Inspired by Japhy's TL-191 list and became of the ongoing provincial election in Quebec, I decided to tackle Quebec's prime ministers in TL-191. All the ones up to Gouin are from Craigo's "TL-191: Filling the Gaps" and Giroux is mentioned in David Bar Elias' "TL-191: After the End".
Prime Ministers of Quebec [1]
1917-1931: Henri Bourassa (Nationalist) [2]
1931-1936: Maurice Duplessis (Conservative) [3]
1936-1946: Louis St. Laurent (Nationalist) [4]
1946-1951: Maurice Duplessis (Coalition) [5]
1951-1961: Paul Gouin (Nationalist) [6]
1961-1964: Antonio Barrette (Nationalist) [7]
1964-1974: Jean Lesage (Coalition) [8]
1974-1983: Jean Marchand (Coalition) [9]
1983-1989: Robert Badinter (Socialist Bloc) [10]
1989-1994: Luc Thibodeaux (Coalition) [11]
1994-2007: Roland Giroux (National Union) [12]
2007-2009: François Talbot (National Union) [13]
2009-20--: Marie Béland (Coalition) [14]
[1]- The title is translated directly as prime minister, but "premier" is also used in both American and Quebecois media.
[2]- Popularly known as "
Père de la pays" (Father of the country), Bourassa was installed as the first prime minister by American forces in the final days of the First Great War. He single-handedly established the Nationalist Party, which would be dominate the country until the 1960s, and set the tempo of the political climate in the nation for decades afterwards. His economically
laissez-faire government finally came to an end with the Great Depression and the economic devastation in the country as American subsidies to prop it up were yanked away to help the United States' own struggling population. He opted to retire from politics rather than sit in the opposition, but remained influential in national politics until his death in 1965.
[3]- Duplessis, the young Conservative standard-bearer, managed to scrape out a minority government in the 1931 elections that saw the Nationalists kicked out of power for the first time since independence. However, after several by-elections in early 1932 saw the National Assembly in danger of falling into Nationalist hands, the Conservatives and Liberals signed a coalition agreement (a forerunner for the Coalition, as it turns out) to prevent the Nationalists from returning to power. The government was unable to do much to combat the Depression, and was kicked out in 1936, but it would not be the last the Quebecois would see of Maurice Duplessis.
[4]- The business-like St. Laurent was drafted by Bourassa as his replacement in 1931, and although he failed to deliver that election, he certainly delivered 1936, crushing the governing coalition to return the Nationalists to power.
Oncle Louis proved to be just the man Quebec needed in 1936 and he began an about-face in the Nationalist ideology from
laissez-faire to corporatism and economic interventionism in response to the still-lingering Depression. Running on refusal to enter into another Great War in the 1941 election, St. Laurent relented to US President Charles La Follette in 1942 to provide troops to help occupy the Canadian territories as more and more American soldiers were needed to fight the Freedomite Confederacy. The Second Canadian Uprising, while in Quebec historiography the final breaking link between Quebec and their former English-speaking countrymen, saw relatively little Quebecois involvement, and became unpopular with Quebecois voters who had largely washed their hands of Canadians in the post-war years. While Quebec did experience a slight post-war economic surge, it was nowhere near enough in most Quebecois' minds to make up for the occupation of the former Canada and St. Laurent wisely decided not to seek a third term in office. The tail-end of his prime ministry saw the demographics of Quebec begin to change, as many Frenchmen, not wanting to live in a German-dominated nation, emigrate to
la belle républic.
[5]- The Liberal and Conservative parties, following the Nationalist victory in 1941, came to a realization that, in staying two separate parties, they had contributed to the Nationalist dominance since independence. Merging shortly afterwards, the Coalition, as it was simply known, came under the lead of former prime minister Maurice Duplessis. Duplessis' second tenure became very controversial. His extremely conservative policies (including allowing the government to de-certify labor unions for even the smallest infractions and restoring the powers of the Catholic Church that St. Laurent had taken away) and almost blatant efforts at bribing voters and intimidating local communities to vote for the Coalition backfired as many voters did an about-face to put the Nationalists in charge after his second term. Retiring from politics afterwards, Duplessis' controversial legacy would include the joining of his nation to the Compact of Democratic States
[6]- The first (and only) First Great War veteran to become prime minister, Gouin's prime ministry would later be looked back on as the calm before the storm that characterized Quebec in the 1960s and early 1970s. A traditional Nationalist, Gouin's government spurred foreign interest in Quebec by serving as a tax haven for rich Americans in exchange for meager (comparatively) investments in Quebec, while at the same time upholding the Catholic Church's fierce control over the republic's social order. However, beneath the surface, tensions between native Quebecois and
émigrés from France and Algeria and their children were causing massive change to the Catholic nation.
[7]- The 1961 election saw, for only the second time in the nation's history, a hung assembly. The Nationalists, under Antonio Barrette, still held control, but several minor parties (whose bases of support were almost totally the
émigré community) held the balance of power. The Nationalists, remarkably, managed to play the minor parties off against each other successfully until union leader Pierre Trudeau unified several of the parties into the Socialist Bloc. Barrette soon was stymied at nearly every turn and forced to call a snap election. The 1964 campaign is sometimes pointed as the beginning of modern Quebec politics, as the Nationalist force that had dominated the first half-century of the republic was finally overtaken as Quebec voted for parties who looked to end the repressive stranglehold the Church held over the nation.
[8]- Jean Lesage's prime ministry stands as the dividing line between the Quebec of the Great Wars and Quebec of the present. During his ten-year term, the power of the Catholic Church, which had dominated Quebec for centuries, was broken as the Coalition and its Socialist Bloc allies rewrote the legal code and amended the Constitution to remove all references to the Church and by 1974, had removed almost all official power it had on the daily lives of Quebecois. The Coalition then overhauled the nation's education system, which had become grievously outdated compared to their American neighbors and begun to harness Quebec's natural resources more efficiently and enact semi-protectionist measures (something that becomes one of the impetuses for the North American Trade Accord). The Fourth Pacific War saw Quebecois soldiers sent to fight against the Japanese alongside the Americans, Texans and other CDS allies. The war came with a high prices as Quebec, despite losing much less of its soldiers than most of the CDS nations, lost proportionally more due to its relatively small population. Lesage, despite urging from his supporters to run for a third term, opted to retire due to age, but not before successfully landing the 1976 Winter Olympics in Quebec City.
[9]- Marchand's victory in 1974 saw the end of the Nationalists as a political force, as the party splintered into various factions that would not be united into a cohesive force until the 1990s. The Quebec City Olympics were a boon for the nation and the sign that the tumultuous times
la belle républic had been undergoing since 1961 had finally ended. Winning a second mandate in 1979, Marchand agreed to sign the North American Trade Accord, which would break down almost all trade barriers between Quebec, the United States and Texas by 1990. This proved almost immediately controversial, as the Socialist Bloc and the several Coalition backbenchers combined to nearly defeat the treaty in the National Assembly. Embarrassingly, Marchand was forced to rely on the ex-Nationalists to get a majority to pass the treaty. The treaty, which proved to be unpopular in large parts of Quebec, resulted in the Coalition losing several enough by-elections to fall into a minority government and soon, Marchand was forced to call an early election.
[10]- The Socialist Bloc's victory in the 1983 election saw Robert Badinter ascend to the premiership. A French-born Jew, Badinter's election on the backs of intellectuals, workers and his fellow post-Second Great War
émigres completely ended the dominant stereotype of Quebec being an insular, conservative nation. Badinter, however, became on of the most controversial of Quebec's prime ministers. His commitment to civil rights lead to the controversial adoption of laws to protect the hardy English-speaking population that has remained in the Francophone nation that many French-speakers saw as giving "special rights" to English-speakers. The Socialist Bloc won a bare plurality in 1988 and, after several scandals came to light in 1989, the National Assembly passed a vote of no confidence in the government.
[11]- 1989 was probably the least ethical election in Quebec history. The Coalition tapped into thought-to-be-buried cultural fears of assimilation into the rest of English-speaking North America as a result of Badinter's work to keep the surviving Anglophones happy. The result was a massive Coalition victory, with the Social Bloc only winning seats in some small English-speaking border towns and parts of Montréal. Thibodeaux cynically then did nothing about the laws, instead focusing on more relevant aspects of governance, where he proved to be rather pragmatic and capable. The Tech Recession, which began in 1991, hit Quebec hard. Unemployment nearly reached 20% in 1993 and the Coalition was forced to nationalize several local companies just to keep the national economy afloat. The Coalition began looking increasingly hapless as Quebecois soon became annoyed at the very small employment gains for the large economic costs of the government trying to prime the economy. 1994 saw the Coalition swept out in a landslide, falling to a humiliating third place behind the Socialist Bloc.
[12]- Giroux's National Union, which had formed out of the ex-Nationalist movement, ended up winning the election handily. The first center-right prime minister in three decades, Giroux surprised observers by barely touching several national agencies that right-wing Quebecois had been grumbling about for years, and mostly acted with what he viewed as a steady hand that had to rein in Quebec's irresponsible financial impulses. His cautious approach to spending, which caused widespread consternation for the first two years of his tenure, proved prescient when the economy began turning around for good in 1996. De-nationalizing the companies Thibodeaux had been forced to save, Giroux won the lockstep support of conservatives and the business community, but his miserly approach to new spending soon began grating on intellectuals, students and labor leaders. He won two more elections (in 1999 and 2004), becoming the first prime minister ever to do so, and signed the enormously popular
Amitié program with France, which enabled Quebecois young adults to visit France for two weeks and quickly became a rite of passage. Poor health and ever-growing accounts of ministerial corruption saw him abruptly resign in 2007.
[13]- Giroux's long-time lieutenant, Talbot took over mid-term from the vaunted leader. He pointedly refused to call for early elections, reasoning that the current assembly was still legitimate and characterized those who wanted him to as opportunists. Talbot attempted to guide his party away from the increasingly bleak electoral forecast for 2009 by reinvigorating the party with several populist planks including anti-corruption efforts. But because his name had popped up so often when the press investigated cabinet corruption, it soon became seen as an empty gesture and contributed to the electoral thrashing the National Union received in 2009.
[14]- Taking office as the first female prime minister, Béland made tackling corruption in the National Assembly and rest of the government as her primary concern in the first term. Styling herself as a reformer, Béland abolished military conscription, which had been in place since the country's founding, reformed the National Assembly to give predominantly English-speaking or Native Americans areas more districts to make up for historical under-representation, and made efforts to reach full gender equality. Although not always successful, Béland's ideas proved popular and she won another mandate to continue leading Québéc in 2014, meaning she will likely be the prime minister during that country's centennial....