Article content

This is a new column by veteran Montreal journalist Martin Patriquin, whose work will appear in print Thursdays.

On the face of it, the Coalition Avenir Québec is hardly revolutionary. The party’s platform, a hodgepodge of nationalist chest thumping and government intervention, is in line with nearly every Liberal and Péquiste effort over the last half-century.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Martin Patriquin: CAQ offers exit from Quebec's old zero-sum game Back to video

At its heart, the CAQ is a Baby Boomer party, chock full of Baby Boomer fears and insecurities. Judging by the rhetoric of leader François Legault, you’d think immigrants aren’t a crucial source of demographic renewal in the province, but a scourge to be contained, constrained and converted. It’s odious stuff — though it’s nothing we haven’t heard from Action démocratique du Québec, the CAQ’s ideological forefather, nor from the more recent nativist incarnation of the Parti Québécois.

Yet by forgoing the issue of Quebec separation, the CAQ presents an alluring spectre not seen in Quebec since the days of bouffants and free love: a properly functioning political marketplace.