MONTREAL

Anyone contemplating a jump into politics should watch the most lasting images of business tycoon Pierre Karl Péladeau’s first week in the Quebec election fray.

There he is last Sunday walking to his induction as the star Parti Québécois candidate in the Lower-Laurentians riding of Saint-Jérôme arm in arm with Pauline Marois.

The PQ leader’s pride in her catch is written all over her face. It is not every day that the sovereigntist party is successful at wooing the owner of a corporate empire, especially one so ready to proclaim his sovereigntist convictions.

To all intents and purposes, Quebec is being introduced to a new PQ power couple although, in hindsight, it is not clear that Marois fully realizes that she is not so much walking PKP — as he is known in Quebec — up the political aisle as joining her destiny with his.

Jump then to Thursday. The two of them are together again but the similarities stop there. When PKP steps forward to answer a question, Marois lunges for the microphone and (gently) pushes the rookie candidate back to the sidelines. When the queries turn to sovereignty, she pointedly notes that the campaign is not about Quebec’s future, only its next government.





It does not usually get this physical but as quite a few MPs can testify, the political recruiters who so assiduously court high-profile candidates routinely turn into drill sergeants once the enlistment process is successfully done with.

On the viral video of Thursday’s ‘shove’, PKP looks more bemused than angry. He is certainly not used to being pushed around. More importantly, in the lead-up to his second joint appearance with his leader he had essentially been on his best behaviour.

Yes, Péladeau slipped early on when he suggested that he would not let the rules of the national assembly stand in the way of his keeping a controlling stake in Quebecor. But that error was corrected promptly and on every other score so far he has marched docilely to the beat of Marois’ drum.

By Thursday, though, it had become clear that Péladeau and the PQ campaign risked becoming victims of his success at restoring their hopes of sovereigntist activists for a referendum that would be both near at hand and — more importantly — winnable.

Galvanizing the sovereigntist base is not something that can be accomplished in a campaign vacuum.

One of the first casualties of PKP’s entry in the battle so far has been a derailed PQ election game plan.

His arrival has turned the campaign into a referendum on a referendum, with federalist voters aligning accordingly.

On Thursday, a Leger Marketing poll published hours before Marois clumsily sought to recast her campaign back to provincial governance illustrated the potential perils of the plebiscite-style election.

It showed that, post-PKP, the Liberals had built a solid lead in the Quebec City area, with the PQ lagging behind in all age groups except those over 65.

Quebec’s capital region is notoriously more tepid than the francophone average toward sovereignty and those poll results should not be extrapolated to the entire province.

But what is certain is that PKP’s arrival has energized Philippe Couillard’s Liberal campaign. The federalist party is never more effective at bringing out its vote than when the top-of-mind voting issue involves Quebec’s political future.

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The fact that Marois spent two campaign days mired in a discussion of post-sovereignty issues such as the currency and borders of an independent Quebec only shored up the Liberal narrative.

Having invited a sovereigntist elephant into the room, the PQ leader is bound to find it difficult to convince voters to ignore its presence between now and April 7 — especially with two televised leaders’ debates coming up over the next two weeks.

Short of another unexpected development, the Quebec ballot question may have gelled over the past week. For now it revolves around whether Quebecers want a third referendum on their political future in the next mandate.

It is not a given that the PQ would lose an election that hinged on the answer but it is certainly not the safe question that Marois had in mind when she called the April 7 vote.

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