Jean Charest's Popularity Increasing

Jean Charest's Popularity Increasing

Quebec Premier Jean CHAREST looked altogether comfortable shaking several thousand hands on a recent frigid Sunday afternoon. It was his idea to open the National Assembly to the public for a bit of new year reverie - the first time in the province's history that a premier has done so. It turned out to be an unlikely public relations coup: upward of 3,000 people showed up, the line extended out the doors and around the corner, and the two-hour affair had to be extended to accommodate them all. Children frolicked, their faces freshly painted and their bellies full of free cookies. The vast majority of their parents, meanwhile, were thrilled to pieces with the premier.

For Quebec pundits, it was all a bit disconcerting. Charest isn't meant to be charming - agitated, combative and endlessly frustrated, possibly, but never charming. Nor is he meant to be popular; he has languished badly in the polls practically from the day he took office in 2003, and his party was reduced to minority status in the spring. As recently as last September, Quebec's formidable Liberal establishment was angling for his ouster, and Charest himself considered resigning.

But Charest's new year's turn pressing the flesh suggests another comeback of the type that has defined his political career for nearly 25 years. Two recent polls put the premier in second place, behind Péquiste Pauline Marois, as Quebecers' favoured party leader - no small feat, considering his personal approval rating dopped below 20 per cent not four months ago. The same polls have the Liberals close to a 50 per cent approval rating, up from an historic low of 24 per cent in April 2005.

"He took the summer to reflect on the election results, on whether he wanted this job and whether he wanted to go on, and then he started to talk to people," said John Parisella, Robert BOURASSA's chief of staff and a longtime Liberal strategist. In September, Charest summoned Parisella to his home. "He asked me, 'What do you think of the situation?' I said, look, I'll give it to you as clearly and as brutal as I can."

It was brutal enough. Mario Dumont had captured the province's imagination with his relative youth and a promise, nebulous as it may be, of an end to Quebec's lurching federalist-separatist political discourse. The ascension of Pauline Marois to the PQ helm ended the nightmare of André Boisclair. A woefully unpopular liquid natural gas terminal project and the botched privatization of a well-known ski hill, as well as the smouldering debate over reasonable accommodations, rained a flurry of nasty headlines on the Liberal camp.

So in September Charest cleaned house. Gone were chief of staff Stéphane Bertrand and communications director Michel Guitard - long-time Charest confidants with a reputation for being uncompromising and autocratic. Charest brought in Parisella and Michel Bissonnette as special advisers to the party, as well as new chief of staff Daniel Gagnier. Though not at first married to the job - he reportedly told staff that if the Charest gig didn't work out, he was happy to return to his farm in Lanaudière - Gagnier gained an impressive reputation while serving in the same capacity to former Ontario premier David PETERSON. "Believe me, I wasn't wanting to get back into politics," said Gagnier. "But he spoke to me about what he wanted to do in terms of the economy and the future of Quebec, and it was inspiring."

Finally, Charest has lost upwards of 30 lb. since the election. It may be prophetic: he's lost weight prior to nearly every comeback he has mounted - of which there have been many, from the MEECH LAKE ACCORD to his failed leadership bid of the federal Progressive Conservatives to his defeat by Lucien BOUCHARD in 1998.

None of this guarantees a third mandate. Charest remains the least favourite leader amongst French Quebecers. To many, he will forever be "John James Charest," a patsy to the English and the province's business interests. These bedrock impressions aren't likely to change before the next election, which Charest hopes to stave off until at least 2009. Still, it's a measure of his recent success that he's already promised to throw open the doors of the National Assembly again next new year, assuming he still has a job.

Maclean's February 4, 2008