PROGRESSIVE ALTERNATIVE
QS says it offers bold change
In an era where right-wing, populist parties are trumping their liberal counterparts both in Canadian provincial politics and around the world, the best defence is a strong progressive offence, said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
“What is becoming clearer everywhere in advanced democracies is that right-wing populism cannot be beaten by weak liberal reform,” said the co-spokesperson for Québec solidaire. Manon Massé is the party ’s other spokesperson. “It can only be addressed and beaten by bold proposals, bold-change proposals. This is being proven every day in the U.S., the U.K., France, Spain. The rise of Québec solidaire has to be understood in that context.”
In conversation with the Montreal Gazette’s editorial board Wednesday, Nadeau-Dubois, a former leader of the 2012 Maple Spring student movement, is justified in his talk of rapid ascent.
Oft dismissed as a sovereignist socialist outlier, QS had 18 per cent support in an Ipsos poll for La Presse and Global News. That number has risen five points since the start of the campaign and is just two behind the Parti Québécois. In the crucial francophone-voter segment, QS has 18 per cent of the vote, one point ahead of the Liberal party. It’s also scoring high with the youth sector.
“That’s why the political establishment is so scared right now,” Nadeau-Dubois said. “That’s why (Liberal Leader) Phillippe Couillard and (Parti Québécois Leader) Jean-François Lisée are attacking Québec solidaire.”
While Quebec’s main parties are engaging in divisive identity and immigration debates, Québec solidaire stands out by standing by its principles, Nadeau-Dubois said.
“This election should be about climate change. It’s the main crisis that Quebec and other democracies are facing.
“It’s also about seizing the opportunity to really renew the Quebec political scene. What we are seeing right now, and I think the polls are showing that clearly, is that old political allegiances are melting, like snow under the sun.
“Quebec voters are more open to new political parties, to new ideas.”
Québec solidaire does not lack for bold ideas. The party is proposing free education from daycare to PhD. It promotes an “ecological transition” away from an oilbased economy and toward green energy.
It would spend $25 billion on public transit, creating 38 new métro stations by 2030, including Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante’s Pink Line, with $13 billion being spent in the first mandate.
Written off by their adversaries as the whimsy of an overactive Marxist-environmentalist imagination, Nadeau-Dubois counters that each proposal is backed by an economic plan. Increasing corporate taxes by 3.5 per cent on large companies will bring in $2 billion a year to pay for free schooling. The party’s public dental-care plan would be financed by carving $950 million a year from medical specialist salaries. Public-transit investments would be funded by long-term loans under the province’s capital-works budget. A provincial prescription-drug program would save $2.5 billion a year.
Anglophone and minority communities need not fear Québec solidaire’s move toward separation from Canada, Nadeau-Dubois said.
“If they really know us, I think they know they can trust us, that the process will be democratic, and a lot more democratic than a simple referendum …” he said. “Our vision for Quebec really considers anglophone communities as integral members of its future …
“What should worry a lot of people in Quebec is that the party that is leading in the polls (Coalition Avenir Québec), yes, a totally federalist party, is proposing exactly the same types of divisive politics as the Parti Québécois did.
“That is for me a lot more worrying than the rise of a progressive party proposing a very democratic way to deliberate together about our future.”
Couillard is using the immigration issue as a tool to win votes, he said, while Lisée, “who sees himself as a brilliant strategist, the Machiavelli of Quebec, is more like a bad hockey coach, hitting everyone in the hope he will score goals.”
Québec solidaire is in favour of maintaining immigration numbers at current levels. Although Nadeau-Dubois said the debate around secularism hurt Quebec, and in particular minorities, the party took the position that persons in authority like police or judges be banned from wearing religious symbols, as suggested by the Bouchard-Taylor report on religious accommodation because “if we want to turn the page on that hurtful debate we had to find some sort of compromise.”
The future for Québec solidaire, which had three seats out of 125 in the National Assembly on the eve of the election campaign, is on the rise, Nadeau-Dubois said.
“When we look at the numbers in my generation it is clearer there is a thirst for a progressive voice in Quebec.”