New boss: One month until Francois Legault becomes Quebec premier

   In one month perennial political tryhard Francois Legault will become the new premier with a majority government, as he apparently has a 91 percent likelihood of doing.
Update: Sept 10- New polls indicate that CAQ now has a 51% chance at a majority, with an 81% chance of winning the election.
   This might be news to some English-speaking Quebecers who pay as much attention to provincial politics as they do AA minor league baseball scores.
   In contrast, francophone Quebecers could name of the sub-Minister of Transport in the Marois government or the MNA who took a ride on a luxury yacht with a businessman 20 years ago.
   That's become English-speakers have one agenda: keep Colonel Sanders out of the henhouse, ie: keep separatists as far from power as possible.
   Liberals, under Jean Charest and Philippe Couillard, have done just that for all but 18 months since 2003.
   But if anglos are chickens, Legault of the Giant Skull - has spent a lifetime working for Colonel Sanders.
   Legault, 61, was born and raised in Ste Annes on the West Island, earned an MBA and accounting degrees from HEC, and then scored a small fortune as co-founder of the Air Transat charter company, which has helped money flow out of the province as Quebec racks up a massive tourist deficits.
   He was voted in as a PQ MNA in 1998 and served in top positions with that separatist party until 2009.
   An artist friend of Coolopolis dated Legault in his early days and she described him as being extremely intense and ambitious. I wasn't able to pry out anything more personal than that, sorry folks.
   Legault's CAQ party has vowed not to hold a referendum but that's like saying that it won't send a man to the moon, as 82 percent of Quebecers now apparently think Quebec should stay in Canada.
   More significantly, Legault hasn't renounced the longstanding hardcore language orthodoxy that has long kept the brakes on prosperity and freedom in Quebec.
   Some of Legault's old allies have attacked him for abandoning the holy quest for separation, so the obligatory attack biography has been penned by journalist Gilles Toupin, who cites an unnamed colleague describing how Legault panicked in 2009 after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Montreal businessmen unhappy that he suggested they might have been involved in government fraud.
   Legault looked like a deer frozen in the headlights, according to the anecdote, and was inconsolable with the fear of having his personal fortune touched by lawsuit.
   The same book suggests that Legault's mentor, former Premier Lucien Bouchard, who gradually lost his interest in separatism, spurred Legault on to start the CAQ. The author also speculates that Legault might have earned a secret salary from the wealthy business elites in exchange for forsaking separatism.
   As for Legault and his policies, the CAQ is meant to be right wing party.
   But the provincial budget is largely gobbled up by education and health and little room is left to maneuver in those realms, particularly since the electorate seemingly wants more money pumped into hospitals.
   A conservative revamping of the Quebec economy seems like as longshot, as many in the Quebec mainstream bitterly denounce even the concept of lower taxes. Meanwhile sacred cow social programs as subsidized daycare or universities appear to be untouchable.
   Couillard and Health Minister Barrette, both physicians, are well aware that health is a bottomless cash pit and did their best to keep spending under wraps.
   Legault, who has experience as provincial health, education and finance minister, seems to promise a lot of unspecified rejigging.
   He has promised to lower school taxes and abolish school boards as well as reduce immigration, which might play in precious rural counties but seems strangely counterproductive in the midst of Quebec's growing labour shortage.
   We can only hope that future premier Legault keeps the ship steady, as Quebec has been uncharacteristically stable in comparison to other places in recent years.
   As for his giant skull, it has been established that large heads are often correlated with higher IQs so maybe Legault is smarter than many imagine him to be.