Québec solidaire should back off the S-word

Muscular approach to sovereignty is hurting the party’s popularity

Here in Quebec, we were witness this week to a truly Canadian spectacle for the first time: the sight of our political leaders hacking their way through a debate in their second language with varying degrees of success.

As with federal party leaders, who suffer through the same indignity in French every election cycle, the same rules apply. One must speak well enough to be understood, but bad enough to evoke pity.

By this quaint measure, the clear winner of Quebec’s first televised English-language debate was Québec solidaire co-spokesperson and candidate for premier Manon Massé. The 55-year-old’s artisanal take on the language of Churchill, coupled with her frequent apologies for it, was suitably endearing.

Massé’s reluctance to get caught up in the tiresome cockfights as practised by her three male rivals perfectly reflects the millennial aversion to baby boomer-dominated politics. Not coincidentally, Québec solidaire has cultivated a young, resolutely progressive base of the type last seen in the Parti Québécois heyday.

It begs the question: after 12 years of existence, and with 16 per cent support on a good day in recent polls, why isn’t Québec solidaire more popular than it is? Because demographics and circumstance suggest it should be.

Earlier this year, an Abacus Data study parsed the whims and priorities of some 4,000 Canadian millennials. Among the results: millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, are worried about climate change, widening wage gaps, rocketing housing prices and the cost of education. They believe in more open immigration policies and First Nations’ rights. They are against further fossil fuel exploration and excavation. And they believe overwhelmingly in the power of government to solve these problems.

Already, these distinctly millennial mores have upended U.S. politics. Consider how progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are torquing the gathering anti-Trump wave leftward — and in many cases are close to or leading their Republican opponents in deep red states like Arizona and Texas.

And consider how noted old coot Bernie Sanders, proud socialist from Vermont, garnered more under-30 votes in the 2016 primary than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined, according to a Tufts University study.

In Quebec, where “socialist” has rarely been a bad word, Québec solidaire’s platform might have been torn from Sanders’s fevered dreams. Free tuition, subsidized public transportation, a radical “decarbonization” of the economy, a massive investment in public housing: the party’s plank is catnip for Quebec’s roughly two million millennials — the vast majority of whom are able to vote in this election.

Exactly why Québec solidaire remains a rump clustered around the south and eastern arm of Montreal’s Orange Line has much to do with the other, long-unspoken piece of its platform. Like the Parti Québécois, Québec solidaire is sovereignist. Unlike the PQ, which has temporarily buried its raison d’être for the sake of electability, Québec solidaire is vocal, even fervent, about its intentions.

“The only way that Quebec can realize the necessary wholesale change needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century is to put an end to its relations with the petro-state known as Canada,” Massé intoned, unprompted, during the first debate last week.

Its more muscular approach coincides with its merger with Option nationale — the leader of which, Sol Zanetti, has a fixation with the topic. Here, Québec solidaire finds itself on the wrong side of its constituency. Unlike the plucky baby boomers of yore, Quebec millennials have neither hostility nor indifference toward the country beyond Quebec’s borders. Just the opposite: seven out of 10 Quebecers ages 18 to 25 consider themselves federalists, according to a recent Ipsos poll.

These same Quebecers believe education, health and the environment are top priorities for the next provincial government. The last priority? Sovereignty. There is a massive political upside in catering to the progressive tendencies of Quebec’s young voters. Too bad Québec solidaire can’t stop seeing old ghosts. twitter.com/martinpatriquin