An era is coming to an end: Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois has announced his resignation as spokesperson for Québec Solidaire, “worn down” by the criticism he has received within the party over the past two years.
Eight years after taking over the reins, GND leaves behind a moribund party that is almost indistinguishable from the PQ, and languishing in fifth place in the polls. This is a reflection of the bankruptcy and cowardice of left-wing reformism in general.
The contradiction within QS
Many will be tempted to blame GND as an individual for QS’s difficulties. He certainly played a central role in the party’s stagnation and shrinking membership. But the problem goes much deeper than a single individual.
QS has always been a contradictory formation. The impetus behind the formation of QS in 2006 was the rejection of the PQ’s austerity turn in the 90s and 2000s, and a growing anti-capitalist mood in a context of mass mobilizations (the anti-globalization movement, the 2005 student strike, the Bolivarian revolution).
Social-democratic parties in Canada and elsewhere were turning to the right, and QS was part of the rise of new left-wing parties opposing this. In 2009, the party even adopted a manifesto that spoke openly of moving beyond capitalism.
But at the same time, the party leadership tends to bow to pressure from the capitalist establishment, which pushes any left-wing formation to abandon its “radical” pretensions.
It is this contradiction that explains the conflicts of recent years.
Even in the days of Françoise David and Amir Khadir, the tendency towards moderation was very much there. In 2014, David said that “idealism is good, but at some point you have to enter the real world […] We are practical idealists.”
Even more clearly, in 2016, Khadir asserted: “We realize there are important hurdles in front of us, there was the perception (in the beginning) that we were radicals. In fact, we’re reformists. We are at the National Assembly because we accepted the principle of reform.”
GND’s takeover of QS was a continuation and deepening of the openly reformist turn. But unlike Françoise and Amir, the clique around GND waged both an overt and covert struggle against everything that represented QS’s anti-capitalist roots.
The quiet counter-revolution
From the very beginning, GND led a struggle against the party’s base. On all fundamental issues, he was to the right of the membership, aiming to moderate the party’s program and discourse.
In 2017, GND and his clique supported the idea of “strategic alliances” with the PQ to supposedly fight the Liberals and the CAQ. This was rejected by the May congress of the party that year.
In 2019, there was a conflict over the religious symbols “debate”. For years, the leadership had imposed the “compromise” position of banning religious symbols “only” for police officers, judges and prison guards. Against GND’s advice, the membership voted to reverse this position and oppose any ban on religious symbols for public sector jobs.
The November 2021 congress marked another turning point. The party rejected its commitment to free education in a first mandate. MNAs had also mobilized against a whole series of anti-capitalist proposals.
Renaud Poirier-St-Pierre, an employee of GND’s cabinet, summed up the convention well on X: “Lots of changes at @QuebecSolidaire Congress. Less down-to-earth proposals are rejected, including several nationalizations. Never seen this before.”
To this we can add how the leadership silenced Catherine Dorion, the only MNA to openly mock the establishment, despite her immense popularity. The departure of co-spokesperson Émilise Lessard-Therrien last May, denouncing “the usual compromises, image calculations and vote indicators” and a party “trailing what is ‘winnable’ in the short term”, simply confirmed the conflict within the party.
GND represents the quintessential parliamentary reformist, allergic to anything that makes him seem “radical”, not “down-to-earth” enough. For eight years, he has represented more clearly than anyone else the wing of QS that wishes to moderate the party and make it acceptable to the establishment.
Éric Duhaime, leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, put it perhaps better than anyone else yesterday: “A famous proverb attributed to Churchill says that if you’re not a socialist at 20, you have no heart, but if you’re not a capitalist by age 40, you have no head. His recent “pragmatic” turn at 34 and his resignation today give me confidence in the future…” If Duhaime is happy, there’s a problem.
The impression is that QS is always looking over its shoulder, seeking to ensure that it has the right “image” in the eyes of the political and media establishment. It always seems as if the communication team and leadership were scared to death of a negative opinion piece in the Journal de Montréal.
The saga around the oath to the king in 2022 is another example of their visceral fear of bourgeois public opinion. While the PQ took the only principled position of refusing to take the oath, QS MNAs took the oath and returned to the National Assembly, leaving the PQ with the honor of having fought to the end.
The results are clear. While the CAQ is increasingly discredited, it’s the PQ that benefits. QS is perceived as a party with no backbone, offering nothing different from the PQ or even the other parties. In the process, GND has succeeded in demoralizing the active base of the party, without getting anything in return.
And it was all done in a totally dishonest way. It was only in 2024 that GND spoke openly of a political difference within the party, after the departure of Émilise Lessard-Therrien.
He expressed it again yesterday in an interview, saying the debate wasn’t over: “A party of protest or a party that, in the short term, gives itself a roadmap to form a government and improve the lives of ordinary people. But that question hasn’t been answered yet.” We’ll come back to this false dichotomy later.
It is worth mentioning that, in the face of this veritable quiet counter-revolution within QS, the left-wing of the party refused to wage a battle. While members organized around La Riposte socialiste (now the RCP) worked to expose GND and his friends, we were constantly told not to rock the boat. This enabled the leadership to carry out attacks against the radical roots of the party, virtually unopposed.
As a result, QS has been effectively completely transformed by GND. Many activists have simply left in silence.
A worldwide process
GND’s failure is not a matter of personal bankruptcy, nor is it a phenomenon unique to QS. It is, in fact, a reflection of the crisis of reformism around the world.
At the federal level, the NDP long ago abandoned all socialist language, lost all relevance, and is virtually indistinguishable from the Liberals.
In the U.S., the “socialist” Bernie Sanders – made hugely popular in 2016 by his call for a “revolution against the billionaire class” – clung with all his might to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, leaving Trump the space to win over a significant portion of the working class to his anti-establishment demagogy.
In the midst of capitalism’s crisis, as muted anger rumbles and the institutions of the capitalist status quo (parliament, the courts, the media, universities, etc.) are discredited and rejected by a growing number of people, the “left” parties are clinging to them ever more. They think they are being reasonable, “pragmatic”, moderate.
And so they stagnate everywhere, leaving the field open for the populist right to channel workers’ anger and present itself as an anti-establishment force.
Whereas the “left” is afraid of its own shadow, the Trump-style populist right has nothing but contempt for the media, institutions and decorum – and that’s what makes it popular with a layer of workers fed up with the status quo.
GND presents himself as the defender of the pragmatism that will enable QS to form the government, instead of being a “party of protest”. The irony is that QS has never been so far from forming a government. GND invokes the need to “listen to people”, when in reality it’s the public opinion conveyed by the media and politicians that he cares about. In reality, GND and his group are incapable of seeing that adopting a clear anti-establishment discourse, addressing the working class and denouncing capitalism – in other words, adopting a class approach – is precisely what would lead QS to gain in popularity.
GND’s bankruptcy is the expression of the cowardice of left-wing reformism in general, incapable of seriously breaking with capitalism and its institutions.
Getting out of the blind alley
The future of QS is uncertain. GND’s departure only further exposes the blind alley in which the party finds itself. But this lamentable state is not the fault of a single personality.
It is the entire QS leadership that avoids denouncing capitalism like the plague, and has accepted and aided the turn towards moderation. Nothing will change with Ruba Ghazal as the party’s main figurehead.
We need to change course. The working class and youth of Quebec need a party that takes an uncompromising class approach. We need a party that is unafraid to scorn the establishment and attack capitalism. We need a party that stands up for a genuine socialist program.
GND said he was “worn out”. We Communists are bursting with energy and optimism. The crisis of the capitalist system is driving millions of people around the world to look for a way out. It is the reformist left that is incapable of providing an alternative.
That’s why we say to all disappointed QS supporters, to young people and workers who can’t stand living in a capitalist society that brings only housing crisis, inflation, instability and unemployment: let’s work to overthrow the capitalist system.
This is the mission of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Join us in this fight.
We’re sharing here for all our readers the main articles we’ve published about QS over the past decade. They show that the Marxists were right. They show the superiority of the Marxist method over the empiricism of bourgeois analysts and the QS leadership that has led us into the current situation.
2016
Quebec Solidaire Turns 10: A Critical Appraisal
2017
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois joins Quebec solidaire
2018
PQ establishment panics as QS surges
Polarization in Quebec as CAQ wins majority and QS advances
2019
Québec solidaire and the ‘problem’ of secularism: No compromises with racism!
Worrying signs at Québec solidaire’s 2019 congress
2021
Crisis in Québec solidaire: Leadership tries to silence dissent
Québec solidaire congress 2021: ‘Preparing to govern’ …capitalism
2022
Quebec Election Upholds Status Quo
The strange case of Émilise Lessard-Therrien, or why fight for nationalizations
2023
The oath to the king, parliamentary cretinism and the problems in QS
Catherine Dorion’s book: the bourgeois parliamentary circus and the leadership of QS exposed
2024
Québec solidaire is turning into a pale copy of the PQ
Letter to Dissappointed QS supporters
