(Trois-Rivières) Decimated by years of defeats and reconstruction, the Parti Québécois is holding its big convention in Trois-Rivières on Saturday for the general elections in October 2022. Is this the convention of the last chance?
“No, I don’t like that expression,” replied PQ member Sylvain Gaudreault, in an interview with The Canadian Press on Friday evening.
“On the contrary, I think it is the congress of renewal or the congress of preparation for the electoral campaign”, he said, while agreeing that the PQ must slow down its fall and reverse the trend.
As environmental spokesperson, he relies heavily on a series of orientations to make a real green shift in the environment and the economy.
“We want to come up with concrete proposals on transport, land use planning, greening of infrastructure, rather than a somewhat sterile outbidding on greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets” , like the one currently taking place between the parties in Quebec.
In the 2022 election, five parties represented in Parliament will court voters, if we also include the new Conservative Party and its MP. Is there still room for the PQ?
“Yes, the only party that is clearly independentist is the Parti Québécois, then that, I think it has its place in the current debate. I think that we are also the only party that has clearly made the most concrete proposals on the environment and on the just transition. ”
The delegates will try to relaunch their training with a series of disparate proposals to be included in the program, whether it be on reducing the demand for transport, making free female hygiene products, the end of segregationist practices in private schools, setting up a process for the removal of elected officials, or even facilitating party activities in high schools, CEGEPs and universities.
Since 2012, the PQ has recorded a constant decline in the votes collected and it does little better than 13% according to the latest Léger poll.
Only since its historic defeat in 2018, the PQ has gone from the official opposition to the third opposition in the House and it has lost three deputies: Catherine Fournier, Harold LeBel and Sylvain Roy. They are now seven to defend the sovereignist option in the National Assembly.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s last leadership race in 2020 crowned Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, but the momentum for renewal he was supposed to give the party was shattered by the health restrictions of the pandemic, which greatly limited the holding of political activities .
During this congress, delegates will amend and adopt a document called the “national project,” a sort of broad statement that acts as a program and has 385 paragraphs.
The document is thick as usual in the PQ, but first of all concerns the independence of Quebec, its “decanadianization”, a form of “de-globalization”, a new economic model to respond to the climate crisis, the defense of French language and Quebec culture.