Quebec polls and parties 2014

Heh. That's probably why it didn't make the news

Brachina, for about the 100th time, it is MAROIS, not Marios.

Stockholm, are you seriously comparing  Quebec anglos to southern US Blacks?

I'm saying that Marois and most of her party are racist xenophobes trying to cynically attract votes by attacking Muslims and Sikhs and now by engaging in vote suppression tactics against non-francophones...today Marois's second in command Bernard Drainville was referring to the Quebec Liberals as "le parti de la niqab" - could there be anything more insulting to voters intelligence than that? Imagine if the Tories starting calling the NDP 'The turban party"

aznd BTW, "Anglos" barely even exist in Quebec anymore - the really oppressed minority are all the immigrants many of whom are from French-speaking countries but who are still attacked by the PQ because they look a bit different from people named Tremblay or Morin and sometimes they even wear funny things on their heads. Its very sad how the PQ has gone from being a Quebec version of the NDP to being a Quebec version of the National Front in France.

Stockholm wrote:

I'm saying that Marois and most of her party are racist xenophobes trying to cynically attract votes by attacking Muslims and Sikhs and now by engaging in vote suppression tactics against non-francophones...today Marois's second in command Bernard Drainville was referring to the Quebec Liberals as "le parti de la niqab" - could there be anything more insulting to voters intelligence than that? Imagine if the Tories starting calling the NDP 'The turban party"

aznd BTW, "Anglos" barely even exist in Quebec anymore - the really oppressed minority are all the immigrants many of whom are from French-speaking countries but who are still attacked by the PQ because they look a bit different from people named Tremblay or Morin and sometimes they even wear funny things on their heads. Its very sad how the PQ has gone from being a Quebec version of the NDP to being a Quebec version of the National Front in France.

Which is a case for fighting hard for QS now...rather than for secretly WANTING the PLQ to win massively this year(as it kind of sounds like you do) because you think that will get you a QNDP next time(which it won't, and which wouldn't be a good thing if it did, because a QNDP would end up being as watered-down and "respectable" as the federal party, a fact that would make such a party's existence in Quebec politics pointless).

What matters is that QS is the only party that fight for workers and the poor in Quebec politics(not talking about federal politics here).  Their constitutional views are irrelevant right now...since Quebec isn't likely to actually try to leave anytime soon, if they try again in this generation.

And anyone who wants to build a Left in Quebec needs to face this fact...while it's fine to attack the PQ(which may be becoming a dying party now anyway)a Left can't EVER be built in Quebec by demonizing sovereingntists and by treating sovereigntism as a heresy that must be recanted.  There can't ever be a time in which francophone nationalism WON'T be the organizing principle of any possible Quebec Left. There will be long periods of time(as we're likely heading into now)where that will be moved off of the top of the agenda, but you're never going to get the majority of Quebec francophones to NOT see their status in Canada as an essentially colonized people. 

If Canada is preserved as a unified polity, it will only be done by accepting that francophone Quebec is, always has been, and always will be, a nation-within-a-nation.   Acting like Quebec should be happy with being "just another province" means denying the reality of all the injustices and humiliations that created sovereigntism as a political tradition in Quebec, and means ending up sounding like one of those bitter old Anglos from the Sixties who kept saying "General Wolfe, we need you now".

Learn from that.

cco wrote:

If the Québec anglo community were made up entirely of the likes of you, Stockholm, as you seem to believe it is, I'd wish desperately for a successful referendum as soon as possible.

I grew up in Quebec and believe it or not I even voted for the PQ in the first election i ever voted in - 1981 the reelection of the Levesque government. Back in those days the PQ was offering progressive, honest government and the referendum had just been defeated so national unity was off the table. But the PQ has evolved into a cynical rightwing party genuflecting before a pig like Pierre Karl Peladeau and now the only thing the PQ seems to stand for anymore is persecuting a handful of woman who want to wear scarves to work...its all very sad. But there is hope - if the PQ gets not just defeated but crushed in this election it will be a defeat for the politics of xenophobia and a defeat for PKP-style union bashing. Hopefully ther PQ will fall apart and next year Harper will be defeated and we can have a federal NDP government with a cabinet chock full of high powered cabinet ministers from Quebec and then we can all live happily ever after!

I think we really need to dial down the rhetoric about 'racist xenophobes'. All this talk about Quebec might be emotionally triggering to some people, and might cause them to have an emotional breakdown, or some kind of other unpleasant reaction. Or they may have what we call on places like reddit, or certain other debating fora, an "excrement loss", although it is expressed more briefly. The word 'loss' is critical here, as it implies several things in context:

1) losing the debate by skirting too close to Godwin's Law
2) a sadness at a loss
3) a loss of debating credibility

If a person is feeling in the losing way, they may consider going to other places where such feelings are not triggered, and where they won't be reminded of all of the unpleasant memories.

Which is why I moved back to Quebec. So, yeah, if Quebec wants to separate so they can (a tad ironically I admit) leave that kind of detached, separated mentality behind, count me in!

Thanks for that post, Cat.

By the way, the Parti autonomiste is a rightwing party, not anything to do with anarchist-type "autonomists". They actually had a (very amateurish) free ad on Radio-Canada yesterday morning.

Oh, I think we all agree about the rightward drift of the PQ, but in no way does that invalidate the national question.

[ thread meta-comment ] So, this thread is now dominated by Stockholm's frenzied anti-Québec provocations (and those who actually think it's worth answering his vicious remarks), plus helpful comments about how Québec should deal with its exaggerated outmoded "maybe-you-were-a-colony-once-but-get-over-yourselves-you're-just-like-PEI-now" national question.

These are the backward and tone-deaf attitudes that continually spark the revival of the independence movement in Québec. Thanks a lot for making our job of building an equal and just federation impossible. [ / back to the real discussion ]

I was chatting with the leader of the Parti Vert the other day, asking why they don't find a way to join forces with QS - given that they (the Greens) have done a good shift to the left (as lagatta was mentioning upthread) and now describe themselves as "eco-socialists". The two main points I understood in his response were: 1. They promote independence - we're neutral on that issue. 2. They promote a secular charter (albeit without the ban on religious symbols in the public service) - we are totally opposed to any such thing at this time, because it's a pure wedge issue and is totally unnecessary.

Funny - I kind of agree with him on both counts - at least, I'm open to that conversation. But I don't think, in our system, you can afford to simply vote for the party which happens to be saying more of the things you like than the other parties. I'm still going with QS.

Echoing the last point by Unionist:

Even people who say they vote mostly "on principals" are implicitly if not explicitly choosing based on where they perceive parties are going, what they are capable of, as well as where the parties they say they are now.

Stay tuned for the next basic positioning of Parti Vert.

I think the right wing party to watch is the "Équipe Adrien Pouliot - Parti conservateur du Québec" (Team Adrien Pouliot - Conservative Party of Quebec). It has already shown it is cynical and manipulative enough to change from social conservative to social liberal in one election cycle, and it has Blue Chip antecedents and support. It did 0.13% in the last election, and if there is any material improvement at all you can bet the gutter press and the CBC will be all over them like a bear to honey. This should not be too hard, as they went from 27 candidates to 60. If they get 0.28% of the vote they can be hailed as the glint on the edge of the blade of the sword of Quebec politics. 

ADQ -> CAQ -> PCQ seems about right. 

I know what you are saying about feeding the trolls, however I also think you have to smoke them out, because they can dangle a whole channel/thread with their passive aggression for years. If you don't comment on what they say, someone else is going to say you have tolerated their points of view. The best solution is to shut someone out, but if there is no power to do that you have to take them on for the record.

Perhaps one fix would be to set threads/thread groups up as channels with operators who can kick people from making posts without kicking them from the whole network. It could cause the creation of cliques however.

I have seen this on other Internet media. On the Internet the obvious has to be stated, when you don't need ambiguity or obfuscation because an issue needs to be considered. I know this make me a "contradictory idiot", as I am told several times a day unless I am doing something wrong.

The whole idea of a "Province" in this day and age is sickening. The Roman Empire had Provinces. So did the British. As long as Canada has Provinces, it is an Empire. We should just call them Jurisdictions, because then if they want to call themselves nations or Crown colonies it is up to them. I do not see what is wrong with calling them States. If you really want the wife of Prince Philip as your eternal head of State, it should be all right for you to live in a State. They manage to do so in Australia.

It is not a question of whether your Empire includes Quebec, but whether your psychology does. I am afaid the two are mutually exclusive.

I found that when I moved to Quebec 24 years ago from Ontario, left anglophones, myself included, were desperate not to be lumped in with angryphones, a pathetically regressive and deluded bunch, to be sure, but it didn't always make for cool analysis and some regretable PQ behavior over the years was given a pass. Marois, when minister of health, took away the underpaid Quebec nurses' right to strike and Bouchard oversaw the opening of the greatest number of private clinics in Canada. I was dismayed by how long it took for the PQ to lose its unearned progressive public face and finally have it replaced with a realistic centre-right, neo-liberal one. I've lived with people's assumption for a very long time that my criticism of the PQ came from my being a regretably not-very-good-at-French anglo and not from my being an anarcho-syndicalist, which is where it lies. I'm not particularly arsed about it, it's an assumption that hasn't been fatal, and the reaction has often been very generous, if not misguided. There are a number of Americans that give Obama a pass in much the same way, which Glenn Greenwald has written extensively and well about. Young people of all backgrounds are much better about it than previous generations in Quebec and that's where hope lies. If, and it's big if, we don't get lost to a plague of factionalism, and looking at the trigger-finger pointing on this board I can't say I'm not a little uneasy.

I tend to think the rightwing "identitaire" stuff in the latest incarnation of the PQ has European, and not US Republican party, roots. Look at vigile.net , an ultra-nationalist website that certainly has an influence.

Fluff, people have different styles of language learning, and often it is a matter of finding a method and above all a teacher corresponding to yours.

I also agree with Unionist. Probably because we all are involved in actual social struggles here, on different levels. Me, in a tenants' association, the Montreal Cyclists Coalition, and various international solidarity initiatives...

Voter suppression based on an exaggerated threat of voter fraud. This is as Republican in strategic terms as it gets. Yes, the PQ sound desperate, but we know from watching our neighbours (neighbors?) to the south that waaaaay too often this shit works. The Soundcloud recording of the student being denied his right to vote is hard to listen to without a rise in BP, and it's clear from this that it's a directive from Quebec that came before there was any hint of this in the public realm - ergo, a pre-planned strategy. Hordes of students from Ontario coming to take away Quebec's democracy! Do you laugh or do you cry? I think I'll drink........

https://soundcloud.com/anonmcgill/voter-suppression

"...it's silly to see signs of organizer voter suppression efforts in the McGill cases reported."

Is it any sillier than having returning officers toss out unknown numbers of "no" votes in the 1995 referendum?

Listen to the recording, though, and notice that the second official that the student speaks to says that they were told "from Quebec" that there are many students from Ontario who are trying to vote illegitimately in the election. Accordingly, she claimed, requirements for accepting voter registration have changed. The election act hasn't changed, but the interpretation (subject to the decision of individual officials) of it conveniently (and probably illegaly) has. Sounds like organised voter suppression to me.

Come to think of it, if anything the PQ is doing the opposite of suppressing the opponents votes.

I'm sure they are aware that they will encourage a lot of their opponents to make sure they vote.... more than the sprinking they can get removed from voter lists.

But its worth it for the bogeyman effect, to stampede the softer nationalist vote in their direction.

Altho' I agree that the real effect the PQ are going for with today's press conference was to target the soft nationalist "low info" voter,  I wonder why some people find it so hard to believe that voter suppression is one of the PQ's tactics. They have, without due editing, thrown every type of crap at the walls of this election campaign in the hopes that something will stick. Why voter suppression would have some kind of "no go" privilege is beyond me. What did Izzy Stone say again? - "governments lie all the time.... about everything" 

chimurenga wrote:

Voter suppression makes no sense when you have a majority. On the contrary, it's exactly in situations like this, where the position of the PQ is precarious, that you should expect voter suppression.

Do you really think that by huffing and puffing and calling press conferences, the PQ is going to effect voting officials to go out and hammer away on students trying to register? If you are focused single mindedly on voter suppression, the first thing you do is innundate the bureaucracy with itemized complaints.

But if your primary goal is posturing to stampede soft nationalist voters, you encite their resentments. Fucking anglo students from Ontario and Alberta.

And the PQ knows this cuts two ways. They know those presss conferences and saber rattling are motivating anglo and allophone voters who might otherwise not bother. Every election campaign avoids motivating your opponents voters. Unless of course the divisive wedge nets out much more in your favour.

Voter suppression is not just kicking people off the voter rolls. Republicans have passed virtually all of the voter ID laws in the various States, the most stringent of which was passed just last week by a Republican Governor, saying, as usual, that it's due to voter fraud, evidence of which has very rarely been found - usually none, actually. Voter ID laws ultimately target the poor, the elderly, the young and people of colour who are less likely to have ID and are assumed to be more likely to vote Democrat. The operating principle is, every hassle at the voting booth helps helps the cause, whichever cause.......

The PQ is saying the RoC is distorting the vote, when in all probability the reverse is true. All anti-democratic efforts are to be deplored - I also recognize the fingerprints from years of researching this field.

So I guess the article in yesterday's Le Devoir was like a whistle to the PQ if this is still being talked about and the PQ politicized it.

Not a good strategy IMO as it poisons the well, and it is not a binary system like the US where you need 50% + 1 to win *ahem*. Multi-party systems require more rationality. If you are trying to whip up hysteria, you do not want to do so around angryphones. No way McKay. 

The other thing which is just mind-boggling is:

"Ms. Marois, Didn't you ride into a minority government on the students of Quebec? Didn't you march with them with a casserole in your hand? Now you want to demonize students? Who else is going to vote for you?"

I can only conclude Ms. Marois and her crew seem to be doing everything possible to throw this election. That chart with all the ridings which would go over if you voted QS is highly dysfunctional. There ARE NO "low information" voters in Quebec, as far as THAT is concerned. Expletives deleted.

PQ: "How dare you want to leave us for QS because if you do so we will lose".
Soi: "Well I want you to lose which is why I am going to vote QS." 
PQ: "But if we lose, the Liberals will win."
Soi: "Yeah well vive la difference."

One idea of the vote for the QS is saying to the PQ that there is no difference between them and the Liberals. Quit blaming your victims.

In February she released her budget, and I read it in detail. It had 3200 social housing units. A $2 billion deficit. Compared to Ontario where I had just come from, it was very good. I really thought all she had to do was run on that and competent governance. All she had to say was "We are not doing a referendum this term, but we are going to be developing the Quebec nation in the following manners, and I promise I will call an election on the referendum question before I call a referendum". There is so much stuff that can be done for the Quebec nation without having a referendum. Which would also be good for Canada.