“The whole history of the Canadian labour movement is a struggle against these banks, against these bosses, against these governments that today support genocide […] The cause of the Palestinians is the cause of the world working class.”

Quebec solidaire is in crisis. With the resignation of co-spokesperson Émilise Lessard-Therrien, what many of us could see occurring behind the scenes is now out in the open. A small clique of bureaucrats around Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois are turning Quebec solidaire into a run of the mill social democratic party. 

A few years ago, Québec solidaire was the main opposition party, “preparing to govern”, while the Parti Québécois was on its last legs. Today, having “moved to the center”, QS stagnates in the polls around an eternal 16 per cent. Meanwhile the PQ has risen from the ashes and leads the polls.

The 2023 Quebec public sector negotiations are drawing to a close, and the outcome is bitter.

The voting period on the tentative agreement between the Common Front and the CAQ government has begun. Although the government was forced to grant some concessions, this agreement does not put an end to wage erosion. Given the scale of the mobilizations, many workers are rightly asking: what was it all for?

On Nov. 23, close to 600,000 public sector workers in Quebec were on strike. Considering that Quebec has around 4,439,000 people active in the labour market, this represents 13.5 per cent of all workers in the province! It is safe to say that everyone personally knows at least one person who went on strike that day: teachers, nurses, support staff and specialists in the fields of health, education and social services. This is the largest strike in the history of Quebec.

Last week, our comrades at Dawson College in Montreal organized a public discussion in the school cafeteria on the history of the Palestinian resistance for fellow students interested in organizing against the oppression of the Palestinian people. Before they could begin, however, they were confronted by campus security and told that they did not have the right to hold an event in support of Palestine at their college.

On Nov. 20, the results of the SSMU referendum on the Policy Against Genocide in Palestine came in. In the largest and most representative referendum in McGill history, a crushing majority of students voted in support of the Palestinian struggle.

On Oct. 29, having learned of the Common Front of public sector unions’ plan to strike on Monday, Nov. 6, the CAQ government tabled a new offer to the nearly half a million workers. This offer is just as insulting as the last one.

On Feb. 11, 1969, the Montreal police violently put down one of the largest student occupations in Canadian history. For two weeks, as many as 300 students had peacefully occupied the computer centre at Sir George Williams University to protest a racist professor’s treatment of Black students, and the administration’s complicity in defending him.