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MONTREAL—The
Dec. 8 Quebec provincial election saw the return of a majority Liberal
(PLQ) government after 18 months of minority rule by that party. Liberal
Prime Minister Jean Charest’ decision to call a snap election risked
alienating voters just weeks after a federal election campaign. While
opinion polls predicted a Liberal majority, it was the looming economic
depression that lay behind the snap election call.
From
the standpoint of the Quebec bourgeoisie, which looks to
the PLQ to direct its political affairs, it was important to secure a
stable grip on state power before the full impact of economic decline. A
Liberal majority ensures the smooth passage of business-friendly
responses to the crisis and a firm hand in dealing with popular protest
and agitation.
Quebec`s big employers were careful not to embarrass the
Liberals with bad news during the campaign. The day after the election,
Bombardier eliminated 1000 jobs. The next day, Rio Tinto,
the Anglo-Australian conglomerate that owns Alcan,
announced cuts of 14,000 employees worldwide involving the potential
closure of plants in Beauharnois and Shawinigan, and the postponement of
plans to upgrade the large aluminum works in Saguenay-Lac
St. Jean.
In
the end, voter fatigue also played in the Liberals’ favour.
The 57 per cent voter turnout was the lowest in the province for over 80
years, and it is the opposition parties who benefit most from higher
participation rates.
A
major political crisis in the federal arena erupted in the final weeks
of the campaign (see December 2008 SA). Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen
Harper, invoked the menace of separatism to save his Conservative
minority government from a Liberal-NDP bid to form a coalition that would
have depended on support from the sovereignist
Bloc Quebecois. Harper’s Quebec-bashing served to shore up support for
the Parti Quebecois (PQ) in the dying days of
the campaign, denying the Liberals a larger majority.
The
election saw a decline in support for the right-wing Action Democratique du Québec
which came a distant third behind the PQ. The
ADQ had enjoyed a spectacular rise in support in the previous election
based on an aggressive privatization agenda and an anti-immigrant
campaign, which capitalized on the insecurities of the overwhelmingly
francophone electorate outside Montreal. Despite his proven skill as
a demagogue, ADQ leader Mario Dumont was unable to achieve any comparable
traction in this campaign.
Also
noteworthy was the electoral breakthrough of the small left-wing party,
Québec Solidaire, winning its first ever deputy
to the National Assembly. Amir Khadir defeated a popular PQ incumbent in Montreal`s Mercier riding. QS co-leader Francoise
David came second in a neighbouring
working-class constituency.
The Parti Quebecois can take some satisfaction from
having regained official opposition status and winning back some of the
nationalist voters it lost in the previous election. Under the leadership
of Pauline Marois, the PQ placed independence
clearly on the back burner, and in other respects its differences with
the Liberals were practically indiscernible.
The
inequities of the first-past-the post system can be seen from the seat
and popular vote breakdown. The Liberals have 66 seats out of 125 in the
National Assembly (with only 41% of the votes), the PQ won 51 seats
(35%), the ADQ 7 seats (16%), QS 1 seat (3.8%) and the Greens 0 seats
(3%). Because of the poor turn-out, all of the parties lost votes in
absolute terms; ADQ and the Greens lost the most proportionately.
The
Liberal victory in itself is not surprising. Mobilization of the labour and allied popular movements has been in
decline since the upsurge of working-class and student militancy in
2004-06 (during the first Charest mandate) ended in defeat. In Quebec, class and national
consciousness tend to be fused, or at least closely intertwined.
Sentiment
for independence has undergone a relative decline in recent years. But
resentment over national oppression (most strongly felt in the Quebecois
working class) is never far from the surface and can quickly change the
political dynamic, as the latest federal and provincial elections
demonstrated so well.
Notwithstanding
failure to achieve its goal of over 5 per cent, Québec Solidaire will get a big boost from the election of
one of its leaders to the National Assembly. Khadir
is an effective media and platform speaker who will put the party much
more in the public spotlight. But his election will also test QS’s claim to be a party of the streets as well as
the ballot. The party needs to develop a more coherent programmatic
response to the economic crisis, advancing demands that have a popular
anti-capitalist character and offer a real alternative.
Until
now, QS has limited its public pronouncements to a package of modest
reforms, such as a very small rise in the hourly minimum wage to $10.20,
public ownership of only the tiny wind-power industry, and public
investment mainly into mass transport and social housing. QS has a tendency to castigate abusive or speculative
profits, instead of targeting the system as a whole. It offers a vision
of reformed capitalism, featuring a mixture of cooperatives and small
local enterprises.
There
is a parallel tendency to define the party as rooted in values (social
justice, gender equality, ecology) rather than a program with a different
class content for which one must actively struggle. Quebec Solidaire needs to avoid being simply the moral
conscience of the National Assembly and of voicing criticisms within only
the officially sanctioned political discourse.
In
this election, as in the last, QS received the endorsement of the
Montreal Central Council of the Conféderation
des Syndicats Nationaux,
although the national body of the CSN was neutral in the election, while
the Fédération des Travailleur(e)s
du Québec (FTQ) supported the PQ. Support from
a section of the trade-union bureaucracy is not to be discounted, but QS
is far from having a presence at the base of the unions from which to
contest the labour movement’s allegiance to the
PQ.
Quebec
Solidaire proposes a path towards independence
qualitatively more democratic and participatory than the model of the PQ.
At the same time, the party does not actively draw the connections
between independence and the struggle for other important objectives. Examples
of such issues would be withdrawal from the imperialist occupations of
Afghanistan and Haiti, refusal to
implement the repressive anti-terrorist laws decreed by the federal
parliament, revamping Quebec’s pension system to substantially increase
public provision and move away from the individualized tax deferral
scheme favoured by Ottawa, or freedom from the
judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada such as that which gave a green
light to the privatization of Quebec’s
health-care system. For the Quebecois to move forward on any of
these fronts requires a direct challenge to the powers of the federal
Canadian state.
Quebec
Solidaire remains an evolving formation, one
that represents a welcome step in the direction of independent Quebecois
working class political action. On that basis, Socialist Action / Ligue pour l'action socialiste, actively participates in building the QS,
urging a deepening of its ties to the Quebec labour
movement, its commitment to mass extra-parliamentary action, and its
adoption of an anti-capitalist Workers' Agenda that recognizes the
inseparable connection between the struggle for socialism and the
achievement of Quebec national liberation.
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