MONTREAL — François Legault’s 2018 single-word campaign slogan, “Maintenant,” showed a man eager to fix Quebec’s many maladies. His list was long: a moribund economy too reliant on equalization payments from other provinces, lagging GDP numbers and standards of living, a bloated public service, low productivity levels and a province otherwise “mired in stagnation” thanks to the nagging existential question of its place in Canada. Legault promised a fix; Quebecers needed only to vote his Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) into power. 

Now that Legault has announced his resignation after just over seven years in power, how successful was he? In two words: it’s complicated.

Throughout his tenure, Legault has been obsessed with Ontario. The province’s name is scattered throughout announcements of the CAQ’s 2018 platform. Almost always, the CAQ was eager to point out how Quebec’s westerly neighbour was richer and more productive. In this sense, Legault has been successful, in that under his watch, Quebec’s productivity grew by 4.6 per cent between 2018 and 2023, while Ontario’s was virtually flat, according to Statistics Canada data.

Certainly, Quebec’s productivity woes are part of a national trend. Yet Quebec remains stubbornly less productive than Ontario, as well as much of the OECD, even as Quebecers themselves tend to work more hours. This is in large part because successive Quebec governments, Legault’s included, tend to invest in low-productivity sectors of the economy like forestry and pulp and paper, because rural votes are disproportionately important in the country’s election system. 

Under Legault, Quebec has only come to rely more on equalization payments, which are expected to increase over 25 per cent from their 2017 levels, to $13.9 billion, by 2027, according to Statistics Canada. Little wonder Legault, once a critic of such government-mandated largesse when he wasn’t in government, came to love the status quo once he was entrenched.

Legault also promised to increase private investment in Quebec. In one sense, it’s been a roaring success, with foreign direct investment in the province increasing by over 350 per cent, to $13.1 billion, between 2019 and 2024, according to data from Investissement Québec, the investment arm of the provincial government. Still, the province has among the lowest levels of private investment in the OECD. As for that bloated public service Legault has long promised to slay? He instead fattened it by more than 14 per cent between 2018 and 2023, according to Le Journal de Québec’s analysis.

Meanwhile, Legault’s public investments in companies like Northvolt, by way of Investissement Québec, were meant to kickstart the province’s EV battery sector. It has instead prompted a sea of red ink, including its $240-million investment in Northvolt, since rendered worthless when the Swedish battery company declared bankruptcy in 2025.

Legault’s handling of immigration has been equally questionable. In 2018, he campaigned on reducing the number of immigrants to the province saying, “We’re going to take fewer, but we will take care of them. (It’s catchier in French, trust me.) He quickly reversed himself, and immigration rates doubled between 2019 and 2024—a tacit acknowledgement of immigration’s importance in a land of low birthrate and greying hairs. 

Despite this, Legault never stopped scapegoating new arrivals to Quebec, blaming them for the alleged decline of the French language and pining for more “European” arrivals. The CAQ government recently cancelled a program that fast-tracked permanent residency applications for people already in the province. 

The CAQ also introduced a law banning religious accoutrements from the bodies of many public sector workers and legislation that would give language inspectors warrant-free access to inspect electronic devices and computer systems of any business. 

The CEOs of over 170 Quebec companies said such a move would harm their businesses. The Legault government enacted it anyway—as it did out-of-province tuition increases for McGill and Concordia universities, ostensibly to stem the decline of French in the province. It did so for plainly political reasons. 

Thankfully, a judge tossed out this particular broadside in April 2025, though the Legault government’s narrative was fully baked: we might be economy first, but we’re not above kneecapping economic development for the sake of red-meat electioneering.

Legault’s promise of post-referendal politics in Quebec has perhaps aged the worst—though this isn’t for a lack of trying on his part. When he co-founded the CAQ in 2011, Legault envisioned a party made of federalists and sovereignists who were exhausted by the constant threat of a referendum. It worked for a while, in that the CAQ’s electoral gain came largely at the expense of the separatist Parti Québécois. 

Yet the Parti Québécois is newly resurgent, thanks to a telegenic leader who says he will hold a referendum should it win the upcoming election in October. The opposition Liberal Party of Quebec promises to be the bulwark against the separatist threat. After years of trying to haul the province away from such an ordeal, Legault and the CAQ may well be watching from the sidelines as Canada stumbles toward another national unity crisis.

Martin Patriquin is The Logic’s Quebec correspondent. He joined in 2019 after 10 years as Quebec bureau chief for Maclean’s. A National Magazine Award and SABEW winner, he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Walrus, Vice, BuzzFeed and The Globe and Mail, among others. He is also a panellist on CBC’s “Power & Politics.”