The Liberal Revolution in Canada: The Quiet Revolt and the French-English Dynamic

The voting numbers in the June 1960 Canadian provincial elections do not bear out the sea change that was made in the legislature and in Quebec City. The Liberals won 51 percent of the vote for the premiership, while the Union Nationale garnered 47 percent, mostly based on large rural turnouts and the fears of a Taschereau style reprisal against all things French Canadian. The Liberals also took 34 seats from the Union Nationale and Independent parties, to put up significant numbers in the legislature and a mandate for Premier Jean Lesage. The Union Nationale did not suffer numerical defeats, but they had lost control a year prior to the elections and the call for modernization and new government were symbolic of a new era in Quebec. 

The goals of the new Liberal administration were threefold: a new economic direction, adapting social structures to dynamic cultural values, and the acceptance of the global market as fact. The new economic direction put forth by Jean Lesage and his allies in the legislature was a mixture of capitalist goals and public ownership. The epitome of this plan was the aggressive action taken by Quebec’s government to nationalize the hydroelectric industry under the newly created Hydro Quebec. This provincial authority would manage the extremely profitable hydroelectric resources of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, bringing eleven separate industrial leaders under one umbrella organization. What sounded like a socialist governmental shift was in actuality merely an increase in governmental oversight and insurance for the industry. This change would allow the province to have a greater hand in regulating prices and ensuring quality, but would allow profit and trade to remain roughly the same as before the 1960s.