Fighting for survival, Parti Québécois chooses new leader
MONTREAL • A comedian, a historian, a lawyer and an establishment politician are all vying to lead the Parti Québécois, the once- mighty political party whose purpose and future are today being openly questioned.
The new leader, whose identity will be known Friday night, will inherit a party at its political nadir and without representation in any major urban centre in Quebec.
Founded in the late 1960s, the sovereigntist party that took Quebec to within a few thousand votes of separating from Canada in 1995 could be holding its last leadership race, Université du Québec a Montreal political scientist Félix Mathieu said in an interview this week.
“It’s the survival of the party itself that’s at stake right now,” said Mathieu, a researcher with the university’s chair in Quebec and Canadian studies.
There is open talk among major names in the sovereigntist movement that the PQ should simply dissolve.
Gilbert Paquette, a founding member of the party and cabinet minister in the government of René Lévesque, says in his new book Le Sens du pays ( The Sense of Country) that his former political formation needs to disappear for the good of the independence movement.
“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Paquette said in an interview this week. “But the new head of the party should affirm that he wants to refound — with all the sovereigntists outside the PQ — a new political party.”
If that doesn’t happen, he said, the new leader should at least approach voters during the next election with a clear plan for a country.
None of the four white, male candidates competing to replace Jean- François Lisée — who in 2018, led the PQ to its worst election result since the early ’ 70s — are talking about dissolving the party.
Instead, the candidates are proposing standard, nationalist fare: some want to reduce immigration to end the slow decline of native French speakers; others would curtail financing to English-language junior colleges; and they all promise to support Quebec independence.
A big name in Quebec who joined the race is comedian Guy Nantel, best known for his standup routines and videos during which he interviews regular people on the street and selects their most ridiculous answers.
Sylvain Gaudreault, 50, is the only elected member of the legislature in the race. A cabinet minister under former PQ premier Pauline Marois from 2012 to 2014, Gaudreault is the “establishment” candidate, Mathieu said.
Paul St-pierre Plamondon, 43, is a lawyer who came in distant second to the Coalition Avenir Québec candidate in a riding north of Montreal in the 2018 election.
Finally, there is Frédéric Bastien, 51, a historian and junior college teacher who is supported by “the most fervent secularist” wing of the party, according to Mathieu.
The party is being torn apart by the interminable debate over how quickly it should trigger a sovereignty referendum if elected.
Paquette said he sides with the impatient who think the PQ has been too timid in its approach to separating from Canada.