MONTREAL—Quebec Premier François Legault had a great political year; Maxime Bernier not so much. Here is a look at some not-always-expected 2019 winners and losers.

Going forward, it will be hard for Legault to have a better year.

Fifteen months after the Coalition Avenir Québec’s election victory, its government is riding high in the polls and Legault himself has a higher approval rating than any of his fellow premiers.

By comparison to Ontario’s Doug Ford, New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs or even Alberta’s Jason Kenney — all of whom head parties with past experience in government — Legault’s rookie team has more easily settled into power.

It undoubtedly helps that two of the three opposition parties in the national assembly have yet to select a permanent leader. Still, the fact is that — a year in — the premier’s current approval rating is higher than that of any of his recent predecessors, including Lucien Bouchard and Jean Charest.

That does not mean he and his team have a perfect track record, far from it. Legault runs a hit-and-miss government whose main saving grace in more than one instance has been a willingness to backpedal rather than run straight into a public opinion wall.

For better or for worse, the CAQ government has mostly delivered what voters expected. That includes a controversial secularism law that continues to divide Quebecers but whose fate most agree is now in the hand of the courts and out of the political arena.

Over and above any policy specifics, Legault is reaping the benefits of having provided the many Quebec voters who wanted to break out of the box that had defined the province’s politics for decades with a means to do so.

On his watch, the sovereignty/federalism divide has not disappeared, but it has largely faded. Quebec for now is less polarized than it has been in a long time.

No politician in Canada had a roller-coaster ride quite as eventful as Justin Trudeau this year. At the end of 2018, his re-election campaign seemed his to lose. Then the SNC-Lavalin affair broke and the government came close to a death spiral.

At year’s end, the prime minister leads a government on probation. He has 18 to 24 months to ensure that the second chance he was given by voters on Oct. 21 does not turn into his last one.

In the process though, Trudeau has lost control of the clock. The minority status of his government means he is more at the mercy of unforeseen events than at any time over his first term.

When Yves-François Blanchet announced he was seeking the leadership of the Bloc Québécois late last year, many assumed the former PQ minister would be the leader who got to turn the lights off on the federal sovereigntist party.

Instead, Blanchet restored the moribund party to a position of influence in a hung Parliament. How the Bloc will wield that influence remains an open question.

At year’s end, Legault, Trudeau and Blanchet form an unusual — and slightly awkward — Quebec triangle.

The three of them share part of the others’ electoral audience.

The prime minister needs the Quebec edge he currently enjoys as the leader of the dominant national party in his home-province to keep his party in power federally.

At the same time, it is in the Bloc’s interest to not exacerbate Quebecers’ desire for regime change in Ottawa. That could drive a critical mass of non-Liberal voters to a federal party liable to replace Trudeau in government.

Legault, for his part, has no interest in the Bloc’s momentum transferring in whole or in part to the Parti Québécois.

For Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, the year has ended badly. In 2019 he failed to grow both on voters east of Manitoba and on his own party members. But all that still does not make him the conservative politician who lost the most this year.

That title goes to Maxime Bernier, Scheer’s former runner-up for the leadership. His breakaway People’s party failed to launch on election day and its self-appointed captain sank with his raft in the riding of Beauce.

If Bernier had bided his time as a Conservative member, he would almost certainly still be an MP and one of the leading contenders to succeed Scheer.

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Instead, his side trip on the fringes of the conservative movement is turning into a one-way ticket to the political wilderness.

Since the federal election, there has, finally, been a lot of words expended on the state of the Conservative party but possibly not enough about that of the federal NDP.

By the numbers but also by the measure of the party’s wipeout in Atlantic Canada, the GTA and all but one Quebec riding, Jagmeet Singh’s NDP — not so long ago a contender for government — suffered the greatest setback this year.

Chantal Hébert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert

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