Pauline Marois resigns as PQ loses power after 18 months in office

CTV Montreal Special: 'Quebecers have spoken' A defeated PQ leader Pauline Marois speaks to the crowd, announcing her resignation as leader of the Parti Quebecois.

Pauline Marois has resigned as leader of the Parti Quebecois after leading the party to its worst showing since 1970.

The premier of Quebec for 18 months, Marois was defeated in her own riding of Charlevoix, the first time since 1981 that she is not an MNA.

"I am very proud of the 18 months during which we formed a government. During this short period of time we did a lot of good and great things and I think we should be very proud," said Marois. .

She then announced she would be stepping down and the PQ would choose a new leader.

"You will understand that I will resign my duties,"

Language concerns

In her speech Marois said the French language, despite growing from a few hundred speakers to nearly 8 million today, was still in dire straits.

"I am worried for our language. Regardless of our political allegiances we have a duty to brandish the torch of the French language," said Marois.

"We have to continue to defend and promote our French language for all time."

Before Marois took the stage several prominent PQ MNA-elects took the stage and they, too, called for a strong defence of the French language and culture, in what seemed to be precursors to the upcoming leadership debate.

Multi-millionaire media mogul Pierre Karl Peladeau was first to speaking, saying "I am very happy to go into the caucus with the best team that Mme. Marois was able to put together. We will defend the interest of Quebecers."

Jean-Francois Lisée, one of the architects of the Charter of Values, predicted the PQ would rise again.

"The PQ has survived the Bourassa years and it tok power. It survived the Charest years and it took power, and it will survive the Couillard years and take power," proclaimed Lisée.

Bernard Drainville, the man who shepherded the Charter over the past six months, echoed the sentiment.

"We have been knocked down before and we have always got up again. We will knock off the dust and gather ourselves and come back even stronger!" said Drainville.

Election campaign

When Premier Marois called an election in early March the Parti Quebecois had strong support in public opinion polls and the consensus was that the election was hers to lose.

Over the next 33 days she did just that, sliding from 54 seats to its weakest showing in decades, with the lowest percentage at the polls since 1970."This is a serious defeat for the PQ," said former Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe.

Andy Nulman was more expressive.

"Marois did such a horrific job that a Muslim holding a huge honking cross could have had better results in this election," said the president of Just For Laughs.

Six months of debate about the Charter of Values and a flurry of fiscal announcements had brought the PQ very strong support, especially among francophones.

But that support proved fleeting, evaporating during the campaign that saw the PQ first promoting, and then being forced to defend the idea of a separate Quebec.

"I think that the PQ made error after error during the campaign," said Duceppe. "It's possible to control the message but not to control the questions."

He said the turning point was when media mogul Pierre Karl Peladeau officially announced his candidacy in St. Jerome.

"It was very badly handled," said Duceppe.

Parti Quebecois partisans were ecstatic at scoring a coup, saying the well-known and much-admired business leader would lend the necessary economic strength to the traditionally socialist PQ.

But PKP's nomination proved to be a poison pill that many unions, traditionally strong supporters of the independence movement, would not swallow.

Already uneasy with the notion that union workers could lose jobs if the Charter of Values became law, many rejected the idea of partnering with a man called "one of the worst employers in Quebec."

The Quebec Federation of Labour said Peladeau's history of locking out workers on 14 separate occasions, and the effective dismantling of the Journal de Montreal's union, was "a catastrophe for the workers of Quebec."

PKP's statement that he was running for the PQ to give his children "a country they'll be proud of" changed the terms of the election overnight.

Suddenly the notion that the PQ would listen to the majority of Quebecers who do not want a separate country became difficult for many to believe, especially after Marois explained that an independent Quebec would use the Canadian dollar, that Quebec would seek a seat on the Bank of Canada's Board of Directors, and that Canadian tourists would be welcome.

"The PQ ran a very bad campaign. They came out of the gate on the bad foot," said Antonia Maioni.

By election day the PQ support had tumbled to 26 percent, with many analysts saying the only way the PQ could form a government was if every poll was wrong.

"It's a tall order, but we've seen it before," said Jean Lapierre. "The last provincial election, nobody could say that Jean Charest would win 50 seats in Quebec. Nobody had predicted that the NDP would have 58 seats in Quebec in the last federal election."

Those polls turned out to be an accurate representation of PQ support.

When all the votes were counted it showed that Marois had led the PQ to not just its worst showing in seats since 2007, but its lowest percentage of popular support since 1970.

Charter is dead

During the election campaign Bernard Drainville repeatedly told voters to choose the PQ or say goodbye to the Charter of Values.

By electing a majority Liberal government, the voters of Quebec have chosen to reject the Charter.

Leger analyst Sebastien Dallaire said the PQ appears to have been led down the garden path by the appeal of the Charter.

"The Charter was kind of a false promise for the Parti Quebecois," said Dallaire.

"Even though they liked the idea, and a majority of Quebecers were in favour of it, it was not a priority."

Indeed many polls conducted concerning the Charter and electoral values over the past six months showed while support for the Charter of Values steadily increased, especially among francophone Quebecers, it was not considered important.

"This is where the Parti Quebecois probably lost the election," said Dallaire.

Former Liberal minister Christine St-Pierre agreed, saying a key moment was a debate she took part in during the final weeks of the campaign at Vanier College.

During that debate she challenged a PQ candidate, Evelyn Abitbol, about the Charter, and Abitbol said nurses and medical staff would lose their jobs "after one year."

That precipitated a sudden shift in polls and led Marois to proclaim a PQ government would use the notwithstanding clause to pass the Charter.

"The moment people in Quebec realized people would lose their jobs because of the Charter, they didn't want that," said St-Pierre.

"Maybe people in Quebec want to see rules, but they don't want to see people losing their jobs."

However analysts don't think the Liberals will be able to ignore the Charter or issues of reasonable accommodations of religious rules.