Quebec elects: the unexpected rise of left-wing Quebec Solidaire

EVEN though 37 per cent of voters made the anti-immigrant Coalition Avenir Quebec, the party in power at last Monday’s election in Quebec, the unexpected success of Quebec Solidaire, which got 16 per cent could give a boost to the international movement against austerity and the carbon economy and affect the forthcoming US elections from an unexpected quarter.

Until recently, Quebec Solidaire (QS) had been in fourth place in Canada’s French-speaking province (population eight million of Canada’s 36 million).

It is now third and, to all intents and purposes, the real opposition.
Successful campaigning by Native and non-Native people to stop the Energie-Est pipeline project last year and marches of “The planet enters the [electoral] campaign” have pushed climate change to the top of the QS political agenda.

For the first time, on September 21, a tornado hit the Quebec south-west region in a further wake-up call.

The economic programme of QS has phasing out fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — as its centre, while the Liberal Party, which lost power, has been promoting the exact opposite.

In 2016, it forced parliament to adopt a law giving oil companies — largely subsidiaries of US or British transnationals — the power to expropriate lands for exploitation, including fracking. The Coalition Avenir Quebec’s programme is merely a carbon copy of the Liberals’.

The QS manifesto includes $15/hour minimum wage, financial support for carers, higher benefits, free education, greater access to dental care, support for organic farming, nationalisation of transport, more social housing and public services and opposition to the militaristic policies of the Canadian government, paid for by ending corporate tax evasion.

After the elections, QS said it will prioritise climate change, defending public services and immigrants’ rights and pressing for proportional representation.

QS has said that, if it wins power, it will set up a Constituent Assembly to define a new constitution for an independent Quebec. This could lead to a “nation-to-nation” dialogue with Native peoples from whom agreement would be sought on any project to be developed on their land. Among other things, independence would be a way to make Quebec free of what Massé called the “petro-state known as Canada.”

The rise of QS is happening at the same time as the Corbyn movement in the UK, Podemos (Spain), the Left Bloc (Portugal), France Insoumise, Die Linke (Germany), the Poor People’s Campaign and Bernie Sanders in the US. It too is a popular movement against an Establishment ready to sacrifice the majority of the population and the planet to its own bottomless greed.

Benoit Martin is Quebecois. He is a member of Payday, a network of men working with the Global Women’s Strike.