Life on the Left: 2018

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Québec solidaire reviews the election and maps campaign on climate crisis

Introduction

Québec solidaire will make climate change the party’s main political campaign issue in the coming year, both in and outside the National Assembly. The campaign will build on the major proposals in the QS economic transition plan featured in the recent Quebec general election.

Meeting in Montréal December 7-9, the party’s National Council (CN), which comprises delegates from its constituency associations and other membership bodies, debated and adopted a “political balance sheet” of the October 1 election, in which Québec solidaire doubled its share of the popular vote to 16% and elected 10 deputies to the National Assembly.

In addition to adopting a leadership proposal to prioritize the issue of climate crisis and how to fight it, the CN held a preliminary discussion on how to prepare an internal debate on “secularism and religious signs” that is to arm the party to counter Islamophobic legislation threatened by the new CAQ government.[1] An introductory document was introduced setting out the existing program on these questions, adopted in 2009, along with changes proposed by some party leaders in recent years.[2] The plan is to clarify the party’s position at the next National Council meeting, to be held in March 2019.

The election report noted that QS had achieved all of its major objectives in the recent election. It had more than tripled its parliamentary representation, with gender parity and increased diversity among the new MNAs, winning seats outside of Montréal for the first time, and obtaining recognition as an official party in the Assembly.

Although the election was not preceded by any major debate or popular mobilization on fundamental issues affecting Quebec as a national entity in the Canadian state, in recent years there have been important mobilizations around ecology (e.g. stopping the Energy East pipeline), the #MoiAussi (Me too) movement, and agitation to raise the minimum wage. Another concern was the troubling global rise in right-wing populism with its anti-immigration rhetoric and “xenophobic, misogynist and racist ideas.”

“Québec solidaire, by taking clear positions on the issue of climate change, by foregrounding the minimum wage demand, and affirming its feminist, independentist and inclusive project, was able to position itself as a relevant and effective force in this social and ideological context.”

Among younger voters it was the party’s emphasis on climate crisis and its support for universal free tuition that proved most attractive. And its environmental platform benefited from “the fact that we integrate this issue with a more comprehensive projet de société.”

“Linking independence and environment is very important in getting the voters — especially young people, who are less spontaneously in favour of independence — to see the importance of Quebec’s political emancipation.”

It is important, the report emphasized, that the party not just be an effective voice in parliament. “We must do more to get a hearing outside the walls of the National Assembly, alongside our allies in the social movements, to give a voice to the popular opposition to this government.” And this will help the party resist the calls for convergence with the Parti québécois, which will grow in light of the PQ’s precarious situation. Moreover,

“the calls to ‘recentre,’ to ‘put some water in our wine,’ to ‘compromise,’ will become more insistent over the next four years from people who think that power can only be taken through the centre. Québec solidaire will have to find a way to overcome these pressures, and to define itself by its own means.”

Personal commitments prevented me from attending this CN meeting. However, a report and commentary by Pierre Beaudet, who as a QS member was entitled to attend the meeting as an observer, presents an informative and reflective analysis of what it revealed of the progress of Québec solidaire and the challenges facing it. I have translated his article from Presse-toi à gauche, adding my own footnotes. Beaudet edits Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme and is currently teaching at the Université du Québec en Outaouais in Gatineau.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

Québec solidaire’s National Council meeting — A comment by a sympathetic observer

By Pierre Beaudet

As the party’s general secretary Gaétan Châteauneuf noted in his opening remarks, the 14^th meeting of the National Council (CN) was above all a “moment of celebration.” How could it be otherwise, given the spectacular results of last October 1? The increased vote, the three-fold increase in the number of deputies, the breakthrough outside of Montréal constitute, together, a real quantitative and qualitative leap — as registered in the report presented by the outgoing chair of the National Elections Committee, Ludvic Moquin-Beaudry.

If we add to that the significant number of young people between the ages of 18 and 35 who opted for QS, especially around the central issue of climate emergency, the outlook is promising. The balance-sheet, endorsed by the 200 or so CN participants, justified the reporter’s conclusion that “from now on, QS has the taste of victory.”

Generations

Québec solidaire’s progress since its founding in 2006 is impressive. At the time, it was a marriage of convenience between the most perceptive elements of the old left (like my friend François Cyr, unfortunately now deceased) and some personalities from the social movements such as the indefatigable Françoise David and François Saillant. The generation of the Seventies and Eighties was still full of energy, with a long and rich tradition of social struggles, but also aware that it had been unable to build a true political pole on the left.

It was time for a “self-critical” dialogue with the “generation of the 2000s” that had put new life into the movements, as in the World March of Women and the Summit of the Peoples of the Americas. Amir Khadir, and later Manon Massé, were very representative of this new tuned-in group of activists. And then, in 2012, there was a radical shift as tens of thousands of youth felt their time had come. That was when a new generation — including Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois (GND), Ludvic Moquin-Beaudry, Simon Tremblay-Pepin, among so many others — made what Québec solidaire has become today, a grand rallying point.

A change in course

The Quebec of the activists has now taken its place on the political scene. In his opening speech, GND[3] argued that QS had emerged from marginality, was clearly no longer the “party of lost causes,” and had even to a considerable degree won the “battle of ideas.” Subsequently, the 10 deputies, still dazzled by their victory, explained how they were constituting the “real opposition” in the National Assembly. With the Liberals and the Parti québécois still groggy from their severe defeat, and a CAQ government that is incoherent, there is indeed ample space in which to disrupt the distance “between the people and the traditional political castes,” as GND put it, adding that October 1, more than a chance event, was a “displacement of the tectonic plates.”

There’s a story here

Some speakers cautioned the National Council against an exaggerated triumphalist vision, noting in particular the attractiveness of a “new old” party like the CAQ among a great many voters, as well as the high level of abstention. Without minimizing the effort of the central team of QS and the many thousands of members in the 125 ridings, there was an alignment of the stars that resulted from such other factors as the collapse of the once-mighty PQ, now at the door of the palliative care unit.

Others noted that a tempting “alliance” between QS and the PQ, as proposed by some party leaders just last year, would have been a serious mistake.

In reality, QS is in search of an orientation that could be termed “strategic.” The program — the product of ten years of debate — is both an interesting foundation reflecting the convergence between generations and militants but also somewhat of a burden that remains obscure for most members, and even more so the population.

A few months ago, before the election was officially called, the QS leadership had not seen the centrality of the environmental question; it was not included in the four or five major priorities in the campaign planning. Influenced by a report commissioned from the IREQ[4] that remains more or less secret even now, the tendency at the May 2018 NC meeting was to veer toward a “soft” consensus, out of fear of being taken for “radical ecologists.” However, the determined mobilization of an increasingly militant ecology movement tipped the balance. If we are to speak of a displacement of tectonic plates, that is where it happened, especially among the youth. Almost at the last minute, the QS leadership changed course, and this was responsible to a large degree for the appeal of Manon Massé’s remarkable presentations in the debates of the party leaders.

A “real” party, and some headaches

Frankly, QS has been more than admirable in its conduct of democratic debate up to now, with recurring congresses and engaged membership committees. Of course, when the party had only three elected deputies, the “parliamentary wing” did not take up too much space. But now, with the 10 MNAs and a huge supporting staff (QS is allocated a budget of $1.8 million as a recognized party), it is likely that the centre of gravity will move more toward the National Assembly. This will be a real challenge, as it is for all progressive parties that reach a certain threshold. The parliamentary team will now assume great influence.

However, it will have to conform to a politically restricted terrain, the National Assembly and the party system, initially conceived by the British colonial regime and since adopted by all bourgeois parliaments as a means of sidelining the people. Beyond the divisions between the parties, the elected members end up constituting a caste that is surrounded, protected, and to some degree insulated by the “cadres and competents” (assistants of all kinds) whose job it is to serve, even to defend, their bosses, the MNAs, more than QS as a whole.

Ends and means

The dilemma is that this apparatus that QS will soon set up will tend (I don’t say it is inevitable) to function on its own foundations. At worst, it becomes a “party within the party” and then the objective (transformation) is shelved in the interests of winning election, by hook or by crook. But QS was not established in order to “win elections”; that’s a means, not the end. To undertake the great transformation, we also have to think about other means such as mobilization, popular education.

In reality, QS belongs to something that is bigger than itself, and that we can call, in the interests of simplicity, the “popular movement.” Without that movement, we will go nowhere.

Of course, it will be said, rightly, that our party is far, very far from being sclerosed and indifferent to the people’s voice. But hold on, the PQ was not initially the affair of a clique. The NDP, in its good years, was in tune with the popular movement. Elsewhere, the left re-ignited a genuine spirit of emancipation, as did the Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil.

We will be told it is not like that here, but we should give this some thought. Once Lula was elected in 2002, the mechanisms of internal democracy were shrivelled. They said the PT has to govern, that the elected members were accountable to their voters and not the party members, etc. Parallel to this, some popular movements were decapitated, their members absorbed by the apparatus. One thing led to another, and a great popular movement lost its direction, ending with the recent great defeat.

Act now, in anticipation

Also, let’s be realists. Québec solidaire is still very far from “power.” I put the word “power” in quotation marks because I don’t think a provincial government (the reality for now) holds real “power,” which will remain in the hands of the real (federal) state and which, once again, is limited by the various circuits of the Canadian bourgeoisie and American imperialism.

This is not to denigrate the importance of the struggle that must be conducted to change this Quebec government. But it must be done without illusions. That is what Gramsci taught us: the fight is a “war of position,” slow, strewn with pitfalls, which will not be ended on the day of an election victory. If we bear that in mind, we will avoid major disappointments, without forgetting that the real strength is that of the organized people, for whom the MNAs are the voice in the parliamentary arena.

Meanwhile, QS should invest in extra-parliamentary work that goes beyond statements of principle. During the National Council meeting, Simon Tremblay-Pepin said QS should “cling” to the mobilizations that are under way, as a stakeholder in a great convergence. To do that, we will need some means, some resources, devoted to mobilization and popular education that are distinct, but protected, from those assigned to support the parliamentary wing.

Avoid “true or false” debates

To become a party is to insert oneself on to the political scene as it exists, with its constraints. The system, and the media appendage that goes with it, is made to fool people, arouse unproductive discussions, avoid the essential. And that is where the current debate on immigration and religious signs must be placed. GND repeated this in his opening speech at the CN; this “crisis” has been conjured up. Immigrants are not a threat to our society. There is no sign of “excess” in the practice of Islam any more than there is in other religious practices. Only a small minority wear ostentatious signs of their belief, and this has no impact on the population as a whole. So where is the real problem? There is one. Capitalism in its neoliberal form discriminates, super-exploits and treats some populations as inferior in its logic of accumulation. It needs cheap labour to pick broccoli in St-Hyacinthe. Or domestic workers to take care of our children.

The immigrants are the victims in this: unrecognized skills, “informal” discriminatory practices, restrictive contracts, etc. To do this, the rulers must convince the population that migrants do not “deserve” the same advantages as others. They create a “them” and “us,” constructing a discrimination which we must fight without hesitation or qualification.

La guerre, yes sir![5]

A second consideration: globalized capitalism, the United States in the lead, is militarizing. The next world war is already begun, in that arc of crises that traverses a major part of Africa and Asia. To justify it, they have to entrench the idea that it is the populations concerned, mainly Muslim Arabs, who are the threat, and not the imperialist concerns of the great powers. That is the stock of Islamophobia, the new name for racism.

Here too, we must resist, as strongly as our ancestors did against hatred of the Jews, which when all is said and done was hatred of the workers and left parties, fueled by the right and the far-right, quite capable then as now of draping themselves in a nationalist cloak.

When the time comes, this will be one of the trump cards of the CAQ. How to fight? We cannot act if we do not go back to the systemic questions, over and above the “religious signs.” Moreover, this is a vast global combat, we are not alone. Internationalism and altermondialisme (words I did not often hear in the National Council) must be in the forefront, and not a vague point on the agenda (generally at the end).

An important challenge

I am proud to see Québec solidaire taken in hand by the new generations. The left, in the past and even now, has not always recognized this necessary change. Of course, the “young at heart” (including the author of these lines) still have many things to say and do (there were still many white heads at the National Council meeting). Some comrades of the previous generations continue to play an essential role in moving projects forward. I am thinking in particular of André Frappier, whose mandate as the head of communications was not renewed; he has still more to share of the lessons learned from countless battles conducted by the people, the advances and also the retreats, the beautiful transformations and the “blind spots.”

At the time when we were in the forefront there was a lot of arrogance, of know-it-all-ism, even a feeling that we were literally writing on a blank page. With this insane dream of “imminent victory,” we broke the momentum. With greater modesty, greater capacity to listen, greater understanding of the complex processes that confront us, we could have done better. Today, it is reassuring to find that the QS members of this world are trying to go further.

December 11, 2018

[1] Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).

[2] For a review of these changes, see “Québec solidaire prepares to confront a new government of austerity and social and ethnic polarization,” under the subheading “Program development.”

[3] Nadeau-Dubois was chief organizer of the QS election campaign. He is a co-spokesperson of the party along with Manon Massé, who represented QS in the party leaders’ televised debates.

[4] Institut de recherche d’Hydro-Québec, a research institute established in 1967 by Quebec’s state-owned power utility.

[5] Roch Carrier, La guerre, yes sir! investigates French-English relations during the conscription crisis in Quebec. Translated by Sheila Fischman (Toronto: Anansi, 1970), 113 pp. Adapted as a stage play in French in 1970 and in English in 1972. “Perhaps the most important work of literature in French relating to the [Second World] war and was equally well-received in English translation.” http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/military/025002-7082-e.html.

Québec solidaire reviews the election and maps campaign on climate crisis

Introduction

“Québec solidaire, by taking clear positions on the issue of climate change, by foregrounding the minimum wage demand, and affirming its feminist, independentist and inclusive project, was able to position itself as a relevant and effective force in this social and ideological context.”

“Linking independence and environment is very important in getting the voters — especially young people, who are less spontaneously in favour of independence — to see the importance of Quebec’s political emancipation.”

“the calls to ‘recentre,’ to ‘put some water in our wine,’ to ‘compromise,’ will become more insistent over the next four years from people who think that power can only be taken through the centre. Québec solidaire will have to find a way to overcome these pressures, and to define itself by its own means.”

– Richard Fidler

* * *

Québec solidaire’s National Council meeting — A comment by a sympathetic observer

By Pierre Beaudet

Generations

A change in course

There’s a story here

Others noted that a tempting “alliance” between QS and the PQ, as proposed by some party leaders just last year, would have been a serious mistake.

A “real” party, and some headaches

Ends and means

In reality, QS belongs to something that is bigger than itself, and that we can call, in the interests of simplicity, the “popular movement.” Without that movement, we will go nowhere.

Act now, in anticipation

Avoid “true or false” debates

La guerre, yes sir![5]

An important challenge

December 11, 2018

[1] Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).

[2] For a review of these changes, see “Québec solidaire prepares to confront a new government of austerity and social and ethnic polarization,” under the subheading “Program development.”

[3] Nadeau-Dubois was chief organizer of the QS election campaign. He is a co-spokesperson of the party along with Manon Massé, who represented QS in the party leaders’ televised debates.

[4] Institut de recherche d’Hydro-Québec, a research institute established in 1967 by Quebec’s state-owned power utility.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

The lesson of Brazil

Students in São Paulo debating resistance to Bolsonaro after the election. (Pic: Margarida Salomão on Twitter)

Pierre Beaudet, an editor of Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme, is a long-standing member of the International Council of the World Social Forum, which first met in 2001 in Porto Alegre, just a year before the Workers’ Party (PT) was elected to the presidency of Brazil. The WSF has met almost annually since then in Brazil and occasionally in other countries. Prof. Beaudet wrote this article the day after the October 28 election of the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil, winning 55% over the PT’s 45%. It was first published in Presse-toi à gauche. A shorter version was published in Le Devoir. My translation. – Richard Fidler

* * *

The Lesson of Brazil

By Pierre Beaudet

The catastrophe — expected and foreseeable — has happened. This immense country, with its 200 million inhabitants, is now in darkness. At best, it will take a decade or two to emerge.

The ‘Colombian model’

It is of course very early to predict what will happen, but the election of the fascist Bolsonaro raises two possibilities. The “optimists,” if one can put it that way, think that a kind of Colombian-style regime will emerge: authoritarian, militarized, using targeted repression against certain sectors of the popular movement with the consent if not support of a vast sector of the middle and popular classes. In Colombia, under Álvaro Uribe’s rule, the state was reinforced and restabilized, benefiting from the militarist excesses of the FARC. Today, Colombia emerges as a small regional power with a façade of democracy, a fragmented opposition, and a solid alliance between the various reactionary factions, not to mention the unfailing support of the United States. In that country they assassinate, kidnap, destroy the opposition, but they leave it a small place in a well-organized system that rules out any change. Has history come to an end in Colombia? Of course not, it never does. Also, Brazil is not Colombia. The popular movement did not become militarized. It still enjoys broad electoral support (45% of the votes), foundations in the institutions, states (provinces) and municipalities. All that cannot be destroyed overnight. However…

The pessimistic scenario

Bolsonaro expresses the hope of sectors that are truly fascist, not only authoritarian. The president-elect said it himself, he wants to “exterminate” the left. Which could mean several things, such as a “purge” of the public service, education and the cultural milieu, as the Turkish dictator has done in his own way. But there is worse yet. In the Brazilian case it will be necessary to break vast popular movements, including in the first place the powerful landless peasants movement, the MST. For three decades this movement has sunk roots in various rural sectors, with an organized network of establishments, cooperatives and institutions. Although not obtaining the agrarian reform it sought from its allies in the Workers’ Party (PT), the MST has established itself in some regions as a mini “state within the state,” with hundreds of thousands of members. Bolsonaro has said he will “clean them up” with the support of the powerful agrobusiness sector, local notables and popular sectors fueled by junk media and the evangelical churches. The MST, which fortunately has never toyed with the militarist option, will have a hard time withstanding the shock, unless other popular sectors join with it to build a sort of anti-fascist front. For the moment, that’s unlikely. The trade-union movement, including the CUT, which gave birth to the PT, is virtually paralyzed, in large part by the frontal assault on the workers in recent years and the impact of “globalization.” Reorienting toward primary resource extraction and agrobusiness, Brazilian capitalism concluded that a working class organized in industry and public services was due for slaughter.

The next challenges of the fascist project

There are still many unknowns in the equation. Urban popular sectors are not, at least in the short term, in a position to mobilize, partly because of the dense network of evangelicals. The PT has for several years lost ground in the favelas. The “middle” layers, including a large petty-bourgeoisie that is relatively comfortable in the state apparatus, education and the media, are neutralized. The big bourgeoisie, initially rather hostile to Bolsonaro, is ready to “play the game,” especially if the new president will undertake the dismantling of the social sector of the state, which will mean lower taxes (which are already very low). In Europe, at the turn of the 1930s, the dominant sectors in Germany and elsewhere lined up behind the fascists, albeit with some reluctance. The popular movements and unions, well organized and implanted, were not in a position to resist. Admittedly, Brazil and today’s world are not Germany and the traumatized Europe of the 1930s. One of Bolsonaro’s challenges will be to prove to the ruling classes that he actually can govern, which means consolidating and worsening neoliberal policies in line with the interests of the big bourgeoisie and imperialism. On the other hand, managing his repressive policy by avoiding “excesses” (too many massacres, too much racism and homophobia), while putting in place a very repressive system. It is easier said than done.

The shock

At this point, everyone is in shock. The natural reflex is to point to the dreadful manipulation of the right, through the use of the media, elite corruption and repression. That’s completely true. The election campaign that just ended illustrates the tremendous slippage of the current liberal democracies, and not only in Brazil (think of the United States). There is a strong tendency to turn politics into a huge show where anything can be said. One might have thought, however, that the left, the PT and the popular movements should have seen it coming. The victory of a fascist comes two years after President Dilma Roussef was overthrown in a “constitutional” coup, the logical and natural consequence of which was Lula’s imprisonment. Even before that, in 2013, the right had taken the initiative by organizing real mass movements in the street to confront the inanities of the PT government, unable to tame the repression and reorient the country to the needs of the people instead of mounting megalomaniac projects (the Olympics, among others). With various media, police and judicial operations, the PT apparatus found itself in hot water. These episodes, events, scandals and other phenomena have of course been reflected in and mobilized by a highly-organized Right in Brazil, deeply embedded in the state apparatus, “armed” by a vast coterie of “service” intellectuals and firmly seated in a racist and reactionary culture that is the legacy of 500 years of social apartheid and slavery.

Dark spots of the left

That being said, it is necessary to look elsewhere. A product of the great workers and democratic struggles of the 1980s, the PT emerged from oblivion with a project of emancipation that boasted some new features. The need to “democratize the democracy” and redistribute wealth to the popular sectors resulted in a broadly attractive and arguably hegemonic project. This kind of “not so quiet revolution” seemed an ideal way to change this country without too many clashes and grinding of teeth. Once elected in 2002 after a decade of slow and partial victories, the PT enjoyed a state of grace, spurred by an economic boom propelled by rising resource prices. This giant country of agrobusiness and mining and petroleum industries amassed a lot of money, and this allowed Lula and his government to redistribute part of the wealth without harming the interests of the better-off sectors. They were never supporters of the PT but they could tolerate it with the thought that the new governance had the effect of pacifying popular demands and moderating more radical sectors. For example, PT governments continued to refuse the major demand of the MST to implement an extensive agrarian reform, thereby reinforcing the power of agrobusiness, the most dynamic sector of Brazilian capitalism. The same thing can be said for the political system.

Shortly after Lula’s election, some dissident sectors had dared to take their distance by insisting that no real change could occur in Brazil without a ruthless fight against a thoroughly rotten political system. Elected officials at all levels, civil servants, members of the judiciary and the repressive apparatus were gangrened by perverted manipulative practices and a corresponding ideology in which the supreme principle is personal profit, anchored in a deep hatred of the people. Lula and the PT leadership simply chose to live with this system.

Contaminated decontaminants

It is sometimes said that it is systems that make the people and not the people who make the systems. That’s a bit generalizing, but it’s still true. Around the small nucleus that had piloted the PT to the top of the state there was a small army of “cadres and competents,” mostly militants who had spent years fighting in the unions, the municipalities, in education and the media. These cadres and skilled elements had some means, a little education, some capacities and naturally they became the backbone of the new power. For many, they did so with honesty, even selflessness, in conditions that were often difficult. For others, this transformation represented a real ascension in the social order. A trade unionist suddenly promoted to chief of staff or director of a parapublic company doubled or even tripled his income. This did not mean that he became “rotten” overnight, but it was not inconsequential either.

Apart from the MST, which remained a special case, the popular movements were largely “decapitated” by the exodus of these “cadres and competents” who were the guiding spirits in the unions and many other movements. Once ensconced in the state apparatus, they found themselves de facto in a new situation in which there was still some complicity with the popular movements but also, gradually and increasingly, some distance. Inevitably, the new managers were contaminated by the culture of opacity, manipulation, and even disdain that has built this country for 500 years. They found many more arguments to do nothing than to the contrary. They did not listen to the dissident voices who said the PT was sitting on a sand castle, without reconstructing an economy that is totally unequal and dependent, without confronting the 1% and the 10% who continued to grow rich, without waging a resolute battle against the huge reactionary media empire and the perverse influence of the evangelicals. The gap between the PT and the popular layers became apparent in 2013 when the people took to the streets to denounce the increases in transit fares and megalomaniac projects. But the left plugged its ears. A decisive moment, this convinced a multi-hued Right to go into action.

Tomorrow’s challenges

Brazil will experience some very dark days and we will have to support our comrades to the best of our ability — for example, by keeping a close watch on the actions of the Canadian state and Canadian businesses that will choose to collaborate with the fascists.[1] In the short term, the Brazilian movements will try to do two things at the same time. They will resist, they have no choice. They will also debate, to try to understand, to unravel their contradictions. It is likely that the leaders of the PT, Lula in the lead, will choose the path of least resistance, of retreat, waiting for the return of things without shaking the cage too much. They will say, with some reason, that this is the only possible choice, that the relationship of forces is too unfavourable. They will blame the people and the popular movements instead of accepting their responsibilities in the debacle. But there will be others who will try, in conditions of great adversity, to hold out as the MST will likely do. We have to stand by them.

Thinking further

Like many countries of the “pink wave” in Latin America, Brazil was an important laboratory of left renewal. The importance this has meant in getting the left out of its vanguardist ruts, the misplaced legacy of a petrified and harmful “Marxism-Leninism,” cannot be under-stated. But the present defeats also weigh heavily. What should we make of them? The rise of an electoral left is not the goal, it is not how we will change society. It is a means, and again a means that involves many risks. Many indeed. There is the problem mentioned above of the “cadres and competents” who ensconce themselves in relative comfort, abandoning the popular movements from which they came. There are the pitfalls of a “political game” where you pretend to make decisions while the real levers of power are well hidden in the interstices of the banks and large corporations. There are the enormous risks of actually confronting the systems of power knowing very well their capacity to destroy, manipulate, annihilate.

Act now

Faced with all this, it is necessary to resist the pseudo-projects of “fleeing from politics,” taking refuge in comfort zones where one can dream of experiencing society on a very small scale. Anticipatory projects such as cooperatives, mini-communes or whatever are important. But it is not that, in itself, that will break the power. So we have no choice but to go into the swamp, knowing what to expect. At a time when Québec solidaire hopes to change the state of affairs, we can be both happy and cautious. It will be interesting to see whether the innovations that served QS so well are furthered, so that we can avoid potential slippages. For example,

The party must remain a place of active and lively debate, and not be content to sink into facile formulas that may be electorally advantageous but may eventually create the illusion that we can change things without making changes. At QS we are not at that point but there is a small risk that the appetite for an electoral breakthrough will bring us down.
Our MNAs and “cadres and competents,” which will increase tenfold in the next period, must accept — as Manon [Massé], Gabriel [Nadeau-Dubois], Amir [Khadir] and others have done — that they are not the “owners” of QS. Nor should they create a situation in which their material situation departs too much from that of their electorate. Here’s an idea: why not establish a rule that elected members put 10% of their income at the disposal of the social movements, and thus outside of their control? 10% of their income?[2] A kind of “popular tax” for the movements that are the backbone of the transformation.
The party’s resources should be decentralized, not “captured” at the top by “advisors,” whether experts or not, whose role is to support the elected members. Yes, the MNAs need some in order to perform their parliamentary work, but QS is not just that. Advisors should not be “gate-keepers” preventing the membership from participating effectively in the debate. The big difference for QS, and not only for the next election, is dynamic associations that can build convergence with the mass movements. Theme-based commissions and committees will produce popular education tools and analyses on the burning issues of the day, and not just answers for this or that parliamentary committee.

Changing society entails a relentless, determined, struggle against an implacable adversary that must be neutralized if it is not to neutralize us.

October 29, 2018

[1] CBC News was quick off the mark: “For Canadian business, a Bolsonaro presidency could open new investment opportunities, especially in the resource sector, finance and infrastructure, as he has pledged to slash environmental regulations in the Amazon rainforest and privatize some government-owned companies.” Later, in response to mass protests, the public broadcaster retreated, while insisting that “it is a well researched and sourced analysis piece about one aspect of that election.” – RF.

[2] Such a “tax” could easily produce $100,000 per year, or close to a half million by the end of a mandate. It could be used to establish a foundation, independent of QS, that could manage these funds while ensuring their permanence.

The lesson of Brazil

Students in São Paulo debating resistance to Bolsonaro after the election. (Pic: Margarida Salomão on Twitter)

* * *

The Lesson of Brazil

By Pierre Beaudet

The catastrophe — expected and foreseeable — has happened. This immense country, with its 200 million inhabitants, is now in darkness. At best, it will take a decade or two to emerge.

The ‘Colombian model’

The pessimistic scenario

The next challenges of the fascist project

The shock

Dark spots of the left

Contaminated decontaminants

Tomorrow’s challenges

Thinking further

Act now

The party must remain a place of active and lively debate, and not be content to sink into facile formulas that may be electorally advantageous but may eventually create the illusion that we can change things without making changes. At QS we are not at that point but there is a small risk that the appetite for an electoral breakthrough will bring us down.
Our MNAs and “cadres and competents,” which will increase tenfold in the next period, must accept — as Manon [Massé], Gabriel [Nadeau-Dubois], Amir [Khadir] and others have done — that they are not the “owners” of QS. Nor should they create a situation in which their material situation departs too much from that of their electorate. Here’s an idea: why not establish a rule that elected members put 10% of their income at the disposal of the social movements, and thus outside of their control? 10% of their income?[2] A kind of “popular tax” for the movements that are the backbone of the transformation.
The party’s resources should be decentralized, not “captured” at the top by “advisors,” whether experts or not, whose role is to support the elected members. Yes, the MNAs need some in order to perform their parliamentary work, but QS is not just that. Advisors should not be “gate-keepers” preventing the membership from participating effectively in the debate. The big difference for QS, and not only for the next election, is dynamic associations that can build convergence with the mass movements. Theme-based commissions and committees will produce popular education tools and analyses on the burning issues of the day, and not just answers for this or that parliamentary committee.

Changing society entails a relentless, determined, struggle against an implacable adversary that must be neutralized if it is not to neutralize us.

October 29, 2018

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Québec solidaire prepares to confront a new government of austerity and social and ethnic polarization

By Richard Fidler

Québec solidaire’s 10 members of the National Assembly, elected October 1, took their oath of office on October 17 in two parts.

The oath of allegiance to the Queen, required by the British North America Act (now the Constitution Act) in order to take their seats in the Assembly, was conducted behind closed doors, presided over by the secretary of the Assembly.

In a public ceremony held in the former chamber of the Legislative Council (the appointed upper house abolished in the 1960s) the 10 MNAs pledged their “real” loyalty “to the people of Quebec.” Then, to the acclaim of many supporters of Quebec sovereignty, both QS and non-QS, they promised to introduce a bill to abolish the oath to the Queen, described by the party’s co-leader Manon Massé as “anti-democratic” and “archaic.”

Although symbolic, it was an auspicious gesture reflecting Québec solidaire’s determination to present a real progressive alternative to the new government of the Coalition Avenir Québec, sworn into office the following day.

A repositioning of Quebec’s economic elite

Winning 37.4% of the popular vote — 25.8% of the eligible electorate, given the high abstention rate — the Coalition Avenir Québec holds 74 seats, a comfortable majority of more than 60% of the 125 in the National Assembly. Once again, the undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system produces a result quite unrepresentative of the voters’ choices. Doubts are widespread, therefore, that the CAQ will adhere to its pre-election pledge to institute some form of proportional representation which, had it applied to the October 1 results, would have held it to minority government status. There is less doubt, however, about how the CAQ will use its parliamentary majority to implement its unabashedly pro-business and ethnically divisive program.

Founded seven years ago, the party is an amalgam of former Liberal and PQ supporters assembled around a core element, the former right-wing Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), which split from the Quebec Liberal party in the early 1990s in the wake of the demise of the Meech Lake attempt at constitutional reform. It supports some vaguely articulated form of Quebec autonomy but not independence. The CAQ is very much the instrument of François Legault, a former Parti québécois minister and before that a prominent businessman, founder and CEO of Air Transat. He personally selected the party’s candidates. At least 32 of the party’s deputies — 43% of its caucus — are from the business and managerial milieu.[1] And well over half of Legault’s cabinet, announced October 18, are business people or journalists in mainstream or business media.

The party is the product of a repositioning of the nationalist sector of Quebec’s economic elite after the narrow defeat of the 1995 referendum on sovereignty, writes Bernard Rioux, an editor of the left-wing on-line journal Presse-toi à gauche. Successive PQ leaderships led the way, postponing their hopes for a sovereign Quebec to an indefinite future while aligning their party increasingly with neoliberal globalization, support of free trade and privatization of public enterprises, establishment of fee-based public services, reduced taxation of the wealthy, continued exploitation of fossil fuels and concentration of media ownership. Legault, having abandoned the PQ, simply aligned his new party with the federalism of the vast majority of the Québécois bourgeoisie, which sees the Quebec government as its prime instrument for gaining a strengthened role within the Canadian ruling class and through it with global capitalism.

Rioux summarizes the CAQ’s agenda for its four-year mandate. Among promised measures:

Privatization of public services, especially in education and health care, for example by continuing the expansion of private clinics allowed by both PQ and Liberal governments.
Greater inequality in the distribution of wealth through tax reductions for business.
Support for gas and oil exploration and exploitation, and rejection of any plan for environmental transition to renewable energy sources. Legault supported the Energy East pipeline project, cancelled for now following mass protests.
Regressive nationalism that caters to white male identity. During the election campaign Legault promised a 20% reduction in immigration quotas and threatened to expel applicants for citizenship who failed to pass tests on language skills and Quebec “values” within three years. Since the election he has promised to prevent state employees in “positions of authority,” including teachers and not just cops, prison guards and judges, from wearing signs denoting religious belief. In this he expands the scope of the Liberal government’s Bill 62, which prohibited citizens from wearing face coverings when receiving or dispensing public services — a measure clearly aimed at Muslim women in particular. (Now law, it has yet to take effect pending a constitutional challenge.)

‘Good riddance… After three years, they have not learned our language and they have not adopted our values!’ (André-Philippe Côté, Le Soleil).

The CAQ promises a pro-business orientation that will wean Quebec off federal “equalization” payments that offset relatively low government revenues with income derived from higher-income provinces such as the petro-province Alberta. At present Quebec gets the lion’s share of such payments, almost $12 billion or about 62% of the total Ottawa gives the six have-not provinces. Overall federal transfer payments, including cash for health care and social programs, total $24.3 billion, or 22% of Quebec government revenues in the current fiscal year. However, the CAQ’s fiscal framework, tabled during the election campaign, projected federal transfers of $25.6 billion in 2022-23, the final year of the CAQ’s mandate. Indeed, it is hard to see how significant progress in reducing this dependency on federal transfers can be achieved without huge cutbacks in government expenditures. The CAQ promises to cut at least 5,000 employees from the public payroll, but that might be only a beginning.

The CAQ’s right-wing anti-immigrant populism has some parallels with the new parties that have emerged in Europe in recent years, as well as with the Trump conquest of the Republican party. These formations are most successful in channeling working-class voters’ discontent over their declining economic status toward a scapegoating of immigrants and other vulnerable populations that distracts from the deepening capitalist austerity they implement. Their electoral success reflects the failure of the old reformist and social-democratic left to present a credible alternative to the rightward drift of capitalist politics.

However, the CAQ does differ somewhat from other right-wing populist formations in Canada such as Doug Ford’s “Progressive Conservatives” in Ontario or Jason Kenney’s merging of Wild Rose with his Conservatives in Alberta. These parties are known more for their virulent rejection of environmental regulation, verging on climate change denialism, than for attacks on immigrants and ethnic minorities. Canadian capitalists generally encourage limited immigration in order to compensate for the shortages in skilled and low-wage labour they face. The CAQ’s seeming indifference to climate change resonates with its Ontario and Alberta counterparts, while its focus on ethnic identity and immigration issues is its main difference with the Quebec Liberals. The Canadian ruling class as a whole can congratulate itself in any case on the emergence for the first time since the Parti québécois was founded 50 years ago of a new party of governmental alternance that is not “separatist.”

As for the Quebec Liberal party (PLQ), the other party of alternance, it suffered the worst election defeat in its 151 year history. Although the party won 25% of the popular vote, it won only 12% of the vote among the Francophone electorate. It finished fourth in 33 of the 125 ridings and behind Québec solidaire in more than 40.[2] Almost all of its 29 MNAs represent predominantly Anglophone and Allophone (immigrant) ridings on the island of Montréal. Ironically, the main cause of voter hostility to the party related to the harsh austerity program it applied, particularly in the first three years of its mandate. Since Legault’s CAQ promises much the same, popular discontent may rise before long.

Shift to the left within the pro-sovereignty spectrum

The combined PQ-QS share of the popular vote (respectively 17% and 16%) was roughly equivalent to the percentage of Québécois supporting independence in recent years, and about the same as in the previous election, in 2014. But it represented a sea change within the movement.

For the PQ it was the worst result since the party was founded 50 years ago; for QS, it was a major breakthrough. QS gained 7 seats, 4 at the expense of the PQ and the other 3 from the PLQ. The PQ was wiped off the map in Montréal, while QS is not only the second party there but won four seats outside the metropolis: two in Quebec City, one each in Sherbrooke and Abitibi. Although the two parties each have ten seats (the PQ picked up one on a recount, and will rank third in the National Assembly ahead of QS because its popular vote is larger) the PQ is still a major force within the pro-sovereignty movement. It boasts 80,000 members compared with QS’s 20,000. The PQ ranked second in the popular vote in 34 ridings, QS was second in 14.

However, QS was stronger among voters under the age of 35, according to exit polls. And when the Quebec Electoral Officer sponsored a mock vote during the campaign in more than a thousand high schools and youth organizations, QS won the most support among the 81,375 young people who voted: 26.15%, followed by the PLQ and CAQ (just over 22% each) and the PQ (15.37%).

Some PQ leaders, realizing the party’s error in its venomous attacks on QS during the election campaign, are now openly suggesting their party should seek “convergence” with QS. And they are not alone.

Claudette Carbonneau, a former president of the CSN union central and now chair of OUI Québec, a united front of sovereigntist parties and trade unions, said an exploration of prospects for convergence should be high on the agenda of the Assises nationales de concertation (national joint-action conference) the coalition plans to hold soon on the future of the independence project:

“If QS and the PQ don’t find an original way to combine their efforts around some essential issues, they will condemn themselves to a certain marginality with respect to climate change, the urgency of a massive reinvestment in our public services, without overlooking their responsibility to bring about independence, indissociable from these objectives.”[3]

Pierre Dubuc, editor of the left publication L’aut’journal, goes further. Acknowledging “the strategic adroitness of QS” in bringing independence to the fore and giving it substance through the fusion with Option nationale last year,[4] Dubuc deplores the fact that once again the division of the independentist and progressive vote paved the way to putting the Right in power. Failing the advent of proportional representation, he says, “it is overridingly important that independentists and progressives unite within a single party,” albeit one that “allows the expression of different tendencies.” Dubuc thinks the PQ decline began when Pauline Marois in 2010 banned the presence of a left-wing “political club” within the PQ, the SPQ Libre, which he founded and led as its Secretary. Dubuc has operated politically for almost two decades as a harsh critic of Québec solidaire and its predecessors for “splitting the independence vote.” He still cannot bring himself to acknowledge the futility of his own attempts to reform the Parti québécois.

The election results reopened a deep division within the Bloc Québécois, the pro-sovereignty party in the federal Parliament. The call by the party’s MPs to support the PQ candidates, and not QS,[5] led one member of the BQ national bureau to resign. Jocelyn Beaudoin, the membership representative on the bureau, charged in a letter to the party’s executive that the Bloc had decided not to choose between the parties in the election “knowing that if it did it would divide the members.” It was a major lack of political judgment, he said. “At the first opportunity we might have had… to adopt a constructive approach, the party shoots itself in its foot.”

The Bloc’s vice-president Gilbert Paquette, for his part, charged that the MPs had committed a “strategic error” in not first consulting the party’s leadership bodies before issuing their statement. That statement, and Gilles Duceppe’s attack on Manon Massé, had “reinforced the impression that the Bloc sees itself as a kind of appendix of the Parti québécois,” Paquette charged in a letter to the BQ executive and MPs. Both Paquette and Beaudoin, the latter a former president of Option nationale, were strong supporters of Martine Ouellet, the BQ leader forced out by the party’s MPs earlier this year because of her insistence that the MPs fight for Quebec independence and not be content with defending “the interests of Quebec” in the federal Parliament.

The Bloc is currently trying to refound itself in a process due to conclude in January that was seen as a first stage toward a reunification of sovereigntist forces both federally and provincially.[6]

No doubt pressure will continue to build on QS to coalesce with the PQ. But for now QS is focused on constituting itself as “the real official opposition” to the CAQ government. “We are a new political movement… and that can’t be reduced to inter-relations with the PQ,” said QS spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “QS is not a sub-category of the PQ,” he told a press conference. “So all the mathematical calculations where you try to add the votes are without foundation.”

André Frappier, a prominent QS member and former president of the Montréal postal workers (CUPW), puts the issue of QS-PQ relations in historical context:

“In 2017 we decided as we had done two times previously to run candidates in all the ridings because what we defend is based on the peoples’ struggles for social justice and control of their destiny, and for a Quebec that belongs to those who inhabit it.[7]
“The PQ abandoned this terrain a long time ago, and has proved this a hundred times. Its anti-union laws in the 1980s, the neoliberal austerity of [PQ premier Lucien] Bouchard in 1999, the secret contracts [PQ premier Pauline] Marois’ government signed with [the oil company] Petrolia on Anticosti Island and the return to zero deficit of [PQ finance minister] Marceau, the cuts in social assistance by [PQ minister] Agnès Maltais, the total abdication of that government when dealing with the mining companies, and its continuation of [Liberal premier Jean] Charest’s Plan Nord. And to complete things, the charter of Quebec values that divided Quebec in order to win votes, and stigmatized an entire part of the population and Muslim community in particular.”

Talk about a convergence between the PQ and QS is essentially a false debate, Frappier argues.

“The change in alternance of the neoliberal parties with the election of the CAQ and the failure of the PQ in relation to the project of Quebec sovereignty presents us with an inescapable observation. The future of Quebec society can only proceed through a political party that is linked to social mobilization for control of its fate and in opposition to right-wing policies. The only party in the running is now Québec solidaire.
“The social change needed to fight against control by the oil companies, multinationals, financial institutions, against corruption and tax evasion, can only be realized by a left party like Québec solidaire. It requires as well the mobilization of the population conscious of the role it must play, of the trade unions, of the women’s movements, the ethnocultural communities, environmental groups and other social movements….
“We must emerge from the cycle of defensive struggles and defeats that have characterized politics for decades.”

And ‘a party of the streets’?

With its ten MNAs, Québec solidaire will be focused very much in coming months on shaping its parliamentary intervention, developing expertise in various policy fields, and learning how to make its principles and program relevant and understandable to a much wider audience. However, as Frappier argues, the party also faces a huge challenge in developing the other component of “a party of the ballot box and the streets.” Much can be said about this, but here I will simply draw attention to three texts, available on line, that can help to orient this needed debate in QS.

“Parliamentary action and social struggles – The experience of the Portuguese Left Bloc” is an important contribution by a founding leader of a party that has many similarities to Québec solidaire in a country not much larger than Québec. Francisco Louçã is a Left Bloc member of the Portuguese parliament and a former Bloc candidate in the 2005 presidential election. With just over 10% of the popular vote, the party has 19 seats in the Assembly of the Republic under a system of proportional representation.

By electing MPs, Louçã writes, “the Bloc has taken a leap forward, becoming a reference party for the popular struggle.” Institutional representation requires close attention to developing technical skills and professional teams to support the party’s parliamentary work, which now includes municipal action. But “this has a significant cost: a significant part of our most experienced activists are taken up in institutional involvement.”

“These institutional machines therefore absorb much of our activist capacity. It is never clear in advance whether or not this will lead to adaptation to the system, but this institutional standardization generates pressure in this direction. These possible forms of adaptation may be varied: resignation to very limited measures in the name of maintaining the positions acquired; refusal to criticise the institutions or their management in the name of possible future agreements; the idea that politics advances in small steps; fear of public opinion which leads to not presenting a socialist alternative which leads to other institutional forms; desire to avoid the risk of conflict for fear of losing. All these forms of adaptation distort a left-wing policy based on popular representation.”

The Bloc has made little progress on representation within the social movements, he adds. It needs to build organized forces in the unions and workplaces, and figure out how to get young people to “join us and find ways of training and political action.” And Louçã explains the relation between this question and the struggle for socialism, which the Bloc sets as its goal.

“Capitalism is a mode of production, of reproduction of the conditions of production and of representation of the conditions of production and reproduction. This definition underlines the essential point: there is no capitalist production without the system reproducing itself and for this reason it mobilizes its representation, which is based on the alienation of work, social relations, life, relations with nature, but also in the alienation of electoral representation and voting. The separation of the worker from the product of their work, from the control of their life, from their social and even electoral power is the foundation of the conformism on which bourgeois hegemony is based. That is why left-wing politics is a social movement and aims to strengthen itself in the perspective that its ideas and proposals also have an impact on elections; that is why it does not give any ground in the dispute over hegemony; that is precisely why the socialist strategy can only triumph in the social struggle….

“[T]he success of this electoral option does not demonstrate that representation is a sufficient condition for socialist politics. Designed as an instrument to accumulate forces, it is useful. Conceived as a form of conditioning and loss of critical sense and social alternative, it fails. The left only exists through social protagonism, through conflict or strategic intervention in class struggle. In other words, it needs to be part of the class movement. This is how it always measures its strengths.”

What this can mean in terms of Québec solidaire is discussed in a recent article by Alexandre Leduc, a staff advisor to the Quebec Federation of Labour and a leader of QS in the Montréal riding of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve who was elected to the National Assembly on October 1. Leduc identifies two major aspects to the work of a QS riding association: support and animation [which can be translated as initiation].

“The role of support,” he writes, “is aimed essentially at publicizing and participating in actions already organized by groups or citizens’ coalitions. This requires little organizational effort but it does not help to put the party up front.” However, the examples of support he presents later in his piece include such activities as preparing briefs on local issues; calling on party members to support artists fighting eviction from their loft studio; joining in the massive protests of parents who formed human chains around public schools to defend their facilities against government cutbacks and urging these citizens to continue the fight in other areas such as health care and culture; and joining with workers facing factory closures in a fight to reopen them as worker cooperatives. It is unclear why Leduc thinks the party as such gains little credibility or support from such efforts.

“The role of animation,” he writes, “allows an association to organize political action on its own basis and subsequently reap the benefits. In this way, the association builds its credibility among the groups and citizens in its neighborhood or region.” As an example, he cites the association’s circulation during the 2012 provincial election campaign of a petition to get the public transit agency to improve service on two bus routes, an action undertaken in the absence of any mobilization on this issue by others. The petition was successful, and the service was improved.

The distinction between support and animation seems a bit formal to me. The common ingredient in both is the party’s identification of a goal that advances or defends social policy or a public service, a willingness to work towards that goal, and wherever possible to work with others in fighting for it. Where other forces are involved, the party can also link the immediate goal with its broader program of fundamental social change.

Finally, I think QS would benefit greatly by reviving and debating a draft proposal on “Québec Solidaire and the social movements” that was submitted by the QS Policy Commission for discussion at a party convention a few years ago; it was then withdrawn from the convention agenda ostensibly for later debate but since then shelved indefinitely. I think it presents some valuable ideas on how the party might structure its intervention in the social movements, including the trade unions. It is appended to the following article: “Quebec election: A seismic shift within the independence movement?”

Program development

On two key programmatic issues, in my view, Québec solidaire needs to give further thought. One is its strategy for Quebec independence. While progress has been made on the linkage between the party’s program —its projet de société — and Quebec sovereignty, and with it the mandate of its proposed Constituent Assembly, there is still no thinking about the strategic issues facing the movement during the Assembly’s proceedings and following a successful referendum ratifying the draft constitution elaborated by the Assembly. QS needs to confront the reality of a federal state determined to thwart any moves that challenge its integrity. This is a complex issue and I will address it in a subsequent article. It should be on the agenda in the general review and updating of the QS program that the party plans to carry out in 2019.

An immediate issue however is the need to correct the party position on secularism.

Quebec’s new premier, François Legault, threatens to implement as a priority the CAQ’s plans to prohibit the wearing of “religious signs” among state-employed persons in positions of “coercion” (cops, prosecutors, judges and jail guards) or “authority” (including elementary and secondary school teachers, and perhaps others).

Québec solidaire has waffled on this issue for many years. The party claims to adhere to the principle of separation of church and state. In 2009, the resolution adopted at the party’s first convention on program stated that the party distinguishes between the need for state neutrality toward religious belief or lack of belief, and the freedom of individuals “to express their own convictions in a context that favours exchange and dialogue.” As I reported at the time:

“Delegates voted in favour of allowing ‘state agents’ (employees and officials) to wear religious insignia (a crucifix, hijab, whatever), but added some caveats that leave much to subjective interpretation and enforcement by employers: ‘provided they are not used as instruments of proselytism’ and do not interfere with their droit de réserve (duty of discretion), or ‘impede the performance of the duties or contravene safety standards.’ Delegates rejected other resolutions that would impose no such restrictions or, alternatively, would impose secular dress codes on civil servants, and they rejected as well a proposal to refer the whole issue for further decision at a later convention.”[8]

While these caveats were problematic, QS leaders in subsequent years went further and began adapting to other parties’ attempts to impose dress codes not only on state employees but on citizens from minority ethnic communities.

In 2011, the sole QS member of the National Assembly, Amir Khadir, voted with the other parties for a PQ motion to ban Sikhs from entering the legislature because their ceremonial kirpans were to be deemed “weapons.” Ironically, the motion was prompted by an incident a month earlier when four members of the World Sikh Organization were turned back by security guards when they came to testify to a parliamentary committee in favour of the right of Muslim women to wear face coverings when receiving government services — which a Liberal government bill then under debate would have denied.

In 2013, when the National Assembly was again debating the PQ government’s now-infamous Charter of Values, QS leader Françoise David tabled a bill that if adopted would have enacted a “charter of secularism” that banned “state agents” from wearing signs indicative of personal religious belief. David described this as an “historic compromise.”

Although in 2017 the three QS MNAs voted against the Liberal government’s bill 62 prohibiting citizens from wearing face coverings when receiving or dispensing public services, they called instead for adoption of a “genuine” charter of secularism. QS leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said their position was a “compromise” that takes a harder line than the Liberals in that it would bar people who wear overt religious symbols such as turbans and hijabs from working as judges, jail guards and cops.

These positions, which clearly violate the QS program adopted by the membership, have prompted a number of protests from defenders of civil liberties, including a very strong “Open Letter” addressed to the party by a number of QS members including prominent human rights lawyers.

Unfortunately, during their swearing-in on October 17, the new QS MNAs told reporters that they intend to support the “compromise” that would ban religious signs for persons in authority. But at least one — Catherine Dorion, representing Québec-Taschereau — said later she was not really sure what her position would be.

These issues should be on the agenda of the QS National Committee meeting, now scheduled to take place December 7-9. The party’s reaction to Legault’s forthcoming legislation will be an early test of the adherence to basic democratic principles of its new parliamentary deputation.

October 20, 2018

[1] Shannon Pécourt, “Un gouvernement de ‘patrons’,” Le Devoir, October 15, 2018.

[2] Konrad Yakabuski, “Quebec’s Liberals contemplate a future on the fringes,” The Globe & Mail, October 18, 2018.

[3] “Leçons et perspectves pour indépendantistes,” Le Devoir, October 6, 2018.

[4] See “Québec solidaire clarifies its support for independence but new debates lie ahead,” Life on the Left, December 12, 2017.

[5] See Richard Fidler, “Solidaires Score Important Breakthrough in Quebec Election,” The Bullet, October 2, 2018. When former BQ leader Gilles Duceppe attacked QS leader Manon Massé, the Quebec City BQ endorsed two QS candidates who were former leaders of Option nationale, now a part of Québec solidaire. The Bloc’s MPs then issued an endorsement of the PQ candidates.

[6] Marie Vastel, “La bisbille au Bloc continue,” Le Devoir, October 5, 2018 : “The Quebec election revealed that the cleavage between the two camps that opposed the BQ old guard to Martine Ouellet and her allies — closer to the ON legacy with their desire to do more in promoting sovereignty — had not completely disappeared.”

[7] See “Québec solidaire: No to an electoral pact with the PQ, Yes to a united front against austerity, for energy transition and for independence,” Life on the Left, May 28, 2017.

[8] “Quebec left debates strategy for independence,” http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2009/12/quebec-left-debates-strategy-for.html.