Libman: Quebec Liberals gamble on Rodriguez. Will voters?

Did Quebec Liberals shoot themselves in the foot last weekend?
Pablo Rodriguez, a former MP and minister under Justin Trudeau, narrowly won the leadership of the provincial party over pharmacist and former head of the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec, Charles Milliard.
The Liberals face an uphill challenge. To win next year's election, they must wrestle back the support of francophone voters who make up 80 per cent of the electorate. For the past several years, francophone support has been languishing at or below 10 per cent.
The Liberals are largely the default party for non-francophones concentrated primarily in the Montreal area. Montreal Island and Laval, however, comprise only 33 of 125 ridings. As the Coalition Avenir Québec and Parti Québécois have shown, you can win elections without Montreal, but you can't win without the overwhelmingly francophone regions covering the rest of Quebec.
Rodriguez came to Quebec as a refugee from Argentina at eight years old, not speaking French or English. He became involved politically in the provincial Liberal youth wing before jumping to federal politics. He is affable and a good organizer with political experience who knows how to say the right things.
Is that the right recipe, though, to save the Liberals?
According to polls, most voters crave change from the CAQ government, and with the Liberals in limbo, had been parking their votes with the PQ — despite a commitment by its leader to hold a sovereignty referendum most Quebecers don't want.
Rodriguez will undoubtedly hammer away at the PQ's referendum pledge as adding more uncertainty in an uncertain world. And when asked how he will win over the regions, he duly responds that all Quebecers want good government. More than rhetoric, though, he will need to start showing some substance on major issues, particularly the economy, health care and education — areas of failure by the existing government. His campaign website has several broad commitments but is short on specifics.
Rodriguez's challenge, however, may go beyond just that.
In the history of Quebec, only one premier — French-born Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière (1878-'79) — wasn't born in the province (though René Lévesque was born in a hospital in Campbellton, N.B., across the bay from his Quebec home in New Carlisle.)
Electoral politics, like it or not, often includes an element of voting for someone with whom you identify — linguistically, culturally, ethnically. In Quebec's regions, where the population is much less diverse and typically more nationalistic, a native son could articulate immigration or economic policies, for example, without the message's focus being potentially blurred by their roots or nationality or mother-tongue.
On language issues, Rodriguez has recently been criticizing the CAQ government's actions as divisive, saying he would modify Bill 96 by eliminating two irritants — the search and seizure provisions and six-month grace period for immigrants to receive government services in English. He also promises to reverse tuition hikes that penalize English universities, and he opposes the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause.
But as he inevitably faces pressure to solidify his pro-Quebec credentials or acknowledge 'the decline of French,' will the standard recoil reflex to throw anglophones under the bus kick in? He certainly didn't object to Bill 96 as Trudeau's Quebec Lieutenant, and he supported the Official Languages Act revision (C-13) that compromises minority-language protections for Quebec anglophones.
Rodriguez beat other strong leadership candidates, but many party members may have supported him based on a Léger poll showing the Liberals under his direction had the best chance of rivalling the PQ. However, that poll may have been skewed by the name-recognition effect at the time. Any new leader, once chosen, inevitably grows in stature. Few Canadians knew Mark Carney a year ago.
Rodriguez has positive attributes and a compelling life story. In choosing him, though, Liberals are challenging history — and gambling that Quebec voters are prepared to do the same.

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