NDP Ex-MPs to rock Couillard's world?

swallow wrote:

The Quebec NDP will run in the next Quebec elections, says (interim?) leader Pierre Ducasse. Can't find anything in the English media but since it's in La Presse today, it will probably be in The Gazette tomorrow. 

[url=http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/politique-quebecoise/201610/...ès plusieurs mois de consultations, le Nouveau Parti démocratique du Québec «enclenche» le processus qui l'amènera à présenter des candidats aux prochaines élections provinciales, a confirmé à La Presse son chef par intérim.[/url]

Ducasse has just put out an open letter that maps out the outlines of an NPDQ potential platform. [url=https://www.facebook.com/npdq2018/posts/680609272114551]RECHERCHÉ : PROJET DE SOCIÉTÉ. Lettre ouverte par Pierre Ducasse[/url]

If they do, they should only stand in ridings NOT held by QS.  There is no good reason for a QNDP to try to take seats already held by a left party.  It would be unforgiveable for a QNDP to do anything that resulted in those seats falling to the PLQ(or worse, to CAQ) on a split of the left vote.

Never mind, found the answer

lagatta4 wrote:

Yes, although QS remains small, it has more than doubled in size, become much younger and increased its following outside the Mtl metropolitan area signficantly. In part this is because of the Faut qu'on se parle (We have to talk) process started last year with a group of progressive people from different backgrounds, many of them young and not all from QS, on a long "listening" tour throughout Québec, even in remote regions, to grasp the concerns of people in regions far from Mtl and Qc.  https://www.fautquonseparle.org/

I don't know whether their book, Ne renonçons à rien, is being translated into English yet. It is supposed to be. 

And I think those who wanted an NPD-Quebec have realized that they could only build such a party by being going scorched-earth on QS and focusing on destroying that party to the exclusion of all other objectives.-essentially, by doing unto QS as the old Canadian Communist Party used to do unto the CCF

(self-delete. dupe post).

I'm a member of the NPDQ and to answer the question of "why not vote QS which is already established" for me its because I'm an anglophone and while I have voted QS in the past (because I like their policies apart from separation) I will not vote for a separatist party who has a chance of winning (whether in a coalition with the PQ or on its own because of the 4 way split in voter intention.) Sure "you can vote no in the referendum", but a win by a separatist party doesn't just represent a referendum for our minority community. It represents another 10-20 thousand anglophones moving out of Quebec that we can never replace because of Bill 101, it represents further hospital and school cuts and closures (over and above what the Liberals already do), it represents a further degradation in our language rights. While I can vote no in a referendum, I can't vote no when it comes to those policies.

Without a change to Bill 101 our community is already dead (every census year shows that our population share in Quebec drops by half a percent or more) and without a change to Bill 101 we'll be gone within 20 or 30 years depending on the political situation, the morbid choice we have as a community is to continue bleeding out by voting federalist or to vote ourselves out of existence as a community by voting separatist. I vote continuing to hold on as a community in hope of a savior who will probably never come.

I've been attending the meetings held by the party regularly and will vote for the NPDQ candidate if there is one running in my riding. Finally left wing federalists have a choice, probably for the first time ever or at the very least since '76. I doubt we'll win a seat in the next election, but its not completely out of the realm of possibility for a new party in our province.

Pietro, anglofono? Davvero?

Having to communicate in French as a common language will not harm your community; on the contrary. Why on earth would progressive people of Italian, Hispanic, Lusophone etc origins rather learn English, a Germanic language? And living in French in no way compromises your ability to perfect your English, or your Spanish for that matter, in North America

It is bad enough that Celts from the Sceptered Isles were starved into emigration because sheep were more valuable than crofters, and then sided with their tormentors.

Why the fuck are you supporting national oppression? I don't really care whether or not you support Québec independence; I think the whole national question has seen a qualitative shift due to the demands of Indigenous peoples moving front and centre, as they should. The question is supporting self-determination and identifying with those who have experienced national oppression - or worse, genocide, in the case of Indigenous peoples (and perhaps Acadians, and certainly Métis).

Believe me, I understand why RIGHTWING Italophones, Hispanophones, Lusophones etc want to speak English: because money talks. Leftists should be in opposition to that kind of crap. Which in no way prevents them from learning English or any other language.

It doesn't matter very much because I doubt QS has much of a chance in that riding now, but it is a sterling example of the NDPQ's DIVIDE THE LEFT strategy.

When the NDP has so much to do to rebuild the Federal party (and turn it left à la Corbyn)...

Look who's back as a tag-team partner!

Quebec Independence – A Key to Building the Left in Canada

The program introduction speaks of “convergence” as the goal. And it speaks of an impasse between the lefts in Quebec and Canada, implying a divergence. So I’ll begin by exploring this. In what follows I will focus on what can be termed the political left, seeking political solutions to the problems addressed more generally by the various social movements. And I will treat the New Democratic Party (NDP) as a part of the broad “left” in English Canada, for reasons I explain later.

Generally speaking, the socialist project is to “change the world by taking power” – that is, building powerful anticapitalist social forces and parties capable of winning control of the state and using government to help build a new anticapitalist popular sovereignty based on decentralized grass-roots participatory democracy.

However, how we think of “taking power” differs between the lefts in Quebec and the Rest of Canada (ROC). In Quebec, socialists have historically oriented to breaking from Canada and creating a sovereign state. In the rest of Canada the left seeks power in Ottawa, hoping at best to use the central government to reform, not dismantle, the central state. To understand this difference, which is crucial, we need to understand how the existing state is viewed in Quebec.

The Canadian State

Both lefts can agree that the Canadian state is historically based on the theft and occupation of indigenous lands and the genocide of their peoples; the British Conquest of the French settlers, the defeat of the latters’ Rebellion, and their subsequent marginalization outside of Quebec. The state that resulted, the bulwark of the class rule of the Canadian capitalists, including their Québécois counterparts, is thoroughly integrated within global imperialism....

quote:

As a reformist party, the NDP is unable to contemplate a break-up of the central state. Its politics are entirely oriented to operating within or at best reforming that state, not destroying it. This is part of its DNA. It promotes a homogenizing politics, unable to accommodate the different dynamic of Quebec’s national struggle.

The NDP voted for unilateral patriation of Canada’s constitution in 1982 in the face of Quebec opposition. In the early 1970s it expelled the left-wing Waffle, which supported Quebec self-determination.[2]

Did the 2011 federal election, when the NDP managed to elect a majority of Quebec MPs, disprove this historical record? On the contrary. That result reflected a confluence of several factors, all of them conjunctural. Traditionally, the Quebec Francophone electorate votes defensively and pragmatically in federal elections, either to help elect a government with the most MPs from Quebec or to prevent parties perceived as relatively hostile to Quebec from winning government. Following the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord, however, the Bloc Québécois (BQ) provided an alternative opportunity to promote “Quebec interests” in Parliament, helping to fend off unwanted federalist incursions on Quebec jurisdiction.

But the BQ is confined to Quebec. In 2011, when it was suffering from the the decline of the PQ and the Harper Tories were threatening to form a majority government, Quebec voters sought a federal option that could more effectively defend them from that danger. The NDP under Jack Layton was able to position itself as the alternative, helped by the apparent tolerance of Quebec self-determination expressed in the party’s Sherbrooke Declaration. The NDP proved unable to sustain that support, especially with Thomas Mulcair as its new leader. Even before his ascendency, the party’s resistance to Quebec nationalism was revealed when it forced leading MPs like Nycole Turmel (the interim leader) and Alexandre Boulerice to drop their QS (and Bloc) memberships. This was a bottom-line issue for the NDP. And since then the party has been unable to sink roots in Quebec. It is barely hanging on to its reduced caucus of 16 MPs, its membership is down to fewer than 5,000 (Le Devoir, Aug. 30), and efforts to build a “provincial” Quebec NDP have gone nowhere.

So the Quebec electorate has reverted to its old pattern of voting for what it perceives to be the “lesser evil” – in 2015, the Trudeau Liberals – to the detriment of the NDP.

quote:

That said, what can be some common campaigns with shared objectives of the broad left in both nations? I’ll mention only two obvious ones – fighting capitalist austerity and fighting for climate justice, especially in opposition to the extractivist economic model – both issues offering important opportunities for forging class alliances with indigenous activists. The key role of the indigenous in leading the fight against climate change, in particular, is signalled in the Leap Manifesto (even though the Manifesto ignores the progressive potential of Quebec independence in posing a real governmental alternative).

Like the Québécois, indigenous militants have little reason to limit their demands to what is possible within the context of the existing state. And in Quebec, they have what can be an important ally. The Québec solidaire program acknowledges the sovereignty of “the ten Amerindian peoples and the Inuit people who also inhabit Quebec territory.”[3] And QS pledges its support to their “fundamental right” to national self-determination, however they may choose to exercise that right – whether through self-government within a sovereign Quebec or through the political independence of their own communities, which cover almost half of Quebec’s present territory.

It remains to be seen what the NDP will commit to next year when it determines its position on the Leap Manifesto, but whatever that decision the party cannot be relied on to incorporate or implement the thinking behind the Manifesto. A key test for the federal NDP will be how it approaches the pending confrontation between the party’s governments in Alberta and now British Columbia over the future of tar sands oil pipelines.

last quote:

In a recent book chronicling a tour of his electoral constituency in Northern Quebec,[4] Romeo Saganash, a Cree leader and as it happens an NDP member of the federal parliament, expresses an idea that must surely have occurred to other indigenous activists. “There has never been a country constituted with the participation of the First Nations. The sovereignty of Quebec could be the opportunity for that!,” Saganash tells the book’s author, a French woman. She says he spoke seriously: “an independent Quebec could be the framework within which the First Nations would win emancipation.”

Intriguing, but will the NPDQ visions of grandeur overrule common sense.

robbie_dee wrote:

pietro_bcc wrote:

The NPD-Q will be launching its first ever candidate in the Louis-Hebert by-election, with former MP for Louis-Hebert Denis Blanchette

lagatta4 wrote:

It doesn't matter very much because I doubt QS has much of a chance in that riding now, but it is a sterling example of the NDPQ's DIVIDE THE LEFT strategy.

When the NDP has so much to do to rebuild the Federal party (and turn it left à la Corbyn)...

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The national question is an important one but it is far from the only one and I would think Quebecer's day-to-day lives are more impacted by 30+ years of unrelenting neoliberalism coming from the dominant Liberal , PQ, and ADQ/CAQ. Why can't there be an electoral alliance? Run NDPQ candidates in anglo ridings or rural Quebec where QS lacks a presence. Commit that a joint QS/NDPQ government would immediately implement proportional representation (to end vote-splitting) and remain free to campaign on opposite sides of any future sovereignty referendum?

The NPDQ is another distinct political option that will take votes from both the Liberal Party (progressives who vote Liberal because they're the only federalist option) and QS (progressives who vote QS because there is no progressive federalist option, like me.) I don't know why people have this idea that the NPDQ should be the only party in Quebec that should not seek to get every vote they can possibly get and should apologize for any possible success they get. And this is on both the QS and Liberal side. Some of my Liberal friends have told me that the NPDQ will split the anglo vote and let the PQ win.

Perhaps the neoliberalism of the Liberal Party Quebec has had a bigger impact on Francophones than the sovereigntist movement, that is not the case with my community. It is no exageration to say that the sovereigntist movement and the language laws they have brought have broken up anglo families and communities. There seems to be some denialism among some in the francophone media regarding the fact that there was a mass exodus in both '76 and '95 and there continues to be a significant though smaller exodus to this day with every graduating university class. It may not be among the biggest issues for most Quebeckers, but it is among the biggest issues for our community because its an issue of survival, another referendum means another exodus at '95 era levels.

That is not the point. It is not a matter of whether people learn languages other than French: the more the better. It is a matter of whether they function in society in French. I don't think anyone opposes language learning; many oppose assimilation.

The problem is that the NDPQ is scabbing on a much more progressive party; one of the most progressive anywhere in the parts of North America north of the Rio Grande.

Angryphones, like La Meute types chez les francos, can simply stuff it. They are equal and opposite reactionaries.

I speak and write three languages fluently and two others to a fair extent. I believe we have the most trilinguals in North America here in Montréal. And I know several people here who speak more languages than I do.

As for his master's voice ... Hmm, macho posters...

Fucking scabs. You have a lot on your plate to build the Federal NDP without dividing the left. You do know, I presume, that many of the people who worked on Alexandre Boulerice's campaigns are QS activists ?

http://appuyez.quebecsolidaire.net/guillaume-boivin

The Québec solidaire candidate: http://www.lapresse.ca/le-soleil/actualites/politique/201709/10/01-51320...

vafanculo pietro. I hate scabs. And national oppression. Odio i crumiri e l'oppressione nazionale...

By the way, I am not a "nationalist"; I support the same rights for Indigenous nations as for the Québécois nation. If we lose almost half "our" territory, so be it. The question is national self-determination. And here, people scabbing on a decade-long struggle for a truly leftist party.

You are out above all to destroy Québec solidaire. Fuck you.

----

I wasn't mentioning or complaining about referendum results; I was complaining about people splitting and wrecking a party that many people far more progressive than you are have spent over a decade building.

And yes, I put angryphones in the same category as "angry white (English-speaking) men", men's rights activists and others who want to return to the good old days when women, francophones, people of colour etc. "knew their place". I'm probably older than you and I remember those times, and how people fought for those things to change.

---

Quote:

hat said, I won't join the bandwagon of slagging the NPDQ. No party, whether it's the Liberals or QS (or the federal NDP, for that matter), is entitled to voters.

I do get that vote splitting can be a crummy thing, particularly when someone with zero chance of winning manages to shave off just enough votes to keep someone else from winning.

But at the same time, it's an inevitable part of more electoral choice.  If a new party joins the list, their supporters are pretty much all going to come from existing parties -- it's not as though the electorate magically grows.

cco wrote:

pietro_bcc wrote:

To put it clearly, this is the legal situation in Quebec in regards to the english and french language. If these kinds of laws were present in any other country francophone leftists would cry foul, but this discrimination is okay because they're the ones doing it, after all they have to protect the 77% of people who are Francophones have to protect themselves from the 7.4% of people who are anglophones.

Interesting that you seem to think Québec's already an independent country. I do appreciate your standing up on my behalf, as an oppressed English-speaking white man in Canada. I must've had a really tough time since immigrating. One day you and Don Macpherson will have to tell me all about it.

In my decades of experience as an anglophone white male Jewish immigrant to Québec, irony doesn't have much impact on people that actually believe the kind of stuff being spewed here - but bon courage, keep trying.

As for the NPDQ, I expressed my views long ago. There is no legitimate place for them on the political landscape of Québec, as they have learned every time they tried to recreate themselves. Scaring the Liberals with a possibility of vote-splitting isn't good enough, in my opinion.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/grenier-quebec-solidaire-merger-1...

I largely agree with Eric Grenier, the 0.7% (probably even less today) they will gain by merging with ON is largely irrelevant. The more relevant development is that Quebec Solidaire has made a clear choice to go after the PQ members who are unhappy with JFL's stance of no referendum in the first mandate and has given up the pursuit of the progressive federalist voter. Whether it will be worth it depends on whether there are more progressive federalists than disgruntled PQ supporters who want a referendum now.

In anycase this opens the field for a left wing federalist party, whether they will be able to take advantage in time and get their name out there is an entirely different question.