With election results still being counted Tuesday night, the PQ led by Pauline Marois had won 59 seats, enough to form a minority government but short of the 63 seats needed for a majority in the National Assembly.
The Parti Québécois is on track to win power in Quebec.
With election results still being counted Tuesday night, the PQ led by Pauline Marois had won 59 seats, enough to form a minority government but short of the 63 seats needed for a majority in the National Assembly.
It’s a bruising loss for Charest and his Liberals, an indictment of a nearly decade-old government battered by corruption allegations in the province, student protests and that in the end, looked worn out.
But the Liberal still turned in a surprisingly strong second-place showing with 47 seats, avoiding the embarrassing third-place finish that some had predicted in the campaign’s final days.
But Charest was in a tight race for his own seat in Sherbrooke.
Third place went to upstart Coalition Avenir Québec led by François Legault. With results still being tallied an hour after the polls had closed, the CAQ had won 17 seats – eight more than it had before—but well short of the high expectations that had them vying for the lead.
That could be because the fledgling party lacked the ground game to get its voters to the polls.
The results mean that Quebec will have its first woman premier with Marois.
Now the questions are what Marois’ victory means for Quebec, her party’s sovereignty ambitions and relations with the rest of Canada, notably the federal government.
Even during the campaign, Marois was threatening to put Quebec on a collision course with Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in Ottawa. She made clear that she would be upsetting years of relative calm between the two governments by demanding new powers for Quebec in areas such as employment insurance and culture.
Ottawa’s failure to deliver on any of those demands would only bolster the PQ’s case for sovereignty, she said.
“I will be very polite, but very firm,” she said Friday during a campaign stop in Gatineau, just across the river from nation’s capital.
But unlike previous Quebec elections – the PQ has held already two referendums on sovereignty – the issue of separation took a back seat in this vote. A CROP poll Friday found that support for the idea of an independent Quebec actually dropped during the campaign to under 30 per cent.
Legault tried to capitalize on that waning separatist sentiment, warning that a vote for the PQ would invite a referendum and with it, turmoil that would undermine the province’s economy.
“Only the Coalition is in a position to block a referendum,” Legault said over the weekend.
He accused the PQ of harbouring a “hidden agenda” that would taint dealings with Ottawa.
Legault, a founder of the vacation airline Air Transat, pitched his party as an alternative to the Liberals, one they could choose without sparking tortured constitutional wrangling. But he was also hoping to woo PQ backers too.
“I’m reaching out to Liberals who can’t take it anymore, the negligence, the corruption,” Legault said late last month. “I’m calling out to pequistes.”
The party’s early days were fired up when Jacques Duchesneau, former police in Montreal and anti-hero corruption her in the province, jumped onboard as a candidate.
Legault himself is a former ardent separatist who has served in the cabinets of several PQ governments. But the focus of his fledgling party has been the economy and he’s promised to put off any sovereignty vote for at least 10 years.
Instead, he tried to woo voters with a campaign to eliminate corruption, slash spending and boost social programs, including an ambitious pledge to get every family a doctor.
Marois tried to reassure voters that a Parti Québécois victory would not reignite old separatism battles. Instead, she said that the economy would be her immediate priority too.
Apart from promises of confrontation with the Harper government, Marois’ campaign promised numerous controversial measures intended to boost French culture, language and identity in Quebec. The PQ wants to introduce new language laws that would force small businesses to work in French and cut down on the use of English, which she claims is on the rise in big cities like Montreal.
Marois has also pledged to bring in a secular charter that would prohibit public employees like school teachers and bureaucrats from wearing religious symbols like head Muslim headscarves and Jewish kippas in the workplace. That same charter would exempt symbols belonging to the Catholic faith, like the crucifix hanging in Quebec’s National Assembly, which the PQ claims are part of the province’s history and heritage.
Charest gambled with his early August election call that the economy would trump voters’ concerns and that Quebecers would again turn to the Liberals. He warned that a vote for the PQ would invite chaos and he appealed to the “silent majority” for votes.
“The choice is clear,” Charest said at Aug. 1 campaign launch. “It’s between stability and instability.”
In the last days, he even took to warning that the Quebec Nordiques – the province’s lost NHL franchise – would never be returned home under a PQ government.
But voters had questions about Charest’s brand of “stability.” In recent months, a student uprising over tuition fees brought sometimes violent protests to the streets of Montreal and a probe into corruption in Quebec’s construction industry raised broader questions about oversight by politicians and civil servants.
All of that cast a pall over Charest’s Liberals, a government many saw as tired and worn out after almost a decade in power.
By the end of the campaign, the real question was where disaffected voters would turn as an alternative.
Indeed, in the final days of this summer campaign, Legault and Marois turned their guns on each other and treated Charest as a spent political force.
At the time of dissolution, the Liberals held 64 seats in the 125-seat National Assembly, the Parti Québécois had 47 seats, the Coalition Avenir Québec nine seats; Option Nationale had one seat; Québec Solidaire had one seat. There were two independents and one vacancy.
Despite the hotly contested election, voter turn-out dropped to 53 per cent compared to 57 turn-out in the 2008 provincial election.
With election results still being counted Tuesday night, the PQ led by Pauline Marois had won 59 seats, enough to form a minority government but short of the 63 seats needed for a majority in the National Assembly.
It’s a bruising loss for Charest and his Liberals, an indictment of a nearly decade-old government battered by corruption allegations in the province, student protests and that in the end, looked worn out.
But the Liberal still turned in a surprisingly strong second-place showing with 47 seats, avoiding the embarrassing third-place finish that some had predicted in the campaign’s final days.
But Charest was in a tight race for his own seat in Sherbrooke.
Third place went to upstart Coalition Avenir Québec led by François Legault. With results still being tallied an hour after the polls had closed, the CAQ had won 17 seats – eight more than it had before—but well short of the high expectations that had them vying for the lead.
That could be because the fledgling party lacked the ground game to get its voters to the polls.
The results mean that Quebec will have its first woman premier with Marois.
Now the questions are what Marois’ victory means for Quebec, her party’s sovereignty ambitions and relations with the rest of Canada, notably the federal government.
Even during the campaign, Marois was threatening to put Quebec on a collision course with Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in Ottawa. She made clear that she would be upsetting years of relative calm between the two governments by demanding new powers for Quebec in areas such as employment insurance and culture.
Ottawa’s failure to deliver on any of those demands would only bolster the PQ’s case for sovereignty, she said.
“I will be very polite, but very firm,” she said Friday during a campaign stop in Gatineau, just across the river from nation’s capital.
But unlike previous Quebec elections – the PQ has held already two referendums on sovereignty – the issue of separation took a back seat in this vote. A CROP poll Friday found that support for the idea of an independent Quebec actually dropped during the campaign to under 30 per cent.
Legault tried to capitalize on that waning separatist sentiment, warning that a vote for the PQ would invite a referendum and with it, turmoil that would undermine the province’s economy.
“Only the Coalition is in a position to block a referendum,” Legault said over the weekend.
He accused the PQ of harbouring a “hidden agenda” that would taint dealings with Ottawa.
Legault, a founder of the vacation airline Air Transat, pitched his party as an alternative to the Liberals, one they could choose without sparking tortured constitutional wrangling. But he was also hoping to woo PQ backers too.
“I’m reaching out to Liberals who can’t take it anymore, the negligence, the corruption,” Legault said late last month. “I’m calling out to pequistes.”
The party’s early days were fired up when Jacques Duchesneau, former police in Montreal and anti-hero corruption her in the province, jumped onboard as a candidate.
Legault himself is a former ardent separatist who has served in the cabinets of several PQ governments. But the focus of his fledgling party has been the economy and he’s promised to put off any sovereignty vote for at least 10 years.
Instead, he tried to woo voters with a campaign to eliminate corruption, slash spending and boost social programs, including an ambitious pledge to get every family a doctor.
Marois tried to reassure voters that a Parti Québécois victory would not reignite old separatism battles. Instead, she said that the economy would be her immediate priority too.
Apart from promises of confrontation with the Harper government, Marois’ campaign promised numerous controversial measures intended to boost French culture, language and identity in Quebec. The PQ wants to introduce new language laws that would force small businesses to work in French and cut down on the use of English, which she claims is on the rise in big cities like Montreal.
Marois has also pledged to bring in a secular charter that would prohibit public employees like school teachers and bureaucrats from wearing religious symbols like head Muslim headscarves and Jewish kippas in the workplace. That same charter would exempt symbols belonging to the Catholic faith, like the crucifix hanging in Quebec’s National Assembly, which the PQ claims are part of the province’s history and heritage.
Charest gambled with his early August election call that the economy would trump voters’ concerns and that Quebecers would again turn to the Liberals. He warned that a vote for the PQ would invite chaos and he appealed to the “silent majority” for votes.
“The choice is clear,” Charest said at Aug. 1 campaign launch. “It’s between stability and instability.”
In the last days, he even took to warning that the Quebec Nordiques – the province’s lost NHL franchise – would never be returned home under a PQ government.
But voters had questions about Charest’s brand of “stability.” In recent months, a student uprising over tuition fees brought sometimes violent protests to the streets of Montreal and a probe into corruption in Quebec’s construction industry raised broader questions about oversight by politicians and civil servants.
All of that cast a pall over Charest’s Liberals, a government many saw as tired and worn out after almost a decade in power.
By the end of the campaign, the real question was where disaffected voters would turn as an alternative.
Indeed, in the final days of this summer campaign, Legault and Marois turned their guns on each other and treated Charest as a spent political force.
At the time of dissolution, the Liberals held 64 seats in the 125-seat National Assembly, the Parti Québécois had 47 seats, the Coalition Avenir Québec nine seats; Option Nationale had one seat; Québec Solidaire had one seat. There were two independents and one vacancy.
Despite the hotly contested election, voter turn-out dropped to 53 per cent compared to 57 turn-out in the 2008 provincial election.
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McGuinty pleads with teachers to accept ‘pause’ in pay hike
Teachers are mad as hell at Premier Dalton McGuinty and he doesn’t blame them one bit.
Even though teachers’ compensation has increased by 25 per cent since he was elected in 2003 and working conditions have improved with smaller class sizes and higher test scores, McGuinty says he appreciates why they are angry that he’s freezing their pay and curbing their collective bargaining rights.
“I understand where teachers are coming from. They’ve got their own household budgets, they’ve made plans to . . . manage their own home finances and then this guy McGuinty comes along and says we’ve got to hit the pause button for a couple of years,” he said.
As has been his tradition for years, the premier on Tuesday marked the first day students are back by paying a visit to a school.
But because the Liberal government is at war with the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, he toured a French-language school.
Speaking to reporters at École élémentaire Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau, whose teachers belong to a union that has settled its contract, McGuinty reminded educators he hasn’t changed.
“We’re the same government, we’re the same people and in the same way we’re absolutely devoted to publicly funded education. We’ve been hit by this terrible recession; we’ve got this deficit,” he said, referring to the $14.8-billion shortfall.
“I’m proud of our teachers and I know that we’ve hit a bit of rough patch and that’s not unusual when it comes to if you see what happens in . . . periods of economic constraint,” the premier said.
“Teachers understand we’ve got to make a bit of a choice and either put more money into pay hikes or we can put more money into expanding full-day kindergarten and keeping class sizes small, which, by the way, hangs onto teachers’ jobs.”
Last week, some 5,000 teachers descended on Queen’s Park to protest McGuinty ramming through legislation that would drastically limit their rights to collective bargaining for two years.
Many in the crowd booed, jeered and chanted “liar, liar” whenever McGuinty’s name was mention during the demonstration.
The Liberal legislation would freeze teachers’ pay — except for seniority grid movement — impose three unpaid days off, halve the number of annual sick days to 10, and stop unused sick days from being banked and cashed out at retirement.
In the legislature, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak grilled McGuinty on why he has brought in a law to end bankable sick days for teachers, but won’t do so for firefighters — whose professional association has long been a staunch Liberal ally — and other public servants.
“Isn’t it time to end this practice, where, for example, firefighters can cash in sick days they’ve not used, to the tune of $50,000?” Hudak asked.
McGuinty noted the government has already scrapped the sick day retirement payouts for Ontario Provincial Police officers and would leave it to the “abiding wisdom” of municipalities how to deal with the firefighters they employ.
Hudak, whose party supports the Liberals on the education bill, charged that argument is “just slippery” because local school boards employ teachers, not the provincial government.
“Why is it good for teachers but not good for firefighters?”
NDP MPP Peter Tabuns (Toronto Danforth) said such legislation is “simplistic and unconstitutional” because workers’ rights are being trampled upon.
Even though teachers’ compensation has increased by 25 per cent since he was elected in 2003 and working conditions have improved with smaller class sizes and higher test scores, McGuinty says he appreciates why they are angry that he’s freezing their pay and curbing their collective bargaining rights.
“I understand where teachers are coming from. They’ve got their own household budgets, they’ve made plans to . . . manage their own home finances and then this guy McGuinty comes along and says we’ve got to hit the pause button for a couple of years,” he said.
As has been his tradition for years, the premier on Tuesday marked the first day students are back by paying a visit to a school.
But because the Liberal government is at war with the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, he toured a French-language school.
Speaking to reporters at École élémentaire Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau, whose teachers belong to a union that has settled its contract, McGuinty reminded educators he hasn’t changed.
“We’re the same government, we’re the same people and in the same way we’re absolutely devoted to publicly funded education. We’ve been hit by this terrible recession; we’ve got this deficit,” he said, referring to the $14.8-billion shortfall.
“I’m proud of our teachers and I know that we’ve hit a bit of rough patch and that’s not unusual when it comes to if you see what happens in . . . periods of economic constraint,” the premier said.
“Teachers understand we’ve got to make a bit of a choice and either put more money into pay hikes or we can put more money into expanding full-day kindergarten and keeping class sizes small, which, by the way, hangs onto teachers’ jobs.”
Last week, some 5,000 teachers descended on Queen’s Park to protest McGuinty ramming through legislation that would drastically limit their rights to collective bargaining for two years.
Many in the crowd booed, jeered and chanted “liar, liar” whenever McGuinty’s name was mention during the demonstration.
The Liberal legislation would freeze teachers’ pay — except for seniority grid movement — impose three unpaid days off, halve the number of annual sick days to 10, and stop unused sick days from being banked and cashed out at retirement.
In the legislature, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak grilled McGuinty on why he has brought in a law to end bankable sick days for teachers, but won’t do so for firefighters — whose professional association has long been a staunch Liberal ally — and other public servants.
“Isn’t it time to end this practice, where, for example, firefighters can cash in sick days they’ve not used, to the tune of $50,000?” Hudak asked.
McGuinty noted the government has already scrapped the sick day retirement payouts for Ontario Provincial Police officers and would leave it to the “abiding wisdom” of municipalities how to deal with the firefighters they employ.
Hudak, whose party supports the Liberals on the education bill, charged that argument is “just slippery” because local school boards employ teachers, not the provincial government.
“Why is it good for teachers but not good for firefighters?”
NDP MPP Peter Tabuns (Toronto Danforth) said such legislation is “simplistic and unconstitutional” because workers’ rights are being trampled upon.
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