Ex-federal minister leads fundraising, with support from more than half the PLQ MNA caucus
Although he came out of the first of the Quebec Liberal Party’s recent leadership debates relatively unscathed, Pablo Rodriguez took more of a pounding during the second event – especially when fellow leadership hopeful Mario Roy decided to challenge him.
PLQ hoping for a revival
Former Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec head Charles Milliard, former Conseil du patronat du Québec head Karl Blackburn, Matane commercial lawyer Marc Bélanger and Beauce agronomist and economist Mario Roy are also running for the leadership.
The Quebec Liberals are hoping the leadership race will help revive the party, which has been languishing since the rise of Premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec which bumped the PLQ aside following the province’s 2018 general election.
The candidates all seemed to agree that the CAQ’s time is up, while saying they would reclaim the PLQ’s status as the party most supportive of economic issues. The PLQ membership will finalize their choice of a new leader on June 14. The next provincial election is set for October 2026.
Rodriguez as frontrunner
As a former senior Liberal minister in the Trudeau cabinet – and with 16 years total experience in several federal Liberal governments – Rodriguez has emerged as one of the likeliest candidates to snag the PLQ’s leadership.
In the days leading up to the French and English-language debates held respectively in Laval and on Montreal’s West Island, it was revealed that Rodriguez had managed to beat out everyone else in campaign fundraising.
As well, it came out within a short time after the second debate that two more Liberal MNAs – Marwah Rizqy (Saint-Laurent) and Greg Kelley (Jacques-Cartier) – had decided to throw their backing behind Rodriguez, raising his support within the party’s 19-member caucus to 10.
While Rodriguez leaned heavily on his experience as a federal minister, saying he knows how to deliver, his rivals sometimes pointed to his close relationship with Justin Trudeau as a liability.
Although several Quebec governments have remained staunchly opposed to pipeline development, largely for environmental reasons, during the first debate Rodriguez was among the candidates who said they were open to fossil-fuel projects here as a means to boost Canada’s energy independence, while overcoming tariffs imposed by U.S. president Donald Trump.
Carbon pricing issue
Mario Roy, said he would end Quebec’s cap-and-trade program, which he said is making local businesses uncompetitive. Quebec’s carbon pricing scheme has been under scrutiny since Prime Minister Mark Carney abandoned the federal carbon tax in April.
Asked what a PLQ government might do differently if elected next year, Rodriguez said they wouldn’t engage in cheque-writing politics, an allusion to the Legault government’s practice of mailing out cash payments to Quebecers on a number of occasions.
“Another thing we wouldn’t do is to give money out to the Los Angeles Kings,” he added, referring to the CAQ government’s $7 million payment to the NHL team last year for exhibition matches in Quebec City.
Rodriguez comes under attack
Blackburn, who as head of the Conseil du patronat was highly critical of the CAQ government’s immigration quotas, said a Liberal government under his stewardship would do everything possible to maximize employer access to a qualified workforce.
While the overall tone of the first debate was collegial and tended to see the candidates agreeing with each other more than disagreeing, the second debate saw Mario Roy, the youngest of the contenders at age 31, making especially open thrusts at Rodriguez.
He suggested the former federal Heritage Minister had fundamentally abandoned Quebec’s English-speaking universities when the CAQ government passed legislation to force them to increase tuition fees charged to foreign students.
Ex-minister defends himself
“You did nothing at all,” Roy maintained. “You closed your eyes on the problem. The institutions were destroyed right and left, and the federal government looked at it and did nothing. So, when you come here and say, ‘We will change what is going on,’ why didn’t you do it before coming here?”
Rodriguez denied he did nothing, saying that “from day one when the CAQ did this, I came out publicly. I was a minister in the federal cabinet. I came out and I said very strongly: this is bad Mr. Legault, this is a bad idea because you’re closing windows and doors to the world. Those are my direct quotes. Go back and read the papers. That’s exactly what I said.”
