We understand why Prime Minister Legault was so eager to present his candidate in the by-election in Marie-Victorin. Nurse, trade unionist, black, Shirley Dorismond ticks all the boxes.
By force of circumstances, this election will take on the appearance of a referendum on the management of the pandemic by the Legault government. However, the opposition parties should not expect a former vice-president of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ) to defend it.
We can think that Mr. Legault will prefer to wait until the easing of health measures has begun to soften the mood of voters before calling them to the polls, but it is clear that the health file will remain at the center of concerns.
Mme Dorismond, who knows the field well, could also provide significant support for the “refoundation” plan that Minister Christian Dubé will shortly present, particularly to network employees, whose participation is essential to any repairs, but who remain skeptical. .
Last October, when she herself accused the government of lacking respect for health care workers and of being “accomplice in organizational violence”, she probably did not see herself wearing the colors of the Coalition avenir Québec ( CAQ), but the Prime Minister’s own journey demonstrates that politics can lead to dramatic changes in course and lead to an unforeseen destiny.
Unionism is also a form of politics that requires a certain pragmatism. Mme Dorismond is not the only one to have come to the conclusion that the debate on the recognition of systemic racism has become counterproductive and that the most important thing is to take action.
Since Geneviève Guilbault’s victory in Louis-Hébert on October 2, 2017 paved the way for the CAQ to come to power, there has been a tendency to give a by-election an importance that experience does not necessarily justify. The famous “message” that voters decide to send to the government has not always been so prophetic.
Eight months before the general elections, however, it is inevitable that the parties, the media and the population as a whole see it as a sort of poll that will determine what happens next.
The Parti Québécois (PQ) is undeniably the biggest player. Marie-Victorin has been a PQ member since 1976, even though Catherine Fournier won with only 705 majority votes in 2018. It would have been difficult to find a better candidate than Pierre Nantel. A defeat would announce the worst, especially if he were to finish behind the candidate of Quebec solidaire (QS), Shophika Vaithyanathasarma.
Conversely, the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ), which finished in fourth place with 15% of the vote in 2018, has little to lose, except to finish fifth. Its candidate, Émilie Nollet, has no notoriety. If Dominique Anglade manages to make a good catch in the curious hunt for candidates launched on the Internet, it is surely not there that she will present herself.
The campaign in Marie-Victorin will take place against the backdrop of a debate on the tax that the Legault government wants to impose on the unvaccinated. This will give an idea of the support that the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) of Éric Duhaime could garner outside the Quebec region.
Its candidate, actress Anne Casabonne, is well known, and her video in which she describes the vaccine against COVID-19 as “big shit”, although she refuses to say if this substance was injected into her, raises the debate. in very clear terms.
Pollster Jean-Marc Léger presented interesting statistics on the vote of the non-vaccinated on his Twitter account. Unsurprisingly, 56% of them plan to vote for the PCQ, but QS comes second (13%), followed by the PQ (12%). The CAQ and the PLQ are tied at 5%.
In the “political remnants” of the end-of-year program ofinfoman, we can hear Éric Duhaime affirm in all seriousness that his party could present former QS candidates in the general elections. Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois immediately ruled out this possibility, but it is true that the pandemic has caused curious rapprochements.
In a recent column, the colleague of The Press Isabelle Hachey reported on research on conspiracy circles conducted by a professor at the University of Sherbrooke, Marie-Ève Carignan, who noted an astonishing convergence between far-right groups and part of the alternative medicine industry, who unite around the challenge of health measures.
After all, if a union nurse can end up at the CAQ, an ex-solidarity could well end up at the PCQ!