Members of the Pineault-Caron family say it doesn’t bother them that they’ve been ridiculed in the social media they call “the gossip channels” for their testimony last week at the National Assembly committee hearings on the Parti Québécois government’s “values” charter.

It probably doesn’t bother the PQ, either.

After the first week of the hearings at which the Pineault-Carons told of their astonishment at seeing “men on all fours on little rugs” in a mosque in Morocco, new poll results offer the PQ nothing but encouragement.

The poll was conducted Friday and Saturday by the Léger firm for the Québecor media organization.

The results suggest that neither the hearings nor briefs to the committee saying the charter would violate fundamental freedoms have shaken support for either the charter or the PQ.

On the contrary, they suggest that, if anything, support for both has increased slightly since a Léger poll Dec. 2-5.

And they suggest that the PQ now has the support of the 43 per cent of French-speaking voters its strategists believe the party needs in order to win a majority in a general election.

Premier Pauline Marois is rumoured to be considering calling a snap election in as little as three weeks, for a voting day of March 17.

One analyst, Bryan Breguet of the website Too Close To Call, says a PQ majority still wouldn’t be a sure thing.

Based on the Léger results, he gives the PQ a 75-per-cent chance of winning a majority.

The poll results suggest that the popularity of the charter, and in particular of its proposed ban on the wearing of “conspicuous” religious symbols by any public employee at work, has pulled support for the PQ upward.

The ban, which is the only point of contention in the charter among the three major parties in the Assembly, has the support of 69 per cent of the French-speaking voters the PQ is courting.

That’s an increase of 11 percentage points since the charter was introduced in September.

At 69 per cent, the ban is much more popular than the PQ, which is supported by 43 per cent of francophones.

The ban, however, is not the only apparent reason for the PQ’s gain in popularity. The poor recent performance of the official opposition Liberal party and its leader, Philippe Couillard, is another.

The Liberals were knocked off-balance in mid-November, when their critic on the charter, Marc Tanguay, imprudently answering a reporter’s hypothetical question about a full-length Muslim veil unknown in Quebec, said the party would accept a candidate who wears the chador.

They’ve been entangled in the invisible chador, and the charter, ever since, repeatedly “clarifying” their positions on both.

The result has been a loss of confidence in Couillard’s political skills and, consequently, of his authority over a party formerly known for its discipline.

On Saturday, one of Couillard’s own policy advisers further undermined the Liberal leader’s already shaky position on the charter, which is based on respect for fundamental freedoms.

Benoît Pelletier, a constitutional expert and former Liberal minister, wrote in Le Journal de Montréal that rights charters must not be considered “insurmountable” obstacles and that freedoms are not absolute, but must evolve with society.

It’s rumoured that one reason Marois backed down from calling a general election last fall is that she was afraid of Couillard, but that she isn’t anymore.

Marois already had one advantage over Couillard: campaign experience.

The next election campaign will be her third as a party leader, and Couillard’s first.

And since 1923, no first-time leader, counting federal experience, has won a Quebec general election against a campaign-tested opponent.