As the Quebec election makes clear, being the incumbent is no longer an advantage, even when you are great selfie material.

Justin Trudeau, beware.

In the wake of Quebec’s second “Quiet Revolution,” all bets are off for the next federal election in Canada.

The landslide victory of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) is a boulder that sends ripples into the furthest reaches of Canada’s political pond. Which is to say, the ascension of Premier François Legault is no regional flash in the pan.

It is suddenly open season on incumbents, with three Canadian premiers recently getting the boot, and a growing animus across the country against traditional politics.

Of course, the earth-shaking news is that the CAQ so easily won the big prize. Not bad for a sapling party with no governing experience.

But also of great importance is the collapse of the Liberal vote in Quebec to record lows. This, despite the fact that former premier Philippe Couillard was a pretty good steward of the province’s economy.

He leaves office with public finances in good shape and a record-low unemployment rate. For those who like to rant about tax-and-spend Liberals, Couillard proved to be an exception. His government even paid down the provincial debt.

So it wasn’t the economy, stupid.

All of this is bad news for every traditional political party in the land. But it is Trudeau and the federal Liberals who have the most to worry about.

For starters, when Trudeau campaigns in Quebec, it will not be with a political cousin running the show provincially, just as in Ontario.

It will be against a leader who is prepared to use the notwithstanding clause to force a ban on hijabs for public servants in the workplace. Legault believes the majority of Quebecers are with him — and the results of the election suggest he’s right.

Quebec will now be led by a man who came to power fixating on immigration and cultural identity.

So how popular will Trudeau be as the politician who comes into the province declaring that Canadians don’t have a “core” identity, and that everyone is welcome here?

The prime minister also won’t win any points as the federal politician who has to defend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Quebec, while Legault is channelling his voters on controversial subjects, energized by his landslide victory.

And it will not bring applause if Trudeau is the prime minister who, as he must, tries to stop Quebec from privatizing some health services. Legault has promised to do just that, charting another collision course with Ottawa.

There is also this bit of bad news for the federal Liberals in the Quebec election results: With the decimation of the Parti Québécois, the Quebec sovereignty issue is off the table.

That deprives the Trudeau government of the traditional political pitch to Quebecers — which is that the federal Liberals are the best line of defence against separation. Since Legault is not interested in Quebec sovereignty, there’s no separatist threat to score points against, no low-hanging political fruit to pluck.

Finally, the Trudeau team would be wise to take note of the spectacular gains of Québec solidaire, the province’s uber-left party that made the environment the centrepiece of its campaign platform, and proposed things like banning non-hybrid cars on the province’s roads after 2030.

Quebecers between the ages of 18 and 34 were apparently listening to the message that there can be no more rhetorical shilly-shallying on climate change. The party more than doubled its seats from the last election. In the process, Québec solidaire knocked off the leader of the Parti Québécois, Jean-François Lisée.

Against Québec solidaire’s unabashed championing of environmental issues, Trudeau’s spin on the file looks tired, with his oft-repeated mantra that Canadians can have it both ways: massive resource development and protection of the environment.

The PM’s speeches feature the words of a leader battling climate change. And it’s true that his government vetoed the Northern Gateway pipeline. But Trudeau’s more consistent record, from Houston to Kitimat, shows he’s essentially a solid corporate citizen of the oil and gas community.

The list of evidence is long: approval for the Site C Dam in British Columbia; approval for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion; the multibillion-dollar public purchase of that leaky, old pipeline from Kinder Morgan; and now the green light for Canada LNG, a $40-billion project that has environmentalists outraged.

While Trudeau talks about how the LNG deal will get other countries to stop burning coal, the Pembina Institute says it will also add 8.6 million more tonnes a year of carbon pollution to Canada’s already dubious record.

So much for having it both ways.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has skewered Trudeau for his “jaw-dropping hypocrisy” over differing standards for Canada LNG and the Trans Mountain project. Already outraged at him for not appealing the court ruling that brought the Trans Mountain project to a screeching halt, it’s no wonder she says the federation is growing dysfunctional.

The Trudeau government passed Bill C-48, the legislation that prohibited tankers from loading or unloading crude oil at ports in northern British Columbia. That was supposed to be an olive branch to environmentalists worried about catastrophic oil spills in the province’s pristine coastal waters.

Notley wonders how that policy squares with being “okeley-dokeley” with “350 tankers coming out of a port” in Kitimat, which has “rougher” waters than southern ports. B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver has denounced the deal as just more short-term thinking for “short-sighted political wins.”

Canada’s commissioner of the environment and sustainable development did not go that far this week in her fall report. But Julie Gelfand made clear that preserving the marine environment is something of an afterthought for the Trudeau government. She reported that Ottawa was slow to protect right, beluga and killer whales. And while there has been some action recently, she wonders if it’s “too little, too late.” As for 11 out of 14 other endangered or threatened marine mammals, the Trudeau government did nothing at all.

If the federal Liberals lose support on the environment file, as they most probably will, it’s doubtful that support will leak to the NDP.

For one thing, environmentalists have noted that it’s NDP governments in both British Columbia and Alberta that are the biggest fossil heads these days.

Alberta wants to flog dirty oil, no matter what the cost to the environment, and B.C. has okayed the Site C Dam, and now Canada LNG.

It’s worth noting that in opposition, the NDP in British Columbia opposed Christy Clark’s LNG plans. Back then, John Horgan claimed that the carbon emissions associated with LNG were too great and there was no fair value for the province’s resources. Now, like Trudeau, he thinks he can have it both ways.

It’s not unthinkable that the federal NDP could suffer the same fate as the Parti Québécois when the next federal vote is taken — a precipitous drop as yesterday’s party. (A recent CTV straw poll showed that 92 per cent of respondents thought the new leader, Jagmeet Singh, is doing a bad job.) The NDP has lost the progressive high ground on what should have been one of its core issues.

So one of the winners of the new politics on display in Quebec might be Elizabeth May and the Green Party. How can the Greens not be taking heart from Québec solidaire’s impressive electoral result?

The Greens have already made breakthroughs at the provincial level in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Young Canadian voters, like young Quebec voters, might be ready to send a contingent of real environmentalists to Ottawa in 2019.

As the Quebec election makes clear, being the incumbent is no longer an advantage, even when you are great selfie material.

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