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MONTREAL — Impatience lives on François Legault’s face, often in competition with exasperation, incredulity and scorn. His lips pucker and his eyes squint. His body seems to itch inside his suit. Watching Legault, the leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec party and possibly the next premier of Quebec, is to observe a man constantly in a fit of pique, with only social convention holding him back.

In a way, his impatience is understandable. For the last seven years, Legault, 61, has sought to lead Quebec by way of a party that is neither Liberal nor Parti Québécois—a feat last accomplished by the Union Nationale party in 1966, when Legault was nine years old.

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And much like the Union Nationale of yore, the CAQ brands itself resolutely conservative, with emphasis on entrepreneurship, private investment, natural resource development and an end to wanton government interventionism.

Suffice to say, the last five decades in this province haven’t been kind to Legault’s stated brand of conservatism. Though conservative, that Union Nationale government oversaw the burgeoning of the Quebec state. It created five government ministries, a network of universities and another of finishing schools, a state-funded radio station and the province’s system of publicly funded healthcare.