MONTREAL – On her 65th birthday, Premier Pauline Marois joked that she called an election April 7th so that she could have as many people come to her birthday party as possible.
Yet with a recent Leger Marketing poll putting the Liberals , not Marois’ Parti Quebecois , projected as forming a majority government, Marois’ celebration was tempered with a dose of pragmatism.
READ MORE: Quebec Liberal Party in the lead in latest Leger poll
Talk of a referendum, for example, was pushed to the margins of discussion.
“I don’t think Quebeccers are ready for that,” said Leila Ben Salem, who was in attendance. “There cannot impose on people something they don’t want. As long as they’re not ready, nothing will happen.”
In a rally that involved much of the PQ’s candidates and lasted longer than an hour and started an hour-and-half late, Marois touched almost all the party’s major talking points outside the referendum: bashing the Liberals handling of the province’s economy, defending of the French language, and promoting the Quebec Charter of Values.
READ MORE: PQ leader wants to clamp down on bilingualism in Quebec
“We are all Quebecers! We are all equal!” Bernard Drainville bellowed at the crowd to raucous applause.
Drainville touted the charter as the definitive step toward ensuring a neutral provincial government and gender equality.
Pierre Karl Peladeau, the star candidate out of St-Jerome who was viewed as a game-changing force mere weeks ago, spoke of the dangers of turning the province’s government over to the Liberals.
“It would be a disaster for Quebec’s economy,” he said.
Polls are notoriously fickle, and when the PQ called the election it appeared that it could achieve a majority government.
While that still may be true, Pequistes may look back at this rally as the last hurrah of a campaign that started with so much momentum.
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