Quebec 2018 Election Results and Analysis

There was no surprise in St-Henri Ste-Anne. Liberals ran away with it. But what I was surprised about seeeing how gentrified this riding has become with a large number of anglo professionals, QS finishing second. Kind of distant but second all the same.

I don't think there were many surprises on the Island. I was disappointed with Chateauguay. I know a lot of people from there, middle aged, parents of milennials even a few grandparents. If you look at CAQ (and any Conservative) support, it''s mostly people my age. No wonder I haven't spoke to any of them in 25 or 30 years.

They say you become more conservative with age.  I think that's an urban legend. I get more liberal (I'm sure most of us here know the difference with being liberal and supporting the Liberals) even when I contradict myself and prefer the Libs both provincially and federally far above any conservative government. I hate conservatives and I can't stand right wingers. I probably have more support to the LPC simply because they legalized something I have been beating the drum to for decades. I'm happy people will no longer be oppressed with a criminal record for cannabis possession thus no longer destroying people's lives. And I am very encouraged to hear the Liberals may pardon all minor cannabis offenders.

2019 is either going to go Liberal or Conservative. I'd much rather the Liberals. But if that asshole Maxime Bernier's party splits the conservative vote maybe the Liberals will be battling with the NDP. I don't want to think about it yet.

Sorry for the thread drift.

I don't think there's anything which could have saved the PLQ from defeat.  Couillard knew that he had alienated a lot of long-standing supporters through years of relentless austerity-at this stage, I doubt that much of any of the social benefits created by either the "Quiet Revolution" PLQ government of 1961-66 or the first PQ government(after 1980, the PQ also became a party of the right on social spending, economics and workers' rights) remains, or remains in anything but badly-butchered remnant form.

QS really, really REALLY needs to look at going to neutrality on sovereigntism.  From last night's results, it looks as though maybe 30% of Quebecers, if that, actually see sovereignty as a meaningful thing to pursue.  They absorbed ON, but what good is the ON contingent in QS to them, really?  Are there truly THAT many people on the Quebec francophone left who put bitterness towards anglophones above anything else?  

If NPD-Q is to go anywhere-it received .57% of the vote overall-it truly needs to get away from being perceived as "center-left" rather than left.  The result there clearly shows there's no support base for a Romanow-Tony Blair-Bob Rae type of party.  It needs to be federalist yet clearly anti-austerity, pro-labour, and outspokenly pro-immigrant in its orientation, and that will require a leadership change.  

Les Vertes...did they even run in this election?  Did they come close to a respectable showing anywhere?  They seem to have lived the wisdom of Kermit the Frog last night.

Actually, the two QS candidates of ON origin elected in Québec are very progressive indeed, and not at all of the identitaire current among sovereignists; they admire progressive and inclusive sovereigntist movements as in Scotland and Catalonia. They are also very appealing people in the same way Manon and Gabriel are. Catherine can play a major role in our work on defending and improving the lot of artists, cultural workers and other precarious workers.  Sol speaks four languages...

Are federalists dancing on an empty coffin?

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In English Canada, Quebec independence is far too often explained as a proxy war between the PQ and the Liberals. You vote Liberal if you’re a federalist. You vote PQ if you’re a sovereignist, and never the two shall meet. On Monday night, both parties had crushing defeats. The PQ’s was anticipated. The extent of the Liberal defeat was not: from majority government with 68 seats to 32. Leader Philippe Couillard resigned.

Does that mean that Quebecers are also rejecting federalism?

No, because the strict binary employed by far too many English pundits inside and outside Quebec has always decontextualized sovereignty to make it an obvious, straight-forward debate: sovereignty, bad versus federalism, good. This obscures what’s really happening. The demise of the traditional parties is not a proxy for where the sovereignty or federalist movements are today.

Left-right polarization

What’s emerging in Quebec is a debate that’s polarizing around left versus right, where federalism is used by the CAQ to assure Quebecers that the economy will remain strong, that their milk will remain federally managed and that business will stay happy. Québec solidaire advocates sovereignty to empower the province to reject Canadian national energy projects and to build a new, more just society.

That’s what makes Quebec solidaire so exciting: it’s a party that believes that the Canadian federation, in its current form, causes more harm than good and that breaking from this (or, giving Quebecers the chance to decide if they would like to break from this) is a democratic struggle for justice. For progressive activists who agree with independence, the discussion is never about independence alone. It’s always tied to a progressive social project that, in the interim, we can fight to achieve with the levers that exist today.

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Sovereignty in itself can be left wing or right wing and it’s right-wing sovereignty that most Canadians see from outside. It’s far easier to to dismiss the sovereignty movement as either racist (as expressed by groups like neo-Nazi Atalante) or dead (as expressed by the PQ) than contend with the progressive aspirations of the movement. It’s important to be clear about who is saying what, especially when the federalist Liberals and the CAQ have been the most recent purveyors of division in Quebec politics. Systemic racism isn’t the domain of sovereigntists alone.

‘A permanent campaign for social justice’

Sol Zanetti, former leader of Option Nationale and newly-elected Québec solidaire MNA from Quebec City, summed up progressive sovereignty during his victory speech on Monday night: “We will use every platform to fight back prejudice and to push further the limits of what’s possible in our collective spirit ... We need to be in a permanent campaign for a country, for social justice, for feminism and the environment, for democracy and inclusion.”

Like Quebecers, average Canadians never voted on the Constitution. With politicians like Ontario Premier Doug Ford thumbing their noses at convention, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau purchasing a pipeline or betraying the dairy industry through trade deals, and with the pressing need to end Canada’s neocolonial control over Indigenous nations, the positives of our federation are hard to justify against the clear negative impacts.

Imagining what’s possible through a new federal arrangement shouldn’t be a Quebec thing alone; it should be part of all progressive debates across Canada. If we believe in democracy, there is no better democratic project than allowing people to write their own future, and ditch those parts of power that have never served average people.

The future is local: local energy production, local food, local merchandise, local transportation. Importantly, local doesn’t mean closed. It means ensuring that people's political will can directly influence political decision making, like finding new ways to enter into international treaties, or forcing public participation in government decisions that have far-reaching consequences. Or rejecting trade deals that make it harder for Canada to create a national system of pharmacare, like the new NAFTA seems to do. How can we have fulsome debates without talking about how a radical break with the status quo could offer us a solution?

You've been accused of harping on the independence issue simply because you seem to have decided that you won't stop bringing it up until QS formally renounces it.  

What a lot of us are saying is...It's going to be four years until the next Quebec election...what's the point of continuing to bring up the referendum issue when it's not pressing, and when it is entirely possible that there will be a discussion on that within QS and the matter will take care of itself?  We all get it that you oppose sovereignty...fine, you are within your rights to do so...but could you tell us why you have to keep belaboring it when it's fallen off the agenda anyway?  Is there a reason you can't simply accept that it has been made a moot point in practical terms and that it simply serves no purpose to keep bringing it up and bringing it up and bringing it up and never, ever letting it go?

You're fighting a battle that is, for all practical purposes, won.  Why can't you move on?

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You've been accused of harping on the independence issue simply because you seem to have decided that you won't stop bringing it up until QS formally renounces it.  

Again, what if they just stop campaigning on it?  Is that a "renunciation"??

And why, if it's so dead in the water, do they campaign on it at all?  That's like a mayoral candidate campaigning with a promise to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Toronto. 

If it can't happen, it makes zero sense to campaign on it, yes?