Everyone has noticed: Québec solidaire has been largely absent from the political debate since the elections of October 3rd. The results were not bad: second party in the popular vote, one deputy more. But also, fewer votes than in the 2018 elections and, above all, a great disappointment because we expected much better.
In addition, the defeat in Rouyn-Noranda of MNA Émilise Lessard-Therrien, much appreciated by her colleagues and who had played an important role in the Horne Foundry file, was hard to accept, even if QS had two new deputies.
At the first caucus after the elections, the two party spokespersons, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Manon Massé, mainly insisted on the fact that the formation had been able to resist the CAQ tsunami and that we now had four years to build the next electoral platform.
The fact remains that at best, we can say that QS has stood still in these elections and will have to redouble its efforts when parliamentary work resumes, in a few weeks, with the Coalition avenir Québec, which will occupy all the space in the National Assembly, leaving the three opposition parties to fight for some attention.
While QS was essentially an absentee, the Parti Québécois, with the help of Charles III, took center stage. With the predictable result that the PQ stole second place from him in the last poll of the year.
Nothing very serious, but it’s the price you have to pay when you don’t take your place.
It is not surprising that there is a kind of uneasiness among deputies in solidarity. We cannot really speak of division, but there is dissatisfaction which has been exacerbated by the fact that there has been no real assessment of the electoral campaign.
For the parliamentary leader of the party, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, this is not necessary and he repeats to anyone who will listen that the electoral campaign was decided in advance and that the results would not have been different if the elections had took place on September 3 rather than October 3.
This is not wrong, but it should still be noted that there was a turning point for QS. This was the presentation of the tax plan at the start of the election campaign, a plan which was unnecessarily complicated, and therefore difficult to explain in detail. Moreover, the day after its presentation, QS had to back down on the issue of agricultural land.
Is the Dodge Caravan a very polluting vehicle and should therefore be subject to a surcharge? Should a retired civil servant who has a modest pension plan and who has spent his life paying for his duplex really be taxed as a millionaire? These are the kinds of questions QS candidates faced during their door-to-door campaign.
“It was not a political program, it was a university seminar on taxation”, lamented a candidate.
After polls which, at that time, showed that QS had the wind in its sails and had in sight the bar of 20% of the votes, things began to change significantly on the ground. With the result that we saw on the evening of October 3.
It’s more than a matter of strategy. The question goes to the heart of a debate that has been going on, albeit quietly, since the founding of the party. There are members who see QS as a quietly social democratic party and others from much more radical movements who find it an insult to be seen as social democrats.
This tension has existed since the founding of QS and is part of the decor as much as the sovereignists in a hurry and the supporters of “good government” in the Parti Québécois.
That said, no one questions the talent of Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. But some fear that we are trying to evade a review of what went less well in the last campaign. “We may be on the left, we are not very keen on self-criticism”, remarked a deputy.
It will be a debate that will be all the easier to evade since two unmissable events await Québec solidaire in the coming months.
First, there will be the partial in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, a riding that QS can win. The election to replace Dominique Anglade should therefore take place in the spring and the solidarity candidate Guillaume Cliche-Rivard – who finished second, less than 3000 votes behind the liberal leader – has already indicated that he will be in the race. With the PLQ which knows difficult days, it will be especially a test for QS.
In addition, the Solidaires must hold their congress in the fall and it is generally expected that the party’s co-spokesperson, Manon Massé, will not seek a new mandate. A race which has not yet started, but which could have a big impact on the image and even the orientation of the party.