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Christine Fréchette is the new Quebec premier. Can she turn things around?
Last fall, months before he resigned, Quebec Premier François Legault was asked in an interview with Cogeco whether there was someone else who could breathe new life into his party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, which had been dwindling in the polls since 2023.
“My minister of the economy, Christine Fréchette, has extraordinary potential,” he said.
Legault said Fréchette didn’t have the same experience he has in crafting business deals but added “she learns very fast.” He, however, fell short of endorsing her as a successor.
On Sunday, Fréchette became leader of the CAQ and will become de facto Quebec’s new premier.
In both roles, she comes second. She is the CAQ’s second leader — Legault having served in the role since he founded the party in 2011 — while she will serve as Quebec’s second female premier — after the Parti Québécois’ Pauline Marois who served from 2012 to 2014.
Fréchette, 56, only has a few months to bask in her new role before she takes on the daunting task of facing an electorate that is determined on turning the page after the CAQ’s two majority governments since 2018 and has now decided it wants to open a new chapter.
A Léger poll issued before the end of the leadership race showed the CAQ had fallen to 9 per cent in vote intentions province-wide — the worst result for the party since its creation, according to Philippe J. Fournier, founder of the polling aggregator website Qc125.
“Obviously, the polls are not great. They haven’t been great for a while, and that’s okay,” said Quebec’s Minister of International Relations Christopher Skeete in a recent interview.
Skeete was one of many CAQ caucus members to support Fréchette in the leadership race. He said he is “very eager” to have her take the reins as premier because he believes she will bring in a different kind of government and a different kind of leadership.
“Right now, given how crazy the world is, having someone as deliberately thoughtful, I think, is completely the right casting. I think people want stability,” he said.
“They want someone who’s not going to be fireworks for the sake of fireworks, but that can give off fireworks when it’s necessary, and I think that is exactly the kind of premier we’re going to get,” he added.
The question remains: is Fréchette doomed to the same destiny as Kim Campbell, who famously took the reins of her party and became prime minister for a few months before electing only two Progressive Conservative MPs after the 1993 federal election? Or worse?
Thierry Giasson, a professor of political science at Laval University, said the dire situation the CAQ finds itself in, months away from an election, would explain why many prominent women inside the party opted to skip their turn and to not seek the party leadership.
“I don’t think we’re seen this in the last 30 years in Canada and in Quebec,” he said.
However, he pointed out that Campbell and Fréchette are two very different people. While Campbell was outspoken, blunt and had a sense for drama, people who know Fréchette say she is studious, thoughtful and considers all avenues before coming to a decision.
Fréchette may have only joined the CAQ in 2022, but her political path spans decades.
In the 90s, she was involved in the student movement with key actors who would end up shaping the CAQ — among whom were Martin Koskinen, who served as Legault’s chief of staff, and Pascal Mailhot, a political advisor in Legault’s first mandate.
Mailhot, who was until recently the Quebec government representative in Ottawa, remembers Fréchette always had her head buried in thick reports whenever he came to visit the Montreal apartment she was sharing with her then-boyfriend François Rebello.
“She was reading reports with her yellow highlighter, while we were chatting and drinking beer,” said Mailhot. “She has always been very studious. That’s the memory I have of her.”
With an academic background in business and international relations, after working in different ministries, Fréchette worked for the Montreal Center for International Studies (CÉRIUM) with a focus on U.S. and Mexico and became a media commentator in Quebec.
Fréchette had already crossed paths with Jean-François Lisée at CÉRIUM and on media panels and went on to serve as his deputy chief of staff when he became minister of international relations in Pauline Marois’ PQ minority government from 2012 to 2014.
Fréchette ultimately quit in 2014 because of then-PQ minister Bernard Drainville’s Quebec Charter of Values which she could not support. As luck would have it, the former PQ staffer would end up beating Drainville for the leadership of the CAQ only 12 years later.
Lisée, her former boss, wrote a column in Le Devoir in which he called Fréchette “Mrs. No-Waves” because she flees controversy and has an aversion for disorder in general.
But Lisée agreed that her propensity to not make waves could be her greatest asset.
Mailhot said he recruited Fréchette to run for the CAQ in 2022. Because she had served as president and director general of the East Montreal Chamber of Commerce, there was talk of her running in Anjou, but the CAQ opted for a safer seat on the Montreal South Shore.
Legault tasked his recruit with the prickly file of immigration, where she oversaw the closure of Roxham Road and negotiated the hefty sum of $750 million from Ottawa to compensate Quebec for costs associated with asylum seekers between 2021 and 2023.
At the time, the deal caught the attention of B.C. Premier David Eby, who denounced a double standard between Quebec and Western Canada.
Fréchette also successfully pushed Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to reimpose a visa on Mexican nationals visiting Canada.
But Fréchette truly rose to the occasion in 2024 when she was tasked by Legault to replace at a moment’s notice Quebec’s “superminister” of the economy, innovation and energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, just as Northvolt was pulling back its battery megafactory in Quebec.
While Fréchette was sent to clean up the mess of her predecessor, she ended up earning the respect of the business community, who said she was attentive and in control.
Away from the spotlights, without really people noticing, Skeete said she managed to recenter the mission of Investment Quebec so there is a little less emphasis on foreign investment and more focus on small and medium-sized businesses based in Quebec.
“Well, those are her fingerprints on the file,” said Skeete.
Fréchette now has the seemingly impossible task of turning things around for the CAQ.
The provincial election is expected to take place in October. Fréchette will be facing her three main opponents — the PQ’s Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the Liberal Party’s Charles Milliard and the Conservative Party of Quebec’s Éric Duhaime — all men.
Skeete thinks the new premier brings with her the ability “to just get things done.”
“The proof is in the pudding. We really have to just stop with these grandiose discourses, stop with these grandiose ideals, and just make it work. And I think that’s where Quebecers are, and that’s exactly the kind of thinking that Christine brings,” he said.
Skeete said that Fréchette has not dropped any file she has taken on in her career, even the toughest ones, and has “always risen to the occasion that’s been presented to her.”
“I would expect nothing less in October.”
National Post calevesque@postmedia.com
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