Can Christine Fréchette really turn the page on the Legault government?

**She was not responsible for SAAQclic and did not launch Northvolt. But Christine Fréchette has sat at the cabinet table since October 2022 and led the Economy portfolio for nearly 17 months. As she now distances herself from several choices made under François Legault, LeQuébecVote.ca separates what belongs to her own ministerial record from what belongs to the government's collective responsibility.** --- Since becoming premier in April 2026, Christine Fréchette has sought to put her own stamp on the Coalition Avenir Québec. The tone has changed, some economic policies are being reconsidered, and on several files she has openly distanced herself from decisions associated with François Legault, Pierre Fitzgibbon or Christian Dubé. But how far can she credibly present herself as a new beginning? The question requires an essential distinction. Fréchette is not personally responsible for every decision made by the Legault government. She was neither transportation minister nor cybersecurity minister when SAAQclic was launched. Nor was she economy minister when the Northvolt project was announced in 2023. She was not, however, an outside observer. Elected in Sanguinet on October 3, 2022, she entered cabinet on October 20 as immigration minister. She became minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy on September 5, 2024, and premier on April 15, 2026. Throughout that period, she was part of the CAQ government. ## Personal responsibility and collective responsibility are not the same thing In Canada's parliamentary system, ministers carry individual responsibility for the powers and departments placed under their authority. Cabinet members are also bound by collective responsibility: cabinet seeks a consensus that ministers must then be prepared to support publicly. That does not prove that Fréchette personally agreed with every Legault government decision. Cabinet discussions are confidential, and Quebec access-to-information law protects cabinet communications, recommendations and records of deliberations for an extended period. It is therefore impossible to reconstruct what Fréchette privately supported, opposed or tried to change on every file. The most accurate formulation is this: **Christine Fréchette was part of a government collectively responsible for its decisions, but that does not make every one of those decisions her personal decision.** ## Immigration was directly her responsibility Fréchette's first portfolio was a major one. In December 2022, she tabled Quebec's 2023 immigration plan, providing for 49,500 to 52,500 permanent admissions. In November 2023, she took part in the new planning framework for 2024 and 2025. The government kept regular immigration at roughly 50,000 admissions per year while changing several rules and placing greater emphasis on French-language knowledge. In 2024 she was also directly involved in Quebec's response to the rise in asylum seekers and non-permanent residents. In August, Legault and Fréchette announced a temporary suspension in the Montreal region of certain temporary foreign worker applications for jobs below Quebec's median wage, with exemptions for several sectors. Those decisions belong directly to her ministerial record. ### Roxham Road: a rare public disagreement followed by a reversal One February 2023 episode also illustrates the limits of cabinet dissent. Asked about closing Roxham Road, Fréchette initially said a physical closure would be ineffective and could make crossings more dangerous by pushing migrants toward unmarked routes. That contradicted Legault's position. A few hours later she returned to reporters and changed course, saying Roxham had to close. It is the clearest documented case found in which Fréchette publicly departed from the government line and then rejoined it the same day. ## SAAQclic: member of the government, not the responsible minister When SAAQclic launched in February 2023, Fréchette was immigration minister. The file was not under her department. In February 2025, Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc reported that the CASA program, which includes SAAQclic, had grown from an initial estimated budget of $638 million to projected costs of at least $1.1 billion by March 2027 — an increase of nearly $500 million. Fréchette was economy minister by then. Holding her personally responsible for the technical, contractual or administrative decisions behind the project would therefore be inaccurate. She was nevertheless part of the government when SAAQclic launched and when the scale of the cost overruns became public. **SAAQclic is therefore primarily a matter of collective government responsibility for Fréchette, not direct ministerial responsibility.** ## Northvolt: two very different periods Northvolt is more complicated. When the project was announced on September 28, 2023, Fréchette was still immigration minister. Quebec then announced up to $1.37 billion in capital commitments to the project. Ottawa and Quebec also announced production incentives of up to $4.6 billion, one third of which would be borne by Quebec if production conditions were met. Fréchette was not the minister responsible for the project at that point. That changed on September 5, 2024. After Pierre Fitzgibbon left government, she became minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy. Northvolt and the broader battery strategy then fell directly within her portfolio. She inherited a project already under way and decisions made before she took over, but she became responsible for managing the file from that point onward. On September 2, 2025, she personally announced the end of public funding for Northvolt. Quebec said it had disbursed $510 million: a $240-million secured loan for the land and a $270-million equity investment in the Swedish parent company. The government then considered the $270-million investment lost, while the loan remained backed by guarantees. The distinction matters: - **The original Northvolt selection and announcement: collective responsibility for Fréchette, but not direct ministerial responsibility.** - **Management of the file from September 2024 to its end: direct responsibility as economy minister.** ## The Auditor General later criticizes the wider battery strategy On June 10, 2026, two months after Fréchette became premier, Quebec's Auditor General released another report on financial assistance to the battery sector. Its conclusion was severe: development of the sector rested on an approach described as insufficiently planned, with important objectives and timelines left undefined. For Fréchette, the political difficulty is clear. She can accurately point out that the strategy and the Northvolt project were launched before she became economy minister. But she later ran that department for nearly 17 months. As premier, she has sought to distinguish her economic approach from the Legault-Fitzgibbon period, acknowledging that the government should have reduced its economic interventionism sooner in some areas. That represents a real political break. It does not retroactively make her an outsider to a strategy she administered from September 2024 onward. ## Health: another break with the previous team The same pattern appears in health policy. On August 31, 2026, Fréchette opened the door to allowing doctors to work simultaneously in the public and private systems, a proposal that departs from the approach associated with former health minister Christian Dubé. Again, she was not health minister. She can therefore propose a new policy without being personally responsible for every decision previously made in that department. But she sat in cabinet while those policies were in place. The same day, questioned about major cost overruns involving health-network computer systems, she said she was "angry" and argued that accountability mechanisms had been tightened. These files illustrate her campaign challenge: **to present herself as an agent of change without suggesting she had no connection to the record of the government she served for almost four years.** ## Can she turn the page? Yes — but not by erasing the previous four years. A new premier can change policy, replace ministers and propose a different direction. Fréchette is not required to preserve every Legault-era policy simply because she served in his government. But her record is best understood through three categories. **First, decisions for which she had direct responsibility:** immigration from 2022 to 2024, then Economy and Energy beginning in September 2024. **Second, decisions made by other ministers while she was part of cabinet:** SAAQclic and the finance minister's budgets largely fall into this category. **Third, decisions made before she inherited a portfolio but that she later had to administer:** Northvolt is the clearest example. That framework avoids two opposite shortcuts. Christine Fréchette is not personally responsible for everything that happened under François Legault. But she cannot be treated as entirely separate from the government that made those decisions either. As Quebec approaches the October 5 election, the line between continuity and rupture is ultimately one voters will have to assess for themselves. ## Methodology LeQuébecVote.ca distinguishes individual ministerial responsibility from cabinet's collective responsibility. Because cabinet deliberations are confidential, this article does not claim to know Christine Fréchette's private views on decisions taken while she served in government. Its conclusions are based on her official ministerial roles, publicly announced decisions, and available government or institutional documents.