https://socialistaction.org/2018/11/22/17665/
Quebec: CAQ takes power, QS is on the rise
/ 3 days ago
By ROBBIE MAHOOD
For the past 45 years, governmental power in Quebec has alternated
between the federalist Parti Liberal du Québec (PLQ) and the
sovereigntist Parti Quebec (PQ). That political era has ended.
Both these parties were punished by the electorate. The Liberals fell to
less than 25% of the vote, the lowest in its history. The PQ paid a high
price for its support of neoliberal austerity and the parallel weakening
of its commitment to independence. It could manage only 17% of the vote
and went from 30 to 10 seats.
The Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) takes up the reins of power with 74 of
the 125 seats. It is a right of centre party deploying a xenophobic
identitarian nationalism to conceal more austerity, privatization, and
fossil-fuel friendly policies.
The CAQ is a motley crew of disaffected former Liberals and PQistes
under the leadership of Francois Legault, an ex-PQ minister and one-time
airline CEO. During the campaign, Legault threatened to raise barriers
to immigration and ban the wearing of the hijab in the civil service and
schools. The CAQ opposes independence but will pose as the best defender
of Quebec “interests” in negotiations with Ottawa and the other provinces.
Quebec’s small left party, Quebec Solidaire (QS), emerged as the other
winner in this election. It more than doubled its popular vote to 16%
and went from three to 10 deputies in the National Assembly, level with
the PQ.
Among the plethora of minor parties, the Greens fared best with 1.68% of
the vote, followed by the Conservatives with 1.46 %, and trailing badly,
the newly launched provincial Quebec New Democratic Party (NDP) at 0.57
%. The NDP’s attempt to split the left vote failed miserably and
deservedly so.
As elsewhere throughout the advanced and not so advanced capitalist
world, Quebec is experiencing a populist moment. There is the same
disenchantment with what Tariq Ali calls the parties of “the extreme
centre”—in the case of Quebec, the Liberals and PQ—and a polarization
along right-left lines even if expressed in populist rather than clearly
class terms.
Although more restrained, the CAQ bears comparison with the right-wing
xenophobic parties in Europe and with Doug Ford’s reactionary Tory
regime next door in Ontario. It is noteworthy that Legault received a
welcome tweet from Marie Le Pen, leader of France’s Front National, on
the morrow of the CAQ victory.
QS provided a left response to the CAQ. After years of stifling
neoliberal consensus, its high visibility campaign came as a breath of
fresh air. It emphasized the diversity of its candidates and an
anti-austerity program that highlighted universal dental insurance, free
education from daycare through university, a transition to free public
transit, opposition to fossil-fuel extraction, and rehabilitating the
vision of an independent Quebec that would be inclusive, egalitarian,
and open to a new pact with the province’s indigenous peoples.
QS’s decision to spurn an electoral pact with the PQ, last year’s fusion
with the small nationalist PQ breakaway, Option Nationale, and the
linking of independence with social reform struck a chord among
politically more aware youth and sections of the francophone working
class. It is now poised to displace the PQ, even to the extent of
duplicating the latter’s early electoral success, starting in Montreal
and then extending to the regions.
It seems unlikely the PQ can revive its fortunes. Not so the Liberals.
They can recover as long as they monopolize the federalist vote.
What are the prospects for a new alternance between the CAQ and the
Liberals? This depends on whether there is room for two parties, both of
them neoliberal and federalist. Many voted for the CAQ as a way of
defeating the Liberals. But there is no denying the CAQ’s appeal to
xenophobia. It will use nationalist and racist demagogy to divert
attention from its mission to serve the needs of Quebec capitalists
allied with Anglo-Canadian and transnational capital within the confines
of the federal Canadian state.
Yet the CAQ has a weak mandate. It lacks the internal cohesion and
reliable base of the outgoing Liberals. It is vulnerable to mass
mobilization under vigorous and determined leadership. Will the unions
and QS rise to this challenge?
The bureaucratic leadership of the unions is quite disoriented by this
turn in Quebec politics. Its de facto alliance with the PQ is sinking.
Yet it hesitates to support and intervene in QS. It has not mobilized
the ranks, even half-heartedly, for over two years.
An aggressive drive by the CAQ for more austerity and privatization may
shake Quebec labour out of its lethargy. But indispensable is a new
leadership in the unions that recognizes it will take mass struggle to
win and that Quebec labour must take the road of political independence,
an opportunity that was missed in the 1970s.
While QS is a left party, it is not a party of the working class. It is
anti-austerity but lacking in clear class references. In part, this
reflects the historic weakness of the Social Democratic and Stalinist
traditions in Quebec. Of more concern is that QS has been silent on two
current union struggles, that of the locked-out workers in the aluminum
industry and the strike of employees in the province’s liquor stores.
QS has much in common with other left populist formations such as
Melanchon’s La France Insoumise and Podemos in Spain. Although the
contexts are different, Sanders in the U.S. and Corbyn in the UK also
provide points of reference.
QS’s populism was very evident in the campaign. When Manon Massé, the
party’s dynamic co-leader, was pressed by journalists to clarify if she
was a Marxist, she was evasive, refusing to say that she was a socialist
or even an anti-capitalist. According to her, QS was above all such “isms.”
QS presents itself as a party of the Quebec nation in which class and
national aspirations are fused. Consistent with left populism, QS
replaces a perspective of socialist transformation and workers power
with the idea of a people or nation against a corrupt elite.
The leadership of QS has set its sights on an eventual parliamentary
majority. Its program is divided between limited measures for adoption
in a first mandate, leaving more radical parts of the program for later
implementation. This is reminiscent of the classic divide between
minimum and maximum programs decreed by European social democracy prior
to the First World War. In this way the parties of the Second
International transformed themselves into aspiring managers of the
capitalist state with at best a limited reform agenda and at worst
support for repression at home and imperialist war abroad.
In contrast to social democracy’s absorption by the capitalist system,
what is needed is a party that agitates outside parliament for
transitional demands that point the way to radical anti-capitalist
measures undertaken by a workers’ government.
Many socialist groups in Greece had their fingers burned by their
support for the left party, SYRIZA, in 2014. We should be no less
guarded in our approach to QS. As the party gets closer to winning a
majority in the National Assembly, the pressure to adapt and retreat
will be enormous.
Should socialists work within or from outside QS? Is QS on the way or in
the way?
The Ligue pour l’Action socialiste (LAS) offered critical support to QS
in this election. We urge the building of a socialist tendency that
pushes the party to become an opposition not only in the National
Assembly but also in the streets, where it must work closely with the
unions and allied social movements. Without an organized tendency, the
efforts of individual socialists in QS will be dissipated.
Legault can be expected to pursue more cuts in health care, education,
and social services, give a green light to fracking and additional
suburban auto-routes, and introduce measures that further stigmatise
immigrants. Will he follow through on his threat to invoke the
not-withstanding clause in Canada’s Constitution to ban the hijab in the
public service, among teachers, or by anyone in a position of authority
such as judges or doctors?
Solidarity with the weakest members of our class is a litmus test for
socialists and the labour movement. Forcing a retreat by the CAQ on its
anti-immigrant policies will stimulate resistance on other fronts,
notably against austerity and degradation of the environment.
The election reveals a nation that is more divided than ever under the
weight of decaying social conditions and the bankruptcy of the
neoliberal order. A period of political uncertainty and contestation
lies ahead. Class divisions are more clearly expressed than at any time
in the past 50 years.
That is not to say that the national question has disappeared. Sentiment
for independence is certainly at a low ebb, but the obituary sought by
those favouring the federal tie is premature.
The PQ dragged the independence option through the mud of racism and
neoliberal reaction. Besides marshalling sentiment against austerity, QS
has quietly but perceptibly rescued independence as a means of realizing
the social aspirations of the Quebecois. True, the content is vague. But
a genuine struggle for independence will of necessity confront the need
for a rupture with Anglo-North American capital and its junior partners
in Quebec.
This election reveals popular discontent with the status quo and a
rejection of the old political order. Quebec has a long tradition of
popular struggle and the highest union density in North America. There
is a potential for mass mobilization waiting to be tapped.
Heading into the next period our watchwords should be:
• Quebec Solidaire in the National Assembly but not of the National
Assembly. The party’s elected deputies should act as tribunes of the
people accountable to the working class, social and climate justice
movements.
• Win QS to a Workers’ Agenda. Win the unions to QS. Quebec needs a
fighting party of the working class and its allies.
• Block the CAQ, starting with its racist anti-immigrant agenda and
clear the path for mass action against austerity, a halt to climate
vandalism, for real climate amelioration, and in support of workers’ and
popular struggles.
Photo: Québec Solidaire leader Manon Massé.
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November 22, 2018 in Canada.
Related posts
Quebecois go to the polls
QUEBEC: Mass struggle continues / Election pending
Quebec Election Reveals Political Impasse
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_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
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death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst
out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how
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― Isaac Asimov