The recent elections in Québec represent a tidal shift in the political landscape. For a generation the debate has been polarized between the federalist Liberals and the sovereigntist Parti Québécois (PQ). Voters expressed their dissatisfaction with the old parties and the old debate by electing the right-populist Action democratique du Québec (ADQ) into 2nd place, […]

The recent elections in Québec represent a tidal shift in the political landscape. For a generation the debate has been polarized between the federalist Liberals and the sovereigntist Parti Québécois (PQ). Voters expressed their dissatisfaction with the old parties and the old debate by electing the right-populist Action democratique du Québec (ADQ) into 2nd place, thus assuring a minority government. The class question has cut across the national question, but unfortunately from the right. The PQ has shown itself to be completely incapable of offering an alternative for the working class against the pro-capitalist Liberals. Only the working class, both on the streets and by forming a mass workers’ party, can defeat the attacks sure to come from the Liberals and ADQ.

Despite technically winning the election, the resulting minority is, in effect, a defeat for the Liberals. After being elected in 2003, Liberal Premier Jean Charest presided over one of the most unpopular governments in Québec history. The Liberals attacked the working class, provoking a call for a general strike from over 90% of Québec union locals. They also attempted to increase the debt burden on students but were forced to back down after a fantastic student strike (see “Successes and shortcomings of the Québec student strike”). Defeating Charest should have been an easy task for the PQ.

However, if this election was a defeat for the Liberals, it was a rout for the PQ. Not since the early 1970s has the PQ been pushed into 3rd place. More and more, Quebecers have come to realize that, apart from the issue of sovereignty, there is no real difference between the Liberals and the PQ. The last PQ government attacked the working class just like Charest. Recently, several prominent sovereigntists and federalists issued a joint manifesto titled “Pour un Québec lucide,” saying that irrespective of the solution to the national question, the working class would have to pay (see “Pour une Québec lucide — A warning to the working class”). We can now see why the PQ was completely incapable of rallying the working class and student opposition against the attacks of the Liberals.

In this vacuum came Mario Dumont’s Action democratique du Québec. Dumont combined a vile mix of healthcare privatization and anti-immigrant racism with a vague “autonomist” position on the national question. Six months before the 2003 election, riding a wave of discontent with the old-line parties, the ADQ became the most popular party in Québec. Unfortunately for the ADQ, this allowed the population time to see their right-wing platform. They only captured 4 seats in that election while the population held their nose and voted Liberal. However, in this election, the stench of the Liberals and PQ was so much that people were looking for an alternative, any alternative, to get out of the old rut of Québec politics.

Seeing the rise of the ADQ, both the Liberals and PQ attempted to once again polarize the debate over the national question. The Liberals attacked the ADQ for being sovereigntists in disguise. The PQ attacked the ADQ for being federalists in disguise. None of these tricks worked and the ADQ attracted support from both parties’ voters. The class question cut across the national question, but it is a tragedy that due to the lack of a credible working class alternative, this job was carried out by the ADQ bigots.

It is wrong to say that support for nationalism has declined; indeed, polling intentions are very similar to those during the 1995 referendum. However, this issue has ceased to be the only preoccupation for the Québec working class and one cannot understand the Quebec election results and the rise of the ADQ purely through the lens of the national question. The bourgeois Liberals and PQ cannot simply force the workers to line up behind them as the representatives of all federalists, or all nationalists, in a class-collaborationist block. It is the job of a mass workers’ party to cut across the national divide and unite all of the workers against all of the bourgeois parties.

Many working class activists looked with hope to the newly formed left party, Québec Solidaire. Unfortunately, the party was not able to win any seats and was even forced into 5th place behind the right-leaning Greens. It is not the job of socialists to sugar-coat reality; our sympathies lie with Solidaire and therefore we must analyze why this happened. At one point, Solidaire polled more than twice its final 3.65% result and this would have been enough to elect 2 or 3 MNA’s and gain a foot-hold for the party.

When Solidaire was formed, it came out of the mass workers and student movement against the Liberals and had a distinct anti-capitalist profile. Also, while taking an “independantist” position, Solidaire correctly stated that the “social” question (the class question in all but name) was primary. It is a shame that since its formation, the leadership of Solidaire moved to the right and watered down the platform to something that was seen as “achievable” under narrow capitalist and provincial politics. Also, the party became viewed as a strictly nationalist entity so, unlike the ADQ, Solidaire was not able to attract workers from across the national divide. This inability to put forward a platform that broke the old dynamic of Québec politics spelled defeat for Solidaire. The party was not seen as fundamentally different to the left-wing SPQ-Libre wing of the PQ and was sidelined.

Within the labour movement there are contradictory tendencies. Almost as an act of desperation, after failing to struggle against Charest’s imposed public-sector union contract, the CLC-linked FTQ supported the Parti Québecois in the faint hope that the PQ would be less bloodthirsty than the Liberals. However, as a positive note, the Montréal Central Council of the nationalist CSN, with 125,000 members, endorsed Québec Solidaire. Fortunately, this endorsement shows that while wounded, Solidaire is not yet dead. The labour movement is the key to the success of Solidaire and the party must put all its efforts into gaining not only endorsements but affiliations. Solidaire cannot just be a party of the petit-bourgeois academic Montréal left with less than 6000 members – it must become a mass party of the Québec working class, based on the unions, that fights on the streets, on the picket lines, and in elections.

The coming months will be challenging for the Québec working class. Charest’s minority government was elected on a platform of increased attacks on students and workers, and the ADQ will only push them further to the right. A renewed confrontation between the student movement and the government over tuition fees is in preparation. Just after the election, the students held a very militant rally of over 3,000, calling for free education and a general student strike if the Liberals raise tuition. This is a good launching point for a mass struggle in the fall which has the possibility of spreading to the wider working class. In the absence of these upcoming mass movements and links with unions, then the prognosis for Solidaire would not be good. But if the party can become a voice for this movement of students and workers, great gains can be made when the government falls. Actions taken now by working class militants in Québec will either change the entire dynamic of the debate in Québec or will lead us back to the same blind ally of bourgeois politics. Only the working class can defeat Charest and Dumont.