Politics in Quebec is always a box of chocolates.

After a disastrous start to the year, including a divorce from Quebec media diva Julie Snyder, Pierre Karl Péladeau focused his energies on leading Quebec’s Opposition party, the Parti Québécois (PQ). Indeed, PKP’s early-morning news conferences and stinging attacks on Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard’s government suggested PKP was in politics to stay.

But everything unravelled when Snyder used the most powerful media podium in the province to bring home to her estranged husband what was at stake in their divorce. Tout le monde en parle is a top-rated Sunday evening talk show on Radio-Canada. The show airs opposite Snyder’s Le Banquier game show on the rival, Péladeau-owned TVA private network.

The late Jack Layton’s appearance on Tout le monde en parle before the 2011 federal election helped to persuade Quebecers to elect 59 mostly no-name New Democratic Party MPs from Quebec. Snyder, whose media image is more zany than zen, used her half-hour interview on Tout le monde en parle to recast herself as a serious person and to reinforce her message to PKP that what was at stake in their divorce is his children. “I chose my family,” a tearful Péladeau said, resigning from politics a day later.

The incumbent PQ had been ahead in the polls early in the 2014 campaign when Péladeau entered the fray as a PQ candidate. At the time, with cerebral Couillard casting around for an issue, PKP gave the Liberals that issue by declaring he was entering politics to give his children a country, his arm raised in a clenched-fist salute.

But the majority of Quebecers do not want another referendum – at least, not right now. Couillard’s campaign pounded on the theme that if re-elected, the PQ would lead Quebec back into the referendum quagmire. The result: the Liberals were elected with a majority.

The PQ has launched a new leadership race and most of the top contenders say they are open to calling a new referendum if the PQ wins in 2018. The exception is Jean-François Lisée, a journalist, author and blogger who was international relations minister in the most recent PQ government and previously was a top advisor to former PQ premiers Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard. Lisée played a key role in the 1995 referendum, working out a crucial deal that brought Mario Dumont, then head of Action démocratique du Québec, into the pro-sovereignty fold.

Lisée says he would lead “a damn good government,” but he would not call a referendum Quebecers do not want. If the choice for Quebecers in 2018 is between a new referendum “and them” (Couillard’s Liberals), Lisée warns, “It will be them.”

Early in the PQ leadership race, Lisée is trailing Alexandre Cloutier and Véronique Hivon, two former PQ ministers who do talk about a referendum. In Lisée’s view, choosing either would assure Couillard’s lacklustre Liberals a second mandate in 2018. But in Quebec politics, you never know.

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