quebec is a very left-wing place, in a more traditional left-wing context than you see today in europe or the united states, where the spectrum has turned on it's head. for that reason, the ndp doesn't do well in this unusually left-wing district, as it has abandoned socialism and embraced identity politics.
it was very weird for this right-wing flank of the pq to win in the first place, and it was more of a refection of internal collapse in the pq, and a general consensus amongst quebeckers that the liberals are unacceptable at the provincial level, partly because they are too pro-immigration (which is a right-wing/capitalist position in a traditional socialist discourse, which argues for low immigration levels, degrowth and sustainable birth rates). the party swung to the caq to give the pq time to rebuild itself, without bring forced to elect the liberals to do it.
what's developing is an isolated spectrum in quebec, but that's not unusual in canada. bc, alberta and saskatchewan have political spectrums that are unique to them and the liberals basically don't exist west of winnipeg at this point, while the conservative parties are all distinct from the federal conservative party. that is because canada is a collection of smaller colonies from three main sources - indigenous, english and french - that are spread out across the country (much of manitoba and saskatchewan was french, too, although not in the louisiana purchase) and united for security and economics, and not a nation state in the sense that england or france are.
it is likely that quebec will alternate between the caq and the pq for the near future, with the liberals being the party that falls off and is banished, unless it's able to redefine itself as being a party of quebeckers instead of a party of foreigners, which is how it's seen by most quebeckers right now. this march of the liberal party to obscurity in quebec at the provincial level will mirror it's obscurity in the west, and may foreshadow similar outcomes in manitoba and ontario in the near future.
manitoba seems to be on the same path as the western provinces, while ontario is in a bit of a contradiction. ontario is not a conservative jurisdiction, which is the reason the liberals can't beat out the ndp to win an election and the conservatives are currently in power. but the ndp scares a lot of the canadian left, for the reason that it isn't a traditional left, it's an initially christian left populist party that has become a kind of bourgeois party for the canadian nouveau riche. a raging socialist like myself really sees almost nothing of value in the ndp at all and, if you understand the history, the reality is the liberals have actually often been closer to traditional socialism, and pushing down socialist options to fight the free market alternatives pushed by the ndp, which is the reason we're so much more socialist - the liberals were, for years, a democratic socialist party in disguise, while the ndp were a progressive capitalist party and often on their right. people were generally confused by how this worked, but content with the outcomes, so they held with it. what took it down was a corruption scandal in the early 00s led by an rcmp investigation, which always stunk of political interference, but was never seen that way by naive canadian political analysts. the liberal party has emerged from this early 00s collapse and purge as a much more right-wing version of it's previous self, and carney has taken the final plunge, re-aligning the party with classical liberal style thatcherism. he has yet to face a verdict on that, but i don't think canadians are going to be happy about this, once they understand it better. the problem, right now, is that there is no alternative to thatcherism.
one example is healthcare, where the supposedly socialist ndp was actually pushing this group insurance model and building support for it, which forced the liberals to step in and say "look, this is bullshit. this won't work. we don't want this obamacare before obamacare. this solves nothing. if you want healthcare, we kind of agree, and we'll just build an nhs, instead. that will actually work, and will be a better use of public money than just pooling insurance contributions to get lower premiums. we're an advanced economy; we won the war and we can build a proper healthcare system like the homeland did. we shouldn't be hobbling together premiums like a third world country, and we won't allow that. we have some pride in ourselves. so, you can have your healthcare. it will be good for the economy, which is what we care about, and something which we understand better than most.".
ontario may need to create a new party to get out of the funk it's in, as the liberals decline in the west, and the ndp declines in the east, leaving it stuck in between.