Posted at 6:00 a.m.
Marc Cassivi : Your film could have been called Dream better…
Catherine Dorion : We looked for a title for a long time, then we wondered what was the impetus that had launched our discussion. Our collective conversation is made as atomized as the media-political world can be vis-à-vis the rest of the population, but also the population itself, because of social networks and echo chambers. We are witnessing the atomization of individuals and the atomization of communities. When we started doing all these interviews, we were really going to random places and people. We were open to surprises and discovery. We asked some really fundamental questions: What are you afraid of? What makes you dream? What do you wish for Quebec, even when you are no longer there? Quite quickly, we realized that it was pretty much the same concerns that came up all the time. Which, for us, is the basis of what could be an outline of a social project, which we no longer have at the moment in our collective conversation.
M.C. : Between these conversations with immigrants, children of immigrants, Aboriginal people, the elderly, truckers, did you feel that you had found a breadcrumb trail, a common link between their aspirations?
C.D. : Yes, and that’s why these are the scenes that we kept in the film. What came up often is precisely this common bond. This is not an editorial, even if these are themes that touch me deeply: the lack of time, the need for community, the need to enjoy nature. It’s a film about time and territory. It is fundamental: the human being who wants to be connected to the territory and to the people around him. I’m sure everyone feels the weakening of that connection. When you take the trouble to give people the time to express it, it comes out in a fairly similar way from one group to another.
M.C. : I sensed a disenchantment with the political process. “We are sucked into the process,” says Sol Zanetti, who sings a song about the little papers you pass to each other in the National Assembly during question period. Is that a way of saying that after four years, you’ve had enough of politics?
C.D. : I ask myself this question all the time. In fact, I can tell you that everyone who is in politics asks this question. We do politics to change things. And there are many absurd things that flow from the political-media system and that fuel Quebec politics today. This fight is never won. There are times when I wonder what meaning I can give to what I do and there are others when I tell myself that this is exactly why I am in politics. I won’t be in politics until I’m 60.
M.C. : You say that the film is not an editorial, but the summary of the common word of all these people whom you met. We still have the impression that it is a kind of manifesto. the Global denial ecologist and anti-capitalist of the left wing of Québec solidaire. I am wrong ?
C.D. : When you ask Quebecers: “Are you in favor of safeguarding the environment?” Is it a value that is close to your heart? obviously everyone says yes. But it’s not just because they want to answer the survey. When you ask them, “Do you care about your communities? Is having the time to care for the people you love important to you? “, the vast majority of people will also answer:” Yes, of course! And when you ask: “Is it very important for you to have lots of objects?” the vast majority of people will say, “No, it’s the most important love.” There is a philosophy there that, yes, sounds like a commonplace. But me, when people say to me: “You know, that’s just what counts”, sometimes I come with tears in my eyes, even if I’ve known it forever. Sometimes we need to remember and tell ourselves. To celebrate, to sing, to do works around it. This film is a bit like that. Is this partisan? The reason I get involved in politics is for the environment, for love, for the community. This is also the reason why I chose this party. For me, it’s consistent. It would be weird if I campaigned for people to work more and earn more money!
M.C. : I didn’t mean that it’s partisan, but that there is something of a manifesto of your deep and fundamental values…
C.D. : “Quebec values” have been monopolized by a certain political current. The community, the love of the territory, looking for meaning in our past and in our wishes for the future, for me, these are Quebec values.
M.C. : When you see, for example, Éric Duhaime who arrives with a very right-wing party and who has immediate success in the polls, does that discourage you? Like you say, nobody’s going to say he’s against the environment. But when it comes time to vote, many voters don’t want less money left in their pockets…
C.D. : In general, people vote according to their affects. With this film, I want to address people’s affect because I think that’s where the left has gone. We know that science is on our side, on the environmental side. May the social sciences also prove us right on all sorts of social issues. But we can’t stop at that. There are several types of politicians. There are politicians who want to address people’s affect or intelligence in a sincere and respectful way. And there are clearly politicians who are less sincere. They know they just have to say this and it’s going to work, who cares if it doesn’t make sense. This is what saddens me about far-right politicians. They tell people what they want to hear so they can sneak through all their plans, which are to destroy the welfare state, to impoverish people and to give more freedom to the wealthy to exploit people who have less luck and the environment, because there is a lot to do. They present themselves as saviors, as defenders of freedom, like Radio X. But are you free when you work 60 hours a week to pay your rent?
M.C. : You say that there is no more conversation around a common social project. The film gives the impression that without independence, Quebec wanders aimlessly. Is this really, in your opinion, the only possible collective project?
C.D. : Let us think of the word “independence”. The mode of social organization in which we are at the moment does not favor the independence of people or of communities or of a people. We are so divided, atomized and dependent on those who are above us, politically as well as economically and financially, that we no longer have the level of mutual aid that makes more self-sufficiency possible. So our collective autonomy, whether at the level of a neighborhood, a village, the country or even the family, is weakened. The more one is alone, in the neoliberal culture, the more one is exploitable, the more one is manipulated, the more one is vulnerable and the less one is independent. Going back to the local may also mean letting Canada do its thing and giving powers to Quebec and the regions of Quebec. I think that collectively, we are locked in walls that are in our head. This is what Sol [Zanetti] he says when he asserts that it has always been a struggle between the possible and the impossible. The political struggle is not so much about winning, for example, over those who say that we have to build a pipeline. It is to convince oneself that it is possible to achieve or advance what is really important to us: people and the territory.