Pity Pauline Marois. Her predecessors as leader of the Parti Québécois had enough trouble with only one "mother-in-law." Now Marois must contend with two former leaders meddling in her relationship with her party.
The first is Jacques Parizeau, whose public chortling about the "crisis" that would be created by Marois's plan for sovereignty might have contributed to the PQ's disappointing loss in the June by-election in the Rivière-du-Loup riding.
Parizeau is to be heard from again in November, when he has a new book published. Publisher Michel Brûlé promises that Parizeau the "strategist" will address the "challenges" facing sovereignists, which might worry Marois as much as it excites Parizeau's cult followers in the sovereignty movement.
In the meantime, it's the PQ's second mother-in-law who's been making noise.
Almost immediately after Bernard Landry resigned as PQ leader at a party convention in June 2005 after a disappointing confidence vote, he began to regret his decision, even considering trying to win his job back in the ensuing leadership election.
Now a 72-year-old grandfather, Landry shows signs of hearing the ticking of the biological clock getting louder.
In the summer, there was a rumour that Landry was waiting for an opening to replace Gilles Duceppe as leader of the Bloc Québécois.
Then he drew attention to himself by participating in a publicity campaign for the Le Monstre roller coaster at the American-owned La Ronde amusement park, surely a first for a former premier.
He also attended the première of a documentary on nationalist movements at Montreal's World Film Festival, along with other prominent sovereignists.
And now he has encouraged the language hawks in Marois's party by reversing himself on the question of extending to the CEGEPs Bill 101's restrictions on admission to publicly-funded elementary and high schools.
Coincidentally, that was the most contentious issue at the PQ convention at which Landry resigned, and some delegates might have voted against him in the leadership vote because of his opposition to the proposal.
As if to make sure nobody missed it, Landry first announced that he would come out in favour of the extension, then did so in an interview and finally did so again in an article in Le Devoir.
It was a weak case he made for the extension.
While he said his thinking had "evolved" because of statistics on immigrant children switching from French high schools to English CEGEPs, he didn't cite any.
And he neglected to explain why two years of French junior college would succeed where, according to him, 12 years of French elementary and high school had failed.
One of his arguments in Le Devoir was a partisan one that would appeal to the members of Marois's party: More immigrants would support sovereignty if they learned history in French CEGEPs instead of English ones.
Unfortunately for Landry, Le Devoir published his article the same day it reported on its front page that less than five per cent of CEGEP students take a Quebec history course, which is offered in less than a quarter of the colleges.
And he was soon contradicted by the CEGEPs' federation. Where Landry referred only to statistics on college enrolment, the federation actually produced some.
They showed that the proportion of students with mother tongues other than French or English who attended French CEGEPs was increasing, from 44.2 per cent in 2001 to 49.1 per cent in 2006.
And they showed that the proportion of these allophones who had gone from French high schools to French colleges was also on the rise, to 60.4 per cent.
But logic and statistics might have less influence on PQ language hawks than Landry's well-publicized reversal. Marois might be in for more "mother-in-law" troubles.