Quebec premier launches last-ditch effort to avoid political annihilation

MONTREAL — A defiant François Legault took a fighting stance as he entered a party convention last weekend, accompanied by the theme song from Rocky III.

The Quebec premier threw a few mock punches and paraphrased an aging Sylvester Stallone to a roomful of supporters in Gatineau, Que.

“It’s not the force of the blows that counts, it’s the ability to take them and keep moving forward,” the Quebec premier said.

“I’m ready to keep taking hits.”

Once considered a benevolent father figure who shepherded his people through the COVID-19 pandemic and steered his party to two decisive majority wins, Legault has since suffered a dramatic fall from grace.

He returns to Quebec’s national assembly this week with an eleventh-hour promise to pull his party back from the brink. With polls suggesting the Coalition Avenir Québec could be wiped off the electoral map, this fall legislative session may be the premier’s final opportunity to prove he deserves to lead the party he founded into a third election – if, indeed, it’s not already too late.

“This is François Legault’s last-chance session,” said Émilie Foster, a former CAQ member of the legislature. Still, she doubted whether his badly damaged brand can recover. “Once the goose is cooked, it’s cooked.”

With the next Quebec election scheduled for October 2026, Legault has signalled what some political observers are calling a shift to the right, with promises to make cuts to the public service, crack down on crime and speed up approvals for major projects. He will give an inaugural speech Tuesday after proroguing the provincial legislature earlier this month.

Legault is long past the point of denying that public opinion has turned against him. According to one recent poll, he is now the least popular premier in the country. Poll aggregator Qc125.com suggests his party would lose every one of its 83 seats if an election were held today.

Legault’s government has been tarnished by scandal, including an ongoing fiasco involving massive cost overruns at the province’s auto insurance board. He has also failed to deliver on some of the commitments that helped propel him to power in 2018. Back then, he promised to cut the size of the bureaucracy. Seven years on, it has grown considerably.

Now, Legault is offering mea culpas and pledging to correct course. He has promised a “shock treatment” in the form of deep cuts to the public service, and to present a “new economic vision for Quebec.”

Although his latest overtures have been cast as a rightward shift, Dimitri Soudas, a political analyst and former director of communications for prime minister Stephen Harper, said the party is simply “going back to the basics.”

“These are their principles,” he said. “They just lost their way.”

During a cabinet shuffle earlier this month, Legault made a former Montreal police officer his minister of public security, promising a new focus on law and order. He also gave his new environment minister, Bernard Drainville, instructions to carry out a “major cleanup” of red tape to speed up regulatory approvals.

Legault has said his government will table a new bill that mirrors Bill C-5, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s signature legislation meant to fast-track projects deemed to be in the national interest. He has also mused about pausing environmental measures. Drainville last week announced Quebec would lift its plan to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.

Foster, now an adjunct professor of political management at Carleton University, said Legault is taking cues from Carney in moving his party to the right. “He’s following the dominant trend,” she said.

The Coalition Avenir Québec will also continue efforts to strengthen secularism in the province, including by tabling a bill to ban prayer in public places. Such legislation will likely appeal to the party’s nationalist base, as will promises to adopt a Quebec constitution.

All this may not be enough, however, and Legault may not have another chance to right his sinking ship. “Have Quebecers already turned the page?” Soudas said. “If polls don’t change by December or January, it’s going to be very difficult to climb that hill afterwards.”

Michelle Setlakwe, parliamentary leader of Quebec’s Liberal opposition, said Legault’s promises are “too little, too late.” But she said it’s unclear what will happen to the coalition that Legault founded nearly 14 years ago once his days are over.

“It’s normal that he’s protecting his party,” she said. “I can only imagine how unhappy he is and the internal struggles that he is going through right now.”

Rumblings of dissatisfaction from within Legault’s caucus have grown louder in recent weeks. One of his former ministers, Maïté Blanchette Vézina, recently quit his caucus after being shuffled out of cabinet earlier this month, saying she had lost faith in Legault.

Doubts about Legault’s leadership also made their way onto the convention floor last weekend, where one party member publicly called on him to step aside.

The premier has dismissed Blanchette Vézina’s criticism as sour grapes, and says he has the support of the “vast majority” of his caucus. He has insisted he will lead the party into next year’s election.

Despite the grumbling, Foster said she doesn’t believe Legault’s caucus will revolt against the man who ended nearly 50 years of Liberal and Parti Québécois dominance in Quebec politics.

“No one in the CAQ is going to orchestrate a coup; that won’t happen,” she said. “Ultimately, it will always be his decision.”

The problem, however, is that Legault may not make the decision that those around him privately believe he should, Soudas said. “People in a position of leadership almost never say, ‘It’s time for me to go,’” he said. “They feel they are eternal.”

Legault is not the first politician to turn to a certain fictional boxer for inspiration when times get tough. When things were looking bad for then-prime minister Justin Trudeau last year, the Toronto Star reported that his office played clips from Rocky Balboa to boost morale during a caucus retreat.

“It ain’t about how hard you hit,” Stallone says in the 2006 film – the quote Legault evoked on Sunday. “It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

Trudeau announced his resignation less than four months later.

– With files from Caroline Plante in Gatineau, Que.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2025.

Maura Forrest, The Canadian Press