About Andrew Cusack
Writer, web designer, etc.; born in New York; educated in Argentina, Scotland, and South Africa; now based in London. read more
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A New Speaker in Quebec
Opposition parties unite to elect new President of the Assembly
François Gendron, the longest-serving member of Quebec’s National Assembly, has been elected Speaker against the will of the province’s prime minister, Jean Charest. The ADQ (conservative, autonomist) and PQ (social-democratic, pro-independence) are opposition parties but combined have more seats than the Libéral (center-left/center-right) minority government Mr. Charest leads. Action democratique du Québec and the Parti Québécois united to select Mr. Gendron without consulting Mr. Charest, which the premier described as a “breach of confidence” that was the result of “subterfuge”. The vote took place by secret ballot, and it was only in the hours before that the opposition parties withdrew their respective candidates in favour of a united ticket for Gendron.
Tradition holds that when a speaker is elected he shows reluctance and must be “dragged” to the speaker’s chair by the prime minister and the opposition leader. This dates to the days when the speaker, as the official representative of the house, was given the task of informing the Sovereign of bad news, and so it was perceived as an unadvantageous office. Irritated by the rejection of his candidate, Premier Charest refused to participate in dragging the speaker-elect and so Leader of the Opposition Mario Dumont (head of the ADQ) and PQ leader Pauline Marois took Mr. Gendron by the arms instead.
The miffed Prime Minister did offer his hand to Mr. Gendron as the speaker-elect was escorted to his chair, but the entire Libéral caucus remained seated, refused to applaud, and ignored the opening remarks of the new Président de l’Assemblée nationale.
The President of the National Assembly (as the speaker’s office is formally titled) is fourth in Québec’s order of precedence, after the Lieutenant-gouverneur (the Queen of Canada’s viceregal representative in her province), the premier, and the vice premier. Until the election of “New Labour” in 1997, there was a convention in Great Britain that the speaker of the House of Commons would rotate between the two main parties. No such convention existed in Quebec, where speakers are typically members of whichever party forms the government.
François Gendron is the first speaker of the Quebec parliament not to be a member of the government party since the election of Arthur Turcotte QC, a Stonyhurst-educated lawyer and journalist, in 1878. Turcotte was an independent conservative assembly member during the Liberal government of Premier Sir Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, a prodigiously-whiskered French-born Huguenot. (Incidentally, de Lotbinière’s grandson Seymour attended St. Cyprian’s in England around the same time as George Orwell, Cyril Connolly, and Cecil Beaton and later became a Director of the BBC).
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I am intrigued by your single-minded fascination with Quebec, Mr. Cusack. You must by now have a dozen posts on the province/nation, yet nary a mention of Ontario, a place almost twice as populous and with as much old colonial charm as its Lower Canadian sister.
Ontario does not interest me much.
Very Interesting article Andrew;
It does bother me somewhat that Premier
Charest decided to be petty and buck tradition
by not fulfilling his duties to escort the
Speaker to his chair.
I am interested to know why in the article
Premier and Prime Minister are used interchangably in reference to Jean Charest?
I suppose for the same reason that “speaker” and “president of the assembly” are used interchangeably. In French, he is the prime minister, and of course in Canada this is usually translated into English as “premier” but since we make no reference to the federal government in this article, it seemed unnecessary to keep to a single term. I have never liked to fake-sounding construct of “first ministers” when referring to provincial premiers and the Prime Minister of Canada. Nor do I like the official title of “First Minister” for the premier/prime minister of Northern Ireland or Scotland.
Interestingly, the office of Président de l’Assemblée nationale was formerly known as the orateur, which is a good cognate to English but is nonetheless poor French.
Mr. Charest was being a bit petty. The decision of the ADQ & PQ was announced beforehand even though it was a last-minute deal. Still, it would have been nice if they had at least spoken to the premier before the announcement.
“Ontario does not interest me much”
The United Empire Loyalists of Upper Canada would be shocked shocked! that a self-professed monarchist could be so indifferent to their existence. :-)
I suppose the traditional fact that Quebec is more French and Catholic and Ontario is more English and loyalist mostly or partially explains the enormous gap in interest. Or perhaps it’s just the modern multicultural mush that Ontario has become (versus the more nationally strident and culturally defensive Quebec) that is the root of your disinterest.
Neither Ontario nor Quebec (nor the USA for that matter) are likely to be around much longer in any sort of historically recognizable form.
The vacuum which the disappearance of European civilization is soon to produce will not be filled by the “multi-cultural” mess which we see hideously displayed in our great cities, but by that other historical culture, the East Asian, and in particular by the Chinese.
We’ve had our day folks.
Thank you, Andrew, for this post about Quebec and for the other posts. Although my family is Acadian in origin, I always have had a soft spot for “La Belle Province,” specifically because the French culture remained so strong within it as well as the fascinating history of the province as the heart of La Nouvelle France.