By Daniel Béland

January 24, 2026

There is a consensus both abroad and in Canada that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 20 speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos was highly successful in resetting the conversation on geopolitics and trade in the face of Donald Trump’s aggressive policies and rhetoric.

But if Carney became a global geopolitical sensation after his Davos address, two days later in Quebec City, another speech generated much uproar in a province where, last spring, voters helped the Liberal Party of Canada stay in power and where, in an election year, the Parti Québecois remains well ahead in opinion polls while its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, remains committed to a third Quebec independence referendum by 2030 if he wins in October.

Clearly, as an economist and former central banker, the Prime Minister was at home in Davos, and he struck a chord with a superbly crafted speech he wrote himself and delivered in front of a global financial, political and diplomatic audience he knows extremely well.

Less in his element two days later in Quebec City — notwithstanding his viral, high-kicking moment with the city’s iconic Bonhomme Carnaval — his second major speech backfired with its immediate audience, eliciting negative comments from many francophone Quebec commentators, in sharp contrast with the praise he received in La Belle Province for his Davos address.

Why have many local reactions to the Citadelle speech been so negative?

First, the Prime Minister delivered a key national unity speech at the Citadelle, on the Plains of Abraham, a location that many francophones have long associated with national humiliation and a durable loss of agency stemming from La Conquête. As novelist and journalist Stephen Maher said on X: “Whoever told Carney to give a speech about national unity sur Les plaines d’Abraham did not give him good advice.”

Journalist Chantal Hébert, who knows a thing or two about Quebec nationalism, shared Maher’s post approvingly. While the Citadelle has hosted the beloved Royal 22e Régiment (known as “the Vandoos” since 1920, its location on the  Plains of Abraham and its historical ties to British colonialism make it a problematic place for the Prime Minister to offer remarks aimed partly at fostering national unity sentiments among francophone Quebecers in a highly uncertain world.

Second, as least as much as the location, the content of the Citadelle address with regard to the nature of La Conquête and its consequences triggered negative reactions among francophones. Particularly based on this statement: “The Plains of Abraham mark a battlefield, and also the place where Canada began to make its founding choice of accommodation over assimilation, of partnership over domination, of building together over pulling apart.”

While the speech does also briefly allude to historical scars such as “the Great Deportation of the Acadians” and “the Durham Report following the Patriots’ Rebellion,” the rather idealistic emphasis on “the wisdom of cooperation” seems to obscure the asymmetrical power relations and the economic and political domination of francophones La Conquête brought about.

The Liberal party should step up its game by providing better Quebec-related advice to a prime minister who, for the time being at least, seems much more in his element in Davos than in Quebec City.

As Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) immigration minister Jean-François Roberge pointed out in reaction to the Citadelle speech: “The Battle of the Plains of Abraham are the conquest, the culmination point where the English came and defeated the French and burned villages, etc. There’s nothing glorious about it.”

According to Roberge, the Prime Minister, while trying to promote national unity, simply displayed the fact he simply “doesn’t know his Quebec history.”

It may also be that Carney, as someone whose introduction to political life came after decades in the C-suites and central-banking bunkers of G7 capitals, is not equipped with the political antennae to spot an unforced error a mile away.

Historical battlefields are always politically sensitive because, by definition, they come with the mixed baggage of winners and losers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a speech at The Alamo in 1936, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt wasn’t Mexican.

Aside from other considerations, this trade-off for the Liberal Party of Canada in exchange for Carney’s disproportionate economic heft should be addressed with extra vigilance on the advice side. Among the other responses to the speech was the refrain, mumbled with head shakes and typed with multiple emojis and expletives, “Why didn’t anyone tell him?”

Paradoxically, then, an address meant to praise domestic cooperation and reinforce national unity provided ammunition to sovereignists, notably St. Pierre Plamondon, who accused the Prime Minister of distorting history and spreading a rosy and inaccurate vision of the province’s past.

At a party conference in Ste-Hyacinthe, St-Pierre Plamondon said with the understatement typical of an election year in the politically combustible province, “Mr. Carney’s speech can only lead to the independence of Quebec.”

Even Liberal Party of Quebec leadership hopeful Charles Milliard, who seeks to convince more francophones to support his party again ahead of the October 5 provincial elections, stated that it lacked historical nuance and that, “We cannot ignore the darker parts of our history.”

While most francophones currently oppose a third Quebec independence referendum, to win the hearts and minds of francophone Quebecers, dancing with and hugging Bonhomme Carnaval is not enough.

Clearly, the political takeaway is that the Liberal party should step up its game by providing better Quebec-related advice to a prime minister who, for the time being at least, seems much more in his element in Davos than in Quebec City.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.