There was a time, not long past, when, if Quebec held an election, the rest of Canada held its breath in dread. This wasn’t due to Quebec’s nationalism — its belief that its identity as francophone and Quebecois was menaced by anglophone Canada and had to be vigorously defended. Everyone in Quebec politics is a nationalist in that sense, including federalist Liberals.
Dread seeps in when nationalism takes the stark form of separatism, a conviction that Quebecers can only survive as an independent country. That’s recurred regularly since the conquest — yes, in 1759, we’re talking long, vivid memories — starting with the rebellion of 1837. A recent version is the Parti Québécois, born in 1968, and since then a major force. It governed often, and almost won referendums to dismember Canada. It’s now in severe decline.
They’ve been reduced to three seats of 125. François Legault’s governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), with 90 seats, is ardently nationalist but not remotely separatist. So almost everyone is happy. Quebec gets to indulge its paranoia; we get our sense of moral superiority, because of course we’d never make religious headgear illegal.
Exhale, everyone.
The only separatist party with any energy now is Québec Solidaire (QS), which is both seriously socialist and seriously separatist. It had a pretty good election, given the sweep by the CAQ. They were the only oppo party to gain rather than lose seats (up one, to 11) and got more votes than the others. If you’ve heard little about them, I don’t think it’s because the mainstream media are capitalist tools (which they are). It’s that they just don’t know how to deal with genuine leftists. (Versus the NDP, who long ago ditched “socialism” and other embarrassments.)
Where QS really shines is on the subject of immigration. They want to take in 80,000 per year, way above the rest. Legault, OTOH, has badmouthed immigrants for causing violence, then tried to backtrack. It’s not easy being both progressive and nationalist in this era, when nationalists are mostly dolts and villains. But if QS can thread the socialist needle by, effectivement, putting a separatist thread through its eye, they’ll be in a neat political place.
This is particularly pertinent in Quebec, with its sense of peoplehood and collective historical anxiety. That’s led to a sense of solidarity(!), openness to programs like universal daycare, perhaps even a sort of socialist proclivity.
There was a belated memorial last weekend for Mel Watkins, the brilliant economist and progressive thinker, who so disquieted the NDP’s grandees that they threw him out of the party for a while. He believed Canada could only become truly socialist if it was truly independent of the malign influence of the U.S. He and his movement, the Waffle, were similar to QS in that way.
Someone at the memorial said Mel had been a reluctant nationalist. He’d grown up during the rise of fascism and the Second World War, when nationalism was often equated with racism and militarism. But he also lived in an era when nationalists liberated their people from foreign control. So he grappled with the discomfort.
What’s saddest in the nationalist negativity toward immigrants in places like Quebec, is it manages to overlook how vital and needed immigrants are. Immigrants bring energy, optimism, paradox, wit (the wit of survival) — they’re crucial to places that are tired and faltering. Even when immigrants fail and their plans collapse, they tend to inject vigour because as an immigrant, you can’t survive without it. If you want to know what I mean, try watching the current season of “Ramy.”
In the election night speech of QS “co-spokesperson” Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, his greatest passion was spent on the need to fight climate change. Why? Because if you truly care about your people, you can’t afford to postpone, much less belittle, this greatest of threats to their survival and well-being. You’d better find a way to bring those things together — or what kind of nationalist are you?
This column originally appeared on the Toronto Star.
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