Will Carney's French flubs matter to Quebec voters?

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks with media on Parliament Hill following a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Canada-U.S. Relations and National Security, in Ottawa, Thursday, March 27, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

MONTREAL — Five years ago, while launching his doomed bid for the federal Conservative leadership, Peter MacKay mangled his French so badly that he ended up on the front page of the Journal de Montréal.

“GOOD LUCK MISTER!” the headline shouted, after the former federal minister struggled to pronounce the phrase “I will be a candidate” in French, while reading from a teleprompter. The front page prompted a response from prominent columnist Chantal Hébert. “Very hard to make a good second first impression,” she wrote on social media.

Not so, it seems, for Liberal Leader Mark Carney, whose shine has not worn off in Quebec despite a first week on the campaign trail that showcased his imperfect command of French and hinted at gaps in his understanding of the province.

Faced with threats of tariffs and annexation from U.S. President Donald Trump, many Quebecers see the Liberal party as a “safe haven,” said political analyst Sophie Villeneuve.

“This is what Mr. Carney embodies,” she said. “And beyond his weaknesses in French and his knowledge of Quebec issues, that may prevail.”

On Monday, the first full day of the federal election campaign, it was announced Carney would not participate in the TVA French-language debate, which was then cancelled. The network had asked the parties to pay $75,000 each to participate, but the Liberal campaign’s decision was widely seen as an effort to shield the leader from a potentially poor performance.

“The calculus was that the political price he’s going to pay for skipping is probably lower than the price he would have paid if he had participated,” said Karl Bélanger, former NDP national director and president of Traxxion Strategies.

On Tuesday, Carney had to apologize to Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the École Polytechnique massacre and a Liberal candidate, after twice misstating her name and mistakenly saying she was a survivor of a separate shooting at Concordia University that happened three years later.

On Wednesday, at a campaign stop in Windsor, Ont., he switched from French to English partway through an answer to a question. The same day, he cut off two francophone reporters by saying “Ça suffit” — a brusque way of saying “That’s enough.”

And on Friday, he offered a confusing answer to a reporter’s question on Bill 96, Quebec’s language-law overhaul, claiming for the first time that the Liberals would intervene in a potential Supreme Court challenge of the law — and framing that as an existing promise.

The party later clarified that the federal government will intervene on Bill 21, Quebec’s secularism law, which is facing a challenge at the top court. The Liberals’ position on Bill 21 had already been made public.

These weren’t the first missteps. During the French-language Liberal leadership debate last month, Carney mistakenly said he agreed with Hamas.

And last week, during a trip to Nunavut, he misunderstood a francophone reporter’s question about his personal finances and began to speak about public finances instead.

Those early blunders have not seemed to hurt him in Quebec. Poll aggregator 338Canada shows the Liberals with around 40 per cent support in the province, well ahead of the Bloc Québécois at 26 per cent and the Conservatives at 23 per cent.

Still, Carney’s weakness in French has been surprising to some. Videos of press conferences he gave during his time as Bank of Canada governor, between 2008 and 2013, show him answering questions in French with more ease and fluency than he displays today.

“I’m not sure what happened,” said McGill University political scientist Daniel Béland. “It’s possible that he just needs to practise more.”

After leaving the Bank of Canada, Carney spent nearly seven years as governor of the Bank of England — where he likely had little opportunity to speak French, Béland said.

Villeneuve, a vice-president with Catapulte Communication and former Parti Québécois staffer, said Carney’s grasp of French is similar to that of Stephen Harper in his early years as prime minister. Harper’s French improved considerably over his near-decade in office, despite an unfortunate tendency to mispronounce the word “election” that will not soon be forgotten in Quebec.

Carney’s opponents have tried to make hay with his weakness. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre offered to pay the Liberal leader’s $75,000 fee to have him show up at the TVA debate. Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said his mix-up on the Montreal massacre displayed an “ignorance of extremely sensitive subjects.”

But Jonathan Kalles, a consultant at McMillan Vantage and former Quebec adviser to ex-prime minister Justin Trudeau, said the attacks have an air of desperation now that the Liberals are leading in the polls.

“Their entire plan is gone and so they’re scrambling for anything else to throw at the wall,” he said of the opposition parties. “But I don’t think voters are focused on that.”

Bilingualism — or lack thereof — has often played a memorable role in Canadian politics. Former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, who struggled in English, famously had to restart a 2008 CTV interview multiple times because he didn’t understand a question.

On the other hand, the NDP’s success during the 2011 Orange Wave was partly due to former leader Jack Layton’s ability to speak “Quebec French, with the right expressions and accents,” Bélanger said.

Still, Béland said language is only ever “one factor among others” during a campaign. “This is a special election, so perhaps some francophone voters, who normally would emphasize these things … will not focus too much on French.”

Villeneuve, however, said it’s been “disappointing” to watch Carney’s mistakes, and pointed especially to his flub on the Polytechnique shooting, when an armed man shot and killed 14 women at the engineering school on Dec. 6, 1989. “It’s something that leaves a bad mark,” she said, adding that no party can afford to take for granted the Quebec vote, which can swing dramatically during a campaign.

“We can’t say that the first week of the campaign was a smooth ride in Quebec for Mark Carney,” she said. “He will have to rebuild a bond of trust.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 29, 2025.

Maura Forrest, The Canadian Press