Maybe keep the sheet music in the drawer for a while longer
Gen du pays, c’est votre cœur may be squawking through the National Post’s editorial boardroom this week, but distributing the sing‑along sheets eight months before Quebecers vote feels like the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for karaoke night at the Legion. Spirited, nostalgic, and wildly out of sync with reality.
Outside the National Post’s 'Liberal Subsidized' English-speaking Only newsroom . . .
. . . Quebec has not been informed (in French) that its election is over. They are deluded into believing it starts in about 8 months from now.
This is the peculiar magic of English‑language commentary on Quebec: the further one gets from the St. Lawrence, the more certain the predictions. A poll appears, a nationalist party rises, and suddenly the National Post is warming up the choir for a sovereignty revival tour. It’s as if someone in Toronto found a dusty cassette labelled Quebec Referendum ’95: Greatest Hits and decided an encore is underway.
Calling a Quebec election eight months early is not analysis. It’s wish-casting with a federal‑funded echo.
The National Post’s clairvoyance improves with distance (from Quebec, and from reality)
There is a long, proud tradition in English‑language media of diagnosing Quebec politics with the confidence of someone reading a weather map upside‑down. The National Post has added its own flourish: a handful of polls, a nationalist party on the rise, and suddenly the Parti Québécois is not merely competitive but inevitable.
Not leading. Not viable. Inevitable.
It’s a bold claim from a newspaper that treats Quebec politics the way most Canadians treat the metric system: vaguely familiar, confidently misunderstood, and always good for a column. Quebecers — a people who can reverse political direction twice before breakfast — might be surprised to learn they’ve become predictable. This is a province that can turn on a dime, then demand the dime back with interest. Calling inevitability in Quebec is like calling a Montreal Canadiens game after the first shot on net. Admirable confidence. Questionable method.
Quebec politics is not a subplot in the Post’s Western alienation opera
The National Post’s editorial reads less like analysis and more like a national anxiety dream. Quebec moves in the polls, and now we have Canadian Confederation a' trembling, the West is packing its bags, and the constitutional ghosts of 1995 are rattling their chains. Break out the song-sheets!
It’s the National Post’s favourite narrative: Canada as a fragile, duct‑taped federation, always one Quebec poll away from collapse. The editorial board seems to believe the country is held together by little more than nostalgia, baling wire, and a few federal‑department grants — which, incidentally, help keep certain newspapers afloat. Who knew? Federal grants are the glue that binds the Liberals to a National Governing Party mythology presently dying on the vine.
Quebec politics is not a morality play about national unity. It has its own ecosystem, with its own weather patterns, its own gravitational pulls, and its own internal logic. The rise of one party is not a prophecy. It is a moment. And moments in Quebec have the shelf life of a snowbank in April, er, May.
What’s actually happening: volatility, not destiny
Strip away the editorial theatrics and the picture is straightforward:
- One party is rising because another imploded.
- Voters are restless.
- The political centre is wobbling.
- The campaign hasn’t begun.
There is not a destiny involved. There is volatility. Quebec specializes in volatility the way Saskatchewan grows wheat.
The National Post’s editorial maxim that insists on inevitability says more about its editorial board than Quebec’s political reality. It’s easier to declare a province halfway out the door than admit the situation is fluid, complex, and not especially convenient for a tidy national narrative. This isn't a Nudge Report. It's not Situational Design in play.
The Post’s premature celebration is the real punchline
There is something endearing and earnest about an English‑language newspaper warming up a sovereignty choir before Quebecers have even tuned their guitars and pianos. Maybe the National Post editorial board found a 1980's 8-track called Rene Levesque's Greatest Hits? They smoked a fatty and decided an encore is already underway.
But Quebec does not move on Toronto’s publishing schedule. If the province ever does make a historic decision, it will not be because an English‑language editor declared the outcome eight months early. It will be because Quebecers themselves — after the usual amount of debate, drama, and last‑minute reversals — decide it.
Until then, the sheet music can stay in the drawer.
Written by Mack McColl Assisted by Co-Pilot, produced for McColl Magazine Daily
