When a party moves into first place, the nature of the political game changes.
The election is approaching and the Parti Québécois is leading, while other parties are busy rebuilding themselves, organizing leadership races, and dealing with internal issues as the calendar keeps moving.
That position creates a clear risk: the risk of complacency.
Reusing promises people have already heard, delivering reassuring speeches, talking a lot, acting little, because the context helps and the others are not ready.
And yet, this moment opens a real opportunity. Not just an ideological one.
An opportunity to put in place structures that allow a territory to hold up in today’s reality, marked by economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, fragile supply chains, and exhausted public services.
This context calls for simple, clear foundations.
First, investing massively in agri-technology, to ensure the ability to feed the population here, with modern, productive systems that support both the economy and food security.
Then, investing clearly in cybersecurity and infrastructure security, to protect data, networks, and essential services, and to prevent every crisis from exposing the same vulnerabilities.
Next, clearly reducing the size of the state and the tax burden, to create room and put money back where it actually produces wealth.
Finally, using that space to create real wealth, from local businesses to SMEs and on to manufacturing, in regions as well as urban centers, in order to move away from an almost entirely service-based economy and rebuild a solid, durable productive base, even if this requires a temporary adjustment to the financial trajectory.
These foundations should not be foreign to the PQ.
They are part of its historical DNA, at least to a large extent.
The difference today lies in the willingness to make a real choice, or to keep riding the wave of “it’s my turn to help myself”, fully aware that people see governments come and go, networks and close circles benefit, while they keep paying and waiting.
The question should not be independence head-on.
Before being, you need the means to exist.
With the current disorder among other parties, the PQ has a rare window: to win because it offers something solid, or to win simply because people are tired of the others.
At the end of the day, the question is simple.
Does the PQ want to win because the others are weak, or become unavoidable by finally laying down clear foundations to feed, protect, and put a territory to work in the real world that’s coming, not the one that’s already gone?
Winning by default happens often.
Building something that holds lasts far less often.
