How Legault moves past his offhand comments on Quebec's housing crisis

When Premier François Legault said last week that "no one has found themselves on the street" on July 1, moving day in Quebec, in the years since he came to office in 2018, he left many people furiously scratching their heads.

Tenants' rights groups and opposition parties pounced on Legault's apparent disconnect from Quebec's undeniable housing crisis that has left nearly 100 Montreal families looking for a place to live with just three days to go before moving day, according to Mayor Valérie Plante. 

The premier's words at the June 19 news conference were especially ill-chosen, as they came a little over a week after the tabling of Bill 31 — the contentious proposed legislation to end tenants' lease transfers. Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau, who sponsored the bill, is now the subject of an ethics investigation.

To add insult to injury, a report from the Canadian Rental Housing Index published the very day of the news conference showed that the average rent in Quebec climbed 14 per cent between 2016 and 2021.

But using a now-familiar move, two days later, Legault "clarified" his original statement about housing.

He explained he had not meant the government would "find permanent housing for everyone," but that it would resort to temporary housing solutions, like making use of hotels to shelter people experiencing homelessness, as it has "done on past July 1sts."

"We all agree that there is a housing shortage," the premier said, to put to rest any doubt that he's unaware of the well-documented crisis. He then said his government would work to reduce housing construction delays.

Inept as his initial comments may have been, the episode was just another hiccup for the premier.

A little more than a week before the June 19 news conference, Legault declared in error that the hamlet of Clova had burned to the ground as wildfires swept through the region 500 kilometres north of Montreal.

The announcement sowed panic among Clova residents who had fled and confused those who were still there as firefighter crews held off the blaze.

But when CBC contacted his office for clarification about Clova's status, Legault's media attaché replied with a screenshot of the provincial fire prevention agency's Facebook status update — published after the premier spoke — which called the situation "critical" and said the agency "may eventually have to pull its teams out for their safety."

While Legault's detractors might roll their eyes at a premier who appears ill-informed and too ready to make comments off the top of his head, his history of recovering from his offhand remarks and remaining unscathed politically is worth examining.

'Nothing like your average Quebecer'

Quebecers seem to like the premier, no matter how much he trips over himself.

Legault uses a tried-and-true method in political crisis management: reframing. It involves shifting perspective on an issue, to regain control of public messaging. 

This strategy has allowed Legault to morph the concept of systemic racism into a semantic debate in Quebec, mainly by conflating the meaning of "systemic" and "systematic" —  and continuing to deny systemic racism exists in the province.  

Some would argue he uses the strategy so effectively, he is able to bank on what Université Laval political communications Prof. Thierry Giasson calls a "capital of sympathy." 

The premier's approval rating hit a high of 77 per cent in June 2020, three months into the pandemic, and to date, it has never dropped below the 43 per cent it sank to in September 2022, according to data from the Angus Reid Institute.

At the beginning of this month, when the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government's controversial language law, Bill 96, came into effect, Legault saw his approval rating dip just slightly, to 48 per cent from 55 per cent in March.

This is despite his government's rush to pass a bill in May making MNAs the highest-paid provincial legislators in Canada, and, in April, backtracking on an election promise to build a highway tunnel connecting Quebec City to Lévis, which risked the seat of La Peltrie MNA Éric Caire.

Giasson notes that Legault has the unusual ability to say things that seem to be "out of touch" without veering into arrogance.

"He makes mistakes when he speaks in French, and people relate to that. They're like, 'He speaks like me, so he is like me,'" Giasson said.

His informal speech gives him a folksy demeanour, although the co-founder of Air Transat was wealthy before he entered politics, and with his latest raise, he now earns more than six times the median after-tax income of a person living alone in Quebec in 2019, according to the latest data from Quebec's statistics agency.

Although Legault's misguided remarks sometimes let slip that he's "nothing like your average Quebecer," Giasson says the premier's ability to retain approval ratings that mostly hover around the 50 per cent mark — after enjoying almost five years in power — is no small feat.

Contrast how Quebecers respond to Legault with how they reacted during the 2018 provincial election campaign when former Liberal premier Philippe Couillard said it would be realistic to spend only $75 per week on groceries for one adult and two teenage children. 

Fine-tuning the persona

The reassuring statesman and father figure, a public persona which Legault fine-tuned in daily news conferences during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, contributed to his overwhelming victory in his bid for re-election in 2022 — a win that cemented the CAQ as a nationalist force, Giasson says.

Above all, those pandemic news conferences gave him a platform to showcase his empathy for the plight of his fellow Quebecers as the province came to a standstill, says Université de Montréal political communications Prof. Simon Thibault.

The CAQ's landslide victory last fall may have left Legault feeling overconfident about what his government has achieved to date, Thibault says. But in the face of a weak and splintered opposition, apparently unrehearsed comments like those the premier made on housing barely qualify as a political hurdle.