MONTREAL – François Legault and his Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party will form the province’s next government after a convincing electoral win last night. Though Legault committed several missteps on his way to a second majority, his opposition was unable to counter the CAQ’s nationalist message, which combined an economy-first message with nationalistic, some say fear-mongering rhetoric about immigrants and the survival of the French language. Here is a look at what the election outcome means for the innovation economy.

The tech sector: On paper, at least, the Legault government championed the province’s tech sector during the election, referring to Quebec as the “leader of the digital economy” and promising in its platform to spend $3.9 billion to attract, train and retain 170,000 additional workers in the health and social services, education, child care, construction, information technology and engineering sectors. In terms of infrastructure, the government has fulfilled a promise to deliver high-speed internet to all Quebec homes, and says cellphone coverage for the entire province will be completed by 2026. 

The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), a tech-industry group, said the province has nonetheless made it harder for companies and institutions to attract and retain smart people through its French-language law—particularly, the requirement that new arrivals learn French within six months. More than 170 executives of Quebec companies signed an open letter calling for the lessening of the French-language provisions. “We need to see much more progress on Frenchification,” said CCI government and public affairs director Pierre-Philippe Lortie. “We need to sit down with the government and try to find a way to collaborate and see how we can make the pill a little bit easier to swallow.”

Meanwhile, the province’s protracted labour shortage continues to plague the tech sectors in Montreal, Quebec City and beyond, leading companies to look abroad for talent. No surprise, then, that immigration dominated parts of the campaign, with Legault seeming to suggest that immigrants are inherently violent (for which he later apologized) and saying an increase to Quebec’s current immigration target of 50,000 a year would be “suicidal” for the French language. Immigration Minister Jean Boulet went further, stating that 80 per cent of immigrants to Quebec “go to Montreal, don’t work, don’t speak French or adhere to Quebec society’s values.” (Needless to say, none of this is true.) Boulet also apologized, and in all likelihood won’t be immigration minister in the new government.

“Increasing the number of immigrants [and] economic immigration in Quebec is a must,” Lortie said. “So we will be louder if there is less collaboration, less listening mode and less working mode. We need to find a solution.”

The CCI says it will pressure the new government for adjustments to the province’s system of R&D credits to favour local companies over foreign-owned conglomerates—the issue of foreign-owned conglomerates benefiting from Quebec’s fiscal largesse has long been a sore point in the tech industry—as well as push for “more local content in procurement.” 

Troisième Lien: In 2018, Legault made a show of supporting the construction of the “troisième lien” (“third link”), a $7-billion, eight-kilometre tunnel between Quebec City and its southern suburbs. Legault doubled down on building it during the election, despite criticism that it will hasten urban sprawl and increase carbon emissions. He did so in large part to solidify his electoral base around the capital, according to longtime Quebec City mayor Régis Labeaume, who retired in 2021. “The project will never be built, in any case. During the next mandate, [Legault] will say it costs too much and the federal government doesn’t want to contribute. That will be his main talking point,” Labeaume predicted to The Logic recently.

Environment: Though many Quebecers themselves denounced what they saw as the CAQ’s insufficient environmental action, the party has nonetheless moved forward on several key areas. Through its Plan vert, the government will ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. (The New York Times recently lauded the province’s network of fast chargers, which is nearly twice the size of New York State’s.) 

In April, Quebec’s National Assembly unanimously adopted (with 10 abstentions) a law putting an end to oil and gas exploration and production within the province—the first North American jurisdiction to do so. Legault has also effectively ruled out further pipeline construction on Quebec territory. Still, while the environmental movement has hailed the province, analysts say the war in Ukraine and subsequent energy crisis in Europe, which have led to a massive increase in natural-gas prices, will put political pressure on a province that is richer in fossil fuels than many Canadians know.  “First and foremost, people want to have jobs, and they want to have reasonable prices for their energy. And that’s what leads to likely some potential for change,” said Fractal Systems chief commercial officer Richard Masson, an executive fellow of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and an oil-industry executive.