or, perhaps he's just being honest about the issues we face in front of us, as a society?

he's right: you can't separate these kinds of attacks from the religion. and, you're being disingenuous if you claim you can.

that said, the political analysis presented here is logically incoherent. the governing party does not need to be concerned about gaining votes from the opposition, but about losing votes to the opposition. if you want to be cynical, the reading would be that he's concerned about losing liberal voters to the caq - not that he's trying to gain caq voters. the caq is to the right of the liberals in a spectrum that had previously put the liberals on the right of the pq, who correctly identified as social democrats despite maintaining and even cultivating a dominant nativist streak. in short, the article is wrong: it makes a great deal of sense for couilliard to try and prevent a collapse on the right side of his party, now that the pq seems to be fading in relevance.

i would hope, however, that quebecers realize that this is a terrible spectrum shift and rally behind something like the qs, instead. remember: this is quebec, where parties go from 3 seats to 83 seats overnight.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/philippe-couillards-tone-shift-on-islam-stuns-quebec-muslims/article35460108/