So my question to you is, why?

Well, I think that there are, you know, several factors here.

First of all, Daniel Gobe, so the winner, the liberal candidate, you know, I mean, he's someone who is well known in the area, is really from the writing.

He's a farmer and someone who's quite prominent in the community and within the, you know, different farming organizations, especially dairy producers.

And so he was, you know, he had a higher profile before the beginning of the campaign than candidates like Caroline Zubay for the Bloc and Regis Gaudreau for the Conservatives.

Another factor, of course, is...

the popularity of the Liberals in Quebec right now, and especially of Prime Minister Mark Carney.

What are the top issues shaping this campaign?

But what is the wiggle room that they have?

It's very limited.

So you mentioned prorogation or, for example...

Let's say you have a situation of a minority parliament and the government is defeated on a confidence vote and the prime minister, say, will ask the governor general to dissolve parliament.

The governor general could turn around and decide to give the leader of the opposition the opportunity to form government and test the confidence of the House of Commons, right? But that's extremely rare.

The last time it happened is in 1926.

So a little bit of wiggle room, but again, it has not been used in a long time.

Can you refresh our memory? What was the issue in 1926?

Yeah

...ri- which is a rather weird, not very common used term in English, rather than secularism, because I think the government wanted to emphasize the specificity of, uh, Quebec's approach to secularism compared to what is done, um, um, elsewhere in the country.

I think there is a direct influence from France here, and France, um, uh, is the kind of the birthplace of, of modern, uh, la- laicite or secularism.

Um, and, um, and it goes back to the French Revolution, but especially to the Third Republic in the late 19, early 20th century.

It was the aftermath of, in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, uh, which involved anti-Semitism, of course, and, um, and modern, uh, laicite in, in France was really about the strict separation between, uh, the state and the church.

And the church here was the Catholic Church.

The emphasis was really on Catholicism and, um, to prevent the Catholic Church from, uh, challenging the, um, d- in France, the Republic, and also, uh, attacking, threatening religious minorities-

Yeah