The funkadelic bus and other tales from day 1 on the campaign trail
Where the parties chose to kick off the campaign says more than you might think
Welcome to Ballot Brief, your one stop shop for all the news, conversations and behind-the-scenes info from the campaign you need to know before you head to the polls.
One down, 38 days left to go. Here's your look at how the first day of the campaign shaped up.
The Breakdown
By Jonathan Montpetit, @jonmontpetit
The campaign kicked off today, promising 39 days of fun and adventure in Quebec politics. Where the party leaders chose to hold their first events tells us a lot about what we can expect between now and Oct. 1.
After the requisite visit to the lieutenant-general, Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard gave a speech in the Quebec City riding of Jean-Talon. He spent the rest of the day campaigning in the Mauricie. This makes clear the only thing the Liberals are worried about, for now, is the Coalition Avenir Québec.
That's because polls are predicting a CAQ landslide in the Quebec City area. They're looking strong around Trois-Rivières as well, where the Liberals took a number of ridings in 2014. This is a two-party race.
The road to victory for Couillard and the Liberals relies, in part, on making people feel good about the past four years. That's easier said than done, even though the economy is strong. The Liberals began their time in power with two years of pretty deep cuts to health care and education spending. Couillard said Thursday the pain was worth it: "Quebec now has the ability to make choices."
The CAQ began its campaign in the Louis-Hébert riding. The party won that Quebec City riding in a byelection last year, and they've had the momentum ever since.
What's doomed the CAQ in years past is the perception there wasn't much depth to the party beyond François Legault. No surprise, then, that Legault was surrounded by some of his big name candidates and insisted they had the necessary experience to govern. "We have a lot of managers," he said.
Legault also spoke in English during his speech, pitching his party as the best way to turn the page on "50 years of fruitless constitutional debates." He wants to be seen as a third way between the federalist Liberals and the sovereignist Parti Québécois.
Jean-François Lisée got things going for the PQ in Borduas, a one-time PQ riding in Mont-Saint-Hilaire they lost narrowly in 2014. Lisée will be a visiting a number of former PQ ridings around Montreal they let slip away. He says he wants to appear to be on the "offensive."
The stakes are, arguably, highest for the PQ. It is polling so badly at the moment, the party risks losing official status in the National Assembly. They need 12 seats to keep it.
Lisée's plan to stave off extinction, judging by Thursday's speech, is to focus on the party's social-democratic roots: it want to be the leftist alternative to centre-right policies of the Liberals and the CAQ. "If you thought austerity was bad under the Liberals, it will be even worse under the CAQ," he said.
But it will have to compete with Québec Solidaire, its leftist rival, which has enjoyed a recent bump in the polls. One of the places it is polling particularly well is in the Montreal riding of Rosemont, currently held by Lisée. Guess where Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois — the party's co-spokesperson — will campaign Thursday night?
The Trail: Dispatches from the road
By Simon Nakonechny, @simon_nak
There's no missing the Parti Quebecois's campaign bus — it truly puts the "parliament" in Parliament Funkadelic.
Its brightly coloured paint job is reminiscent of psychedelic album covers from the 1970s — coincidentally or not, a time when the PQ was cruising along.
But a lot has changed since then.
The PQ is currently running third in the polls, and for the first time in decades, the issue of sovereignty is not expected to figure much in the election.
Today as he launched his campaign, leader Jean-François Lisée again doubled-down on his pledge to not to hold a referendum in a first PQ mandate.
For some in the crowd of mostly of baby-boomer age péquistes, putting the independence talk on the backburner was a bit of a buzzkill.
"To me [that's] a little mistake," said 64-year-old François Paquette who has been a party stalwart since the 1970s.
It really fits with my personality and I like to believe if we were first we would still have done it.- Jean-François Lisée on the PQ bus, aka "Parliament Funkadelic"
Paquette says he has two daughters who are 23 and 25, and he said they have "no clue" about what he believes are the potential benefits of an independent Quebec.
"It's not in their mindset at all."
But the PQ's groovy bus and double-edged slogan, "Sérieusement" ("Seriously,") may be signs that the party is ready to take more risks in this campaign to try and regain some of that 1970s mojo.
I asked Lisée if the funky colours were only something a third-place party could get away with.
"It's me," Lisée says, "It really fits with my personality and I like to believe if we were first we would still have done it."
Paquette says the funky motorcoach is, at the very least, a conversation starter.
"I mean people are talking about it, that's fantastic."
Out of the gate
CBC poll analyst and all-star stats go-to Éric Grenier aggregates all publicly available polling data in our Poll Tracker. On day one of the campaign, this is where the parties stand:
The mic
Why are Quebec's fixed election dates in the fall? What are the rules around election signs?
Do you have election questions you want answered? Send in your queries to melinda.dalton@cbc.ca and we'll choose some to be answered right here.
We also want to hear what matters most to you this election in the 2018 edition of Vote Compass. The short, quiz-style survey will show you how your views compare with those of Quebec's political parties.
You can check out our Vote Compass explainer, or head right on over there and try it yourself.
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À la prochaine,
-Melinda Dalton, social media editor
