MONTREAL — Judging by the lineup of readers waiting to have their copies of his autobiographical book Terrain d’entente signed at the Montreal’s Salon du livre last weekend, Justin Trudeau was one of the main political attractions of the city’s popular annual celebration of French-language books.

Former Parti Québécois minister Jean-François Lisée even took time out from his own book signing to post a selfie shoulder-to-shoulder with the Liberal leader on his Twitter feed. (That did not go down well with some of Lisée’s sovereigntist followers and it likely did not enhance his already modest leadership prospects.)

Between this and that, Trudeau was probably too busy to notice that a book on his provincial counterpart, Philippe Couillard, did not seem to be on many people’s Christmas lists.

It is not that the story of the Liberal premier’s journey to power — as told by L’actualité magazine’s talented political writer Alec Castonguay — does not make for a good read but rather that Couillard’s audience is shrinking.

With every austerity measure that the provincial government puts forward — and not a day seems to have gone by without a bad-news announcement coming out of Quebec City this month — more Quebecers are taking to the streets in protest.

So familiar has the closure of Montreal’s downtown streets for demonstrations become this fall that many initially mistook last Saturday’s Santa Claus parade for a protest against cuts to Quebec’s public child care system.

Contributing to the confusion was the sight of parents with toddlers and strollers in tow lining the sidewalks.

Few programs are being spared the spending cuts undertaken by Couillard’s government in its bid to balance the books but on that long hit list, Quebec’s public child care system stands out.

That’s because the provincial decision to impose steep fee increases on middle-class working parents of young children is as blatant a breach of an election promise as Quebec has seen in years.

Last spring Couillard campaigned on a commitment to roll back a modest two-dollar-a-day hike decreed by the PQ. He argued again and again that families had to be spared the shock of that comparatively small fee increase.

No one then imagined that a Liberal government would make those same families the poster children of its austerity regime.

Couillard’s heavy-handed approach to the child care program could become a tipping point in the Quebec restraint debate. By all indications the issue is in the process of turning a fall of union discontent into a larger anti-austerity movement.

At this rate, all is in place for another spring of Quebec discontent along the lines of the 2012 so-called Maple spring. But instead of contending with students angry about higher tuition fees, the provincial government could find large swaths of Quebec’s civil society on the barricades.

The good news for Couillard is that his government still has more than three years to kiss and make up with some of the groups it is alienating before returning to the polls.

The fact that Pierre Karl Péladeau — the prohibitive front-runner in the PQ leadership campaign — is intent on focusing on sovereignty is also a positive development for the government.

But the news is not so good for the federal parties and, in particular, for Trudeau’s Liberals. They stand to be campaigning for Quebec votes next year against the backdrop of a populist backlash against their provincial cousins.

In federal-provincial politics, elections for one level of government often turn into an outlet for voter discontent with another level of government.

In Ontario in the 2004 federal election, Paul Martin’s Liberals got an earful at the doorstep over Dalton McGuinty’s health levy.

In Quebec in the late nineties, the Bloc Québécois was a collateral casualty of premier Lucien Bouchard’s municipal amalgamation plan.

In Ontario, federal and provincial Liberal leaders routinely campaign side by side. Trudeau took part in some of Kathleen Wynne’s rallies last spring and the premier canvassed voters on his behalf in the Whitby-Oshawa federal byelection last month.

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In Quebec there are a few more degrees of separation between the two Liberal families but possibly not enough to prevent some Quebec voters from seeing red when they see the Liberal brand name on the federal ballot.

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

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