Had Quebec been in the midst of an election campaign this week, Philippe Couillard’s days as premier would have been numbered.

His Liberal government would not have survived the bungle that saw hundreds of motorists left stranded on one of Montreal’s major highways in the worst snowstorm of the season.

It all started when two trucks became stuck in the snow on Highway 13 at the tail end of the evening rush hour.

What followed was a comedy of errors that could easily have turned into a tragedy.

The stranded motorists might as well have been stuck in the middle of nowhere rather than a few kilometres from the downtown core of Quebec’s largest city.

Despite multiple calls to 911, there was not an emergency vehicle, a snowplow or a police officer in sight for the better part of 12 hours.

To make matters worse, the highway remained open long after the trucks’ mishap with more cars getting caught in the trap.

For most of the night, Transport Quebec — the department in charge of co-ordinating the provincial response to major storms — was apparently not even aware that there were people trapped on the highway.

It was only in the early hours of the morning that Montreal’s fire department finally stepped into the breach. More than 300 people had to be rescued.

Couillard’s government has been in full damage-control mode since then.

The premier has issued a rare public apology.

He has launched an independent inquiry into the chain of decisions or non-decisions that led to the event.

Senior officials with the provincial police and Transport Quebec have been suspended from duty. The private snow-removing company that is under contract to clear that portion of the highway is also under scrutiny.

But while the snowstorm has abated, the political storm has not.

The opposition parties are calling for the resignation of the two ministers in charge of the file. Political commentators agree that the root cause of the episode is a failure in leadership.

There was plenty of advance warning that a major storm was on the horizon. Quebec does not lack for equipment to deal with snow. It has protocols in place to deal with emergency situations. They worked at the time of the 1998 ice storm.

At a minimum, the weakness of Couillard’s ministerial team is again under the spotlight. For this government, it has been a chronic problem.

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Since he beat the odds and won a majority government in 2014, the premier has been shoring up his cabinet with former star candidates of the rival Coalition Avenir Quebec. The Liberal backbench is apparently too thin on talent to fill a cabinet roster.

Public safety minister Martin Coiteux has been doing double duty as municipal affairs minister.

Transport minister Laurent Lessard currently doubles up as agriculture minister.

Neither is a great communicator. Lessard initially tried to argue that for the most part the response to the storm had been adequate.

He is Couillard’s third transport minister in as many years. His immediate predecessor resigned over allegations of conflict of interest in the sale of the Rona hardware stores to an American corporation.

The man Couillard had first appointed as transport minister maintains he was ushered out of the portfolio after he flagged irregularities in the department. Robert Poeti claims he uncovered a troubling number of intimidation and mismanagement cases.

A few years ago, Transport Quebec was caught in the storm of the corruption and collusion scandal that led to a provincial public inquiry headed by Justice France Charbonneau.

Florent Gagné, the former transport deputy minister Couillard has tasked with conducting an independent inquiry into this week’s quagmire was in the sights of the inquiry. The commission considered blaming him for having turned a blind eye to allegations of collusion between the department and the construction industry. (In the end, Charbonneau opted to issue no formal blame to any of the officials who had come to her attention.)

Almost two decades ago, Ontario premier Mike Harris was blindsided by a public health crisis involving the contamination of the drinking water of the town of Walkerton. Seven people died and thousands took sick. The Conservative government never totally recovered from the perception that it might have allowed its tax-cutting creed to take precedence over the province’s public health infrastructure.

The good news for Couillard is that there were no casualties on Highway 13 this week. The bad news is that Quebecers may not soon forget that he leads a government that can’t manage a snowstorm.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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