Activists from Québec solidaire (QS) want to see their party reaffirm its feminist values. Meeting in a national council this weekend in Montreal, they will discuss proposals to “ensure that the solidarity caucus is equal as soon as possible”.
This will be the first national council since the general elections of October 3, 2022. This annual gathering is usually an opportunity for the party to do some introspection. This is all the more the case this time, when the national office has planned a “political assessment of the election” on Saturday.
But the delegates who will meet in Montreal on Friday, Saturday and Sunday also have their sights set on the non-parity of the current solidarity caucus. Of the eleven MPs in the party, four are women and seven are men. Far from displaying perfect parity in the last term — five women, five men — the group could move further away from the parity zone if lawyer Guillaume Cliche-Rivard wins the complementary ballot in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne. next month.
The duty got its hands on the proposals that will be debated by local and national QS associations over the weekend. One of them suggests in particular “that the national coordination committee and the electoral committee be mandated to take the means at their disposal […] in order to ensure that the solidarity caucus is equal as quickly as possible, in particular by encouraging […] female candidates for future nominations”.
Seven local associations are asking for more. They will propose this weekend “that means be developed and adopted in a future national body to impose female candidates in specific constituencies”.
“Frank discussions”
Last month, the author and solidarity member Simon-Pierre Beaudet signed a letter particularly critical of the party’s choices regarding parity. In particular, he criticized the co-spokespersons for having supported the candidacy of Étienne Grandmont as a replacement for the outgoing MP for Taschereau, Catherine Dorion. The latter was elected on October 3.
The text, published in the pages of Dutyhad resonated with Mme Dorion, who relayed it on Twitter adding that “this [l’attristait] a lot “.
Reached by telephone, Simon-Pierre Beaudet said he was satisfied to see local solidarity delegates carrying the parity ball to the National Council. “It is up to the party itself to include mechanisms that allow, even constrain, parity in its deputies,” he said in an interview.
The left-wing activist hopes that the national council next weekend will lead to “frank discussions on representativeness” within the solidarity team in Quebec. “If ever QS won the election in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, there would be two men to one woman in the caucus, which is extremely unbalanced, especially for a party like Québec solidaire, which registered parity in its statutes,” he added.
At QS, “it’s the members who decide,” replied the co-spokesperson for the second opposition group in the National Assembly, Manon Massé, last month, when asked about the non-parity of her caucus. . “Indeed, it raises a number of questions,” she admitted.
Regions and independence
In addition to taking stock of the elections, the members of QS meeting in the national council will discuss this weekend the place of independence in the solidarity electoral discourse and the party’s difficulties in addressing customers in rural and suburbs.
Already, last month, the solidarity co-spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, had admitted at a press conference that the training was struggling to get out of urban centers. The delegates will therefore discuss the possibility that QS “launches a mobilization and consultation tour in the regions of Quebec […] to better root the solidarity project in the realities of all the regions”. A proposal that satisfies the former MP for Rouyn-Noranda–Témiscamingue Émilise Lessard-Therrien: “We had some difficulty getting the solidarity project to land in the regions of Quebec,” she said in an interview.
Although it won additional urban ridings in Maurice-Richard and Verdun, QS lost its only seat outside Montreal, Quebec and Sherbrooke when Rouyn slipped through its hands on October 3.