(Drummondville) An overwhelming majority of 97.25% of Bloc delegates on Saturday gave their confidence to the leader of the party, Yves-François Blanchet, during the congress of the formation which takes place in Drummondville during the weekend.
What there is to know
- The Bloc Québécois convention is being held in Drummondville all weekend.
- Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet won a vote of confidence on Saturday with 97.25% of the vote.
- The militants of the party debated throughout the day proposals relating to the values and the guideline of the party.
- The question of sovereignty was at the heart of the discussions and still arouses the enthusiasm of the Bloc members.
The Bloc leader was able to rejoice at having won such support from party activists. This is his first test of this kind since his ascension to the head of the political party in 2019.
Recall that in 2018, the former leader of the Bloc Québécois Martine Ouellet lost the vote of confidence with only 32% of the vote. Former leader Gilles Duceppe had obtained 95.3% of the votes of Bloc delegates in 2011.
More recently, Quebec Premier François Legault won 98.6% support in a vote of confidence at the CAQ convention. Ditto for PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, who won 98.5% of the vote in his party’s vote of confidence last March.
“A revival of independence”
The Bloc Québécois convention, which is being held in Drummondville all weekend, is an opportunity to bring the question of sovereignty back to the fore. Friday evening, the PQ leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, and the former leader of the Bloc Québécois Gilles Duceppe denounced, in their speech, any assertion that the sovereignist momentum and its cause belong to the past.
On the sidelines of the congress, Mr. Blanchet told The Press share that same enthusiasm. A feeling also present among the cohorts of young Bloc activists.
“Young people are in the best position to carry the ideas of sovereignty, because it affects them deeply, whether in terms of the environment or inflation,” analyzed 19-year-old Zachary Tremblay. “Because we are the ones who are going to suffer this,” added the man who is regional president of the Bloc youth forum in Montreal East.
Gather all the sovereignists
If independence is a consensus, the Bloc delegates on Saturday rejected a resolution which made the Parti Québécois “the only political formation in the National Assembly to carry the sovereignist cause”.
A little earlier during his speech, Mr. Blanchet had also reached out to sovereignists of all political allegiances, while affirming that the Parti Québécois was “our main vehicle in Quebec”.
On the contrary, the delegates felt that rallying directly to the Parti Québécois “until the complete attainment of Quebec independence” risked excluding separatists active in other parties from the National Assembly.
They instead voted in favor of a proposal that recognizes the “historic and privileged” ties between the Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois, while affirming the need to “bring together separatists of all stripes”.
“At the Bloc Québécois, we want to attract all separatists, and that’s why the debates are healthy within the same body,” said the Bloc Québécois delegate and former Parti Québécois candidate in Sainte-Marie. –Saint-Jacques Phoeby Laplante.
More than a hundred proposals on the table
Last November, the Bloc Québécois tabled a thirty-page document entitled We, Quebecers, aimed at redefining the party’s mission. It is this one, including more than a hundred proposals, which is debated, amended and which will be adopted by the end of the congress.
It talks about immigration, values, secularism and the economy, in particular. “We will take it, this program, we will bring it to life,” assured Mr. Blanchet. “We have debates and we will start from what people will have given us for the future. It will guide us. »
Among the many debates, Bloc delegates rejected two proposals aimed at declaring that a lack of powers in immigration in Quebec “represents an obstacle to social cohesion”. Many activists have argued that this may imply, intentionally or unintentionally, that the influx of immigrants is a problem.
Other delegates also rejected a motion that affirmed that “any person who lives in Quebec and who freely chooses to be a Quebecer is a Quebecer, by adhering to the social contract that binds them to their fellow citizens, to their fundamental values […] “. They chose to keep the first sentence stating that a Quebecer lives in Quebec.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
At another time, the issue of feminism captured attention. A proposal that the Bloc Québécois be “feminist universalist” was finally rejected, so that only “feminist” would be kept. A victory for the militants of the Youth Forum, underlines Zachary Tremblay.
“We found that it excluded women who can identify with other forms of feminism,” he explained afterwards.
” A country ! A country ! »
Yves-François Blanchet was warmly applauded by Bloc supporters during his speech on Saturday morning. The theme of independence was at the heart of his remarks, as his supporters underlined by chanting “one country, one country” as he left the stage.
The Bloc leader attacked the federalist professions of faith of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) and Quebec Premier François Legault, inviting the latter to hold his next convention in Ottawa.
Mr. Blanchet spent long minutes of his speech criticizing Ottawa for its subsidies to oil energy from public funds, for its continued affiliation with the British monarchy as well as for its failures in immigration.
With The Canadian Press