Anthony Koch: The CAQ has turned into a cheap Liberal party knockoff - National Post

Leader of the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) Christine Frechette speaks to the media following the third and final televised Quebec election debate in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on September 23, 2026. Photo by CHRISTOPHER KATSAROV /POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesArticle contentMONTREAL — The Coalition Avenir Québec was founded because a huge number of Quebecers wanted something neither the Parti Québécois nor the Quebec Liberals could give them.

They were nationalists, but they did not want another referendum. They wanted to protect French, defend Quebec’s identity and autonomy, and elect a government willing to stand up to Ottawa.

At the same time, many were economically conservative. They were tired of an oversized state, suffocating bureaucracy, and governments that seemed to believe every problem could be solved with another program, another regulation, or more intervention in the market. The merger with the conservative Action démocratique du Québec gave that part of the coalition a political home.

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That was the CAQ bargain: nationalism without a referendum. Centre-right economics without the Liberals.

The CAQ shattered the old Liberal-PQ duopoly and delivered François Legault two consecutive majority governments.

Then, somewhere along the way, the CAQ stopped being the CAQ. This election completed their transformation.

The CAQ has effectively become the francophone wing of the Quebec Liberal Party.

Let’s start with the economy. What is actually left of the original CAQ proposition?

The party that promised to shake up the establishment became the establishment. The party that absorbed the ADQ tradition became the defender of a massive, expensive, interventionist state. Talk of fiscal discipline, reform and efficiency ended up just resulting in another round of record spending, bureaucratic expansion, and an even more bloated administrative state.

Put simply, the CAQ did not reform the “Quebec model,” it ended up completely surrendering to it.