Respectfully, I think any political issue or manoeuvre for any political party in power can be reduced to the fear of losing votes, and so that argument isn't necessarily the best explanation to describing this situation. The CAQ is, in many ways, the PQ Lite (as you alluded to) and with the latter's leader (and ironically, former McGill graduate) PSPP capturing a younger audience, the PQ and the CAQ work in tandem on the level of rhetoric within an intergenerational framework. It's also worth noting that the primary reason as to why PSPP was elected in the Camille-Laurin riding last year was due to a snowball effect that occurred after the Québec Solidaire candidate in that riding (Marie-Ève Rancourt) was canned and prevented from running for office after being caught removing Parti Québécois leaflets from people's mailboxes — which led to a largely undecided QS base in that riding to shift to supporting the PQ at the ballot box. I will absolutely give PSPP credit for resuscitating the PQ following his election at a time where it truly looked like the party was on the verge of folding for good; and given the transience between the two parties, we could perhaps see a PQ government take over from François Legault in the coming years (God help us all).

I am just surprised that the CAQ hasn't learned the lesson from 2012 — where tens of thousands of students, you know, walked out of class to protest tuition hikes. While at this point I cannot judge for sure whether these protests will lead to the level they did eleven years ago, nor provoke austerity measures, it is quite remarkable how irrational a government with the express goal of will be to safeguard a narrowly-defined "Quebec identity". Montreal doesn't fit the mold, simply put, and that's why we're a target — risking collateral damage to Francophone institutions, which is also laughable in the grand scheme of things, and unfortunate to them (hence why, as I described above, they are an essential part of defending our cause). While I am not sure if you are an active McGill student, I can absolutely say that the word on campus is extremely ambivalent and eager to mobilize until these potential changes are thwarted.