Québec solidaire (QS) co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois calls on young people to vote even if the Québec political system is, according to him, “broken”.
“Don’t leave your future in the hands of a politician who has a 1990s vision. Go vote!” Go vote on October 3! Go vote on campus now [mardi] “, he repeated during a stop of the campaign bus in downtown Montreal on Monday. “2022 is the election of the climate generation”, he added, surrounded by candidates and activists all smiles.
According to the statistical model of the electoral projection site Qc125, QS could collect more than 15% of the popular vote during the general elections of next October 3… but 7% of the seats in the National Assembly (9 out of 125). On the other hand, the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) could obtain 41% of the popular vote, but 78% of the seats (98 out of 125).
Despite the electoral distortion, which currently favors the party of François Legault, Mr. Nadeau-Dubois refuses to “resign from political commitment and electoral commitment”. He asks solidarity sympathizers to do the same. “Our voting system is deeply dysfunctional. It does not prevent us from being there. That does not prevent us from encouraging people to vote and, of course, democracy continues in other forms after the election through citizen mobilization, through media work, through the work of social movements, through the checks and balances within our parliamentary system itself, through the work of our justice system,” argued Mr. Nadeau-Dubois, emphasizing in the same breath that “democracy is not just about voting day “.
If they are called upon to sit in the opposition, the solidarity deputies will “collaborate” with the government in order to advance “projects that go in the right direction” and “criticize” the government when “it goes in the wrong direction “, he said.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is ruling out for the moment using parliamentary obstruction to force the next government to step up the fight against climate change. “There are no such tactics planned at the moment. […] It is not in our plans, ”he said before heading for constituencies where the left-wing party intends to make a breakthrough in a week, starting with Saint-Henri-Saint-Anne. The southwestern riding of Montreal is currently represented by Liberal leader Dominique Anglade in the National Assembly.