Québec solidaire (QS) co-spokesperson Manon Massé says she is disappointed with the weak support shown by older voters for QS’s political program.
“To break through, you have to get more than the young people. On this, I am able to recognize that we still have work to do”, she underlines in an exchange with The duty tuesday. “We have not yet succeeded in the bet of the intergenerational alliance”, she specifies after having traveled the roads of Quebec aboard the “Manon mobile”.
On the eve of the election, Manon Massé asked, again, “the people of [sa] generation” to “trust” the “coherence” and “constancy” of his party’s policies. QS proposes an “intergenerational solidarity project where everyone builds together a Quebec where no one is afraid of aging” despite the crises – the climate crisis, the crisis in care for the elderly – hammered the other co-door -speaking, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, Saturday.
According to the Léger polling firm, QS had the support of 4% of voters aged 55 and over on September 27, but 7% of voters aged 55 and over on October 2.
small victories
Manon Massé, however, clings to the small victories in the aftermath of the general elections: she first points to the election of Haroun Bouazzi in Maurice-Richard and Alejandra Zaga Mendez in Verdun; it then points to the second place occupied by QS in the ranking of political parties having obtained the most votes. ” It’s not nothing. It allowed us to expand our team,” she says, before adding: “It’s still fun. »
QS finishes the electoral race with an additional seat in the National Assembly (11 rather than 10). According to Manon Massé, the solidarity will form a “formidable opposition”. “We won’t let one pass. The fight against climate change cannot wait four years. […] We do not let the CAQ go alone, ”she promises.
The fact remains that the progressive, environmentalist and separatist political formation obtained some 15,000 fewer votes in 2022 compared to 2018. Isn’t this a failure of QS? “It’s not a failure. In any case, that’s not my perspective at all,” replies Manon Massé. According to her, QS resisted as best he could to the CAQ “tsunami” that swept through Quebec on Monday evening thanks to the current voting system. “I call it the ‘election of distortion’. The composition of the Parliament of Quebec is not the will expressed by the people, it is what the uninominal voting system resulted in,” she laments on the other end of the line. .
Three new faces will appear in the Parliament Building, including Étienne Grandmont, who managed to keep the riding of Taschereau in the solidarity fold after the departure of Catherine Dorion. “It strengthens our team,” says Manon Massé.
The QS co-spokesperson, however, does not hide her disappointment to see Rouyn-Noranda voters turn their backs on solidarity “pioneer” Émilise Lessard-Therrien, who was fighting to lower arsenic emissions from the foundry. Horne, to throw himself into the arms of CAQ candidate – and former Liberal MP – Daniel Bernard.
“Me, I am not in the minds of voters, voters. What I do know is that Émilise has done an extraordinary job over the past four years. She did not stop for a moment and a quarter to put forward the concerns of her people. Why didn’t it work? I don’t know, ”she said, promising in the same breath to turn the results of Monday’s poll in all directions.