy.
Robert Libman is an architect and planning consultant who has served as Equality Party leader and MNA, mayor of Côte-St-Luc and a member of the Montreal executive committee. He was a Conservative candidate in the 2015 federal election. X @robertlibman
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