Donald Trump’s threats drive Quebec’s growing love for Canada

Quebeckers have never been ones to drape themselves in the Maple Leaf.

The fleur-de-lys has always flown from front porches, and Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day is celebrated with more vigour than Canada Day. Polls have long showed that pride in Canada is lowest in Quebec of all the provinces.

Then Donald Trump came along.

Since the U.S. President started talking about annexing the “51st state,” Quebeckers have discovered new reservoirs of affection for what is sometimes tellingly known as the Rest of Canada. The patriotic wave that has swept the country has even washed over la belle province.

Support for Quebec independence is near an all-time low. Made-in-Canada products are flying off the shelves. The atmosphere around Team Canada in the Montreal leg of the 4 Nations Face-Off was feverish. The odd Maple Leaf is even starting to peek out from apartment balconies. (The red-and-white kind, not the hated blue-and-white insignia of Toronto’s NHL team.)

Remarkably, more Quebeckers now say they’re proud to be Canadian than Albertans do; the figure has leapt from 70 per cent to 86 per cent since last summer in polling by Leger (while dipping slightly in oil country).

The author and independent book publisher Mark Fortier knew something was up when he noticed it was impossible to find Canadian ketchup at the grocery store in the mainly francophone Montreal neighbourhood of Ahunstic where he lives, thanks to customers boycotting American goods.

Again, he was taken aback when some of his sovereigntist friends said they were considering voting for the Liberals under leadership front-runner Mark Carney in the impending federal election – at least to block what they perceive as the Trumpian figure of Pierre Poilievre from forming a Conservative government.

Signs of a shift in attitude toward Canada are everywhere in Quebec. Jean-François Lisée, former leader of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois, recently wrote in the newspaper Le Devoir that Mr. Trump’s tariff and annexation threats were an “existential threat” to Canada that required a forceful and united response. (When he was promising to eventually hold a referendum on Quebec independence, some federalists would have considered Mr. Lisée an existential threat to Canada.)

Quebeckers with longer memories might have been even more shocked by the pro-Canadian comments of another former PQ Leader, Lucien Bouchard. After very nearly leading Quebec out of Confederation in the 1995 independence referendum – when the No side won by less than a percentage point – Mr. Bouchard infuriated many federalists by remarking that Canada could be broken up because it was “not a real country.”

In the wake of Mr. Trump’s threats, he has changed his tune rather starkly. During an interview with the Montreal newspaper La Presse on Tuesday, Mr. Bouchard said that Canadians must remember “that we are a real country.” The federation might have some internal issues, but faced with tariffs and annexation “we are together,” he added.

The immediate prospects of the sovereigntist movement Mr. Bouchard and Mr. Lisée championed have clearly dimmed. Although the PQ still leads in the polls, support for Quebec independence sits at 29 per cent in the most recent Leger survey, among the lowest the firm has registered since it began asking the question in 1993.

Meanwhile, the federalist Liberal Party of Quebec has seen its support climb five points since December.

The changing mood in Quebec is part of a “pervasive Trump effect” that has overturned electoral fortunes and shot a jolt of electricity through public sentiment since November, said Sébastien Dallaire, executive vice-president of Eastern Canada for Leger.

“Everything got shaken.”

Quebec’s diminishing support for independence, and increased attachment to Canada, is driven by both fear and patriotism, Mr. Dallaire believes. On the one hand, Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs – now set to kick in across the board on Tuesday – have produced a “moment of deep uncertainty and worry for Quebeckers,” he said. The thought of abandoning the status quo and creating a new country in such a climate has scared off some soft sovereigntists.

But the President’s attack on the Canadian economy – and possibly, in the future, on Canadian sovereignty – has also reminded some Quebeckers of their attachment to a country that often comes second in their affections. When residents of the province speak about their nation or being nationalistic, it is usually in reference to Quebec.

But now, said Mr. Dallaire, “there’s a rally around the flag effect” – the Canadian flag, that is – “and it’s happening here in Quebec as well as the rest of Canada.”

During the final of the 4 Nations Face-Off, with Canada playing the U.S. after weeks of mutual booing and fisticuffs, Mr. Dallaire was playing his own more casual hockey game with friends in Montreal. Their ice time began just as the epic in Boston was going into overtime, and guys on the bench watched the action unfold on their phones.

Finally, when Connor McDavid scored the winning goal for Canada, Mr. Dallaire and his buddies paused their game and gathered around various screens to watch the highlights. They cheered and high-fived, a spontaneous outburst of patriotism that was mirrored across the country.

Even Mr. Dallaire, the pollster, was surprised by the excitement displayed by him and his teammates over a Team Canada win.

“It was really striking for me how much that meant,” he said.