Progressive Quebec?

quizzical wrote:

did i say anything about QS?

i'm pissed at the citizens period. scream about French language rights and cultural destruction and what do they allow? destruction of language on top of abuse. 

 

If you were just raising this issue, it would be one thing.  Your phrasing implied that this proves that there's nothing progressive in Quebec.  Also, you can't assume that francophones who have fought to preserve French language and culture against the perpetual challenge it is under from Anglo-Canadian/Anglo-American cultural imperialism are collectively ok with what's being done to Inuit kids here.  It obviously goes without saying that a lot of them are outraged about this and protesting against it.

I've lived in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and, Quebec, and I consider Quebec to clearly be the most progressive province. This is how I would rate them:

1. Quebec
2. Ontario
3. BC
4. Manitoba
5. Saskatchewan
6. Alberta

Many people here are shocked about the denial of the Inuit kids' right to speak their own language among themselves. Sadly many agencies, here and elsewhere, are clueless about issues such as cultural genocide. It is not specific to Québec. I think I was the person who raised the issue here, by the way.

Not excusing Legault, but Ford for one has proven far more reactionary so far.

quizzical wrote:

lagatta respectfully disagree when you say "elsewhere " and "clueless " even AB understands cultural extinction and associations would not be doing.

imv this is just part of QC stealing hydro from FNs and Inuit, and the citizens thinking it's all good. i could list a whack of other less than progressive activities condoned by Quebecers too.

 

 

All of which happens in every Western province.  What, exactly, is the point of starting a thread just to attack Quebec?  Yes, this ruling is a horrible thing(and I think it can be overruled by the Charter-there's no way the "notwithstanding" clause would protect whichever agency did this), but no, it doesn't mean that Quebec doesn't have a strong progressive movement.

Quebec's left has been subjected to the same factors as the left everywhere else(the relentlessness of neoliberalism and "market forces"), and has, in addition, been weakened by the fact that a large sector of the left stayed with the PQ out of a basically sovereigntist orientation-not in itself an illegitimate thing, given the longstanding hostility of anglophones to the very idea that francophone culture should survive at all-and that orientation kept(and continues to keep, to some degree)a large part of the Quebec left supporting the PQ even though the PQ is no longer, in any sense at all, a party of even mildly left-of-center politics.

Quebec has a strong left, it simply hasn't had an effective electoral expression for a long time.  This particular situation does not justify the total dismissal of Quebec's left tradition.

Ken Burch wrote:

All of which happens in every Western province.  What, exactly, is the point of starting a thread just to attack Quebec?  Yes, this ruling is a horrible thing(and I think it can be overruled by the Charter-there's no way the "notwithstanding" clause would protect whichever agency did this), but no, it doesn't mean that Quebec doesn't have a strong progressive movement

What ruling?

Quote:

Quebec's left has been subjected to the same factors as the left everywhere else(the relentlessness of neoliberalism and "market forces"), and has, in addition, been weakened by the fact that a large sector of the left stayed with the PQ out of a basically sovereigntist orientation-not in itself an illegitimate thing, given the longstanding hostility of anglophones to the very idea that francophone culture should survive at all-and that orientation kept(and continues to keep, to some degree)a large part of the Quebec left supporting the PQ even though the PQ is no longer, in any sense at all, a party of even mildly left-of-center politics.

Quebec has a strong left, it simply hasn't had an effective electoral expression for a long time.  This particular situation does not justify the total dismissal of Quebec's left tradition.

What Anglo hostility? Most anglos entirely accept that Quebec is a Frenchspeaking province. The exceptions are old, boring, and frankly, irrelevant. And outside Montreal’s West Island, almost non-existent. 

quizzical wrote:

so you all are blaming "relentless neoliberalism" for your allowing cultural genocide and abuse of Inuit children?

alrighty....

Of course not.  I blame whichever institution it was in Quebec that made the decision to impose this.  Obviously, the Left in Quebec is fighting in support of the Inuit kids and against cultural genocide with exactly the same passion people on the left in B.C. or the Prairies or Ontario or the Maritimes fight for FN peoples there.

You are not entitled to act as though you are in solidarity with FN people and nobody in Quebec is.  And there's no reason to start a thread for the sole purpose of baiting one area.

I don't think anybody actually SAID Quebec is above reproach.  Quebec politics have constantly been critiqued on this board.  The difference, however is that there is nothing in AB, SK or ON politics that is remotely comparable to Quebec Solidaire in terms of potential effectiveness as a Left project of any sort.  

And if AB, SK, and ON have been unfairly maligned-what case would you make that those places are significantly more progressive than they've been characterized on this board, btw?-how does trash-talking the Quebec left for the sake of trash-talking the Quebec left do anything to effectively combat that?  How does implying that the Quebec left doesn't care about a situation-what's being done to the Inuit kids, in this case-when you have no way of knowing for sure that they don't-lead to people taking a different view of the political situation and possibilities in the places you listed there?

In Alberta, there is an NDP government, but it is at war with the NDP in the rest of the country over pipelines and the war it started over that is never going to lead to that party taking votes away from the Alberta right wing.  Notley will be an ex-premier, and possibly an ex-MLA, by summer.  There are some good activists there, and I salute them, but they are fighting losing battles.

In Ontario, the NDP is the official opposition, but has been totally ineffective in fighting the Ford government so far and has already managed to do what should have been the impossible and fall behind the Ontario Liberals in the polls.  I wish the Ontario activist left well, but so does everybody else here including the Quebec activist left as far as I know.  Nobody is disrespecting Ontario activists to my knowledge. 

In Saskatchewan, the SNDP is leading in the polls, but they could still turn victory in defeat and they've spent most of their years in opposition doing all they can to dismantle activist culture in that province, falsely blaming the activists for losses that were caused solely by the incompetence and bloodyminded stubbornness of the SNDP right wing.  Good luck to the activists there.

Don't you have better things to do than to lash out at people here for the SAKE of lashing out at them?

From my years following Canadian politics, I'd say that romanticization of Quebec by activists in the ROC was mostly a tendency among the boomer generation, the people who came of age politically during the Quiet Revolution and the first-term of Rene Levesque's government. It was shaken somewhat, though not mortally, by the support, including among the supposedly progressive PQ, for free-trade in the '88 election(that whole "Letters to a Quebecois friend" soul-searching by anglo nationalists.)

But it limped along a bit for a couple of more decades, until now, when I think the view, at least among the younger progressives, is almost the opposite. In the 2015 election, it was not at all uncommon to hear stuff like "Well, if the NDP keeps pushing multiculturalism, it's really gonna hurt them in Quebec", taking for granted that Quebec was the least interested of any province in accomadating cultural minorities. Basically, the same view that people used to have of Alberta.

As for QS itself, yeah, they're probably more progressive than any NDP in Canada right now, but they're also a mere third-party. We'll pass judgement once they have actually formed government.

As for the advisiability of this thread, I agree that any claims of Quebec being especially progressive are looking rather laughable right about now. But I'm not sure we need to be starting an out-of-the-blue thread about it(or, indeed, about the shortcomings of any one province). It kinda makes the forum look like a regionalist rant in a donut shop(which I suppose does have the quality of being quintessentially Canadian).

Admittedly by those arguing that Quebec is progressive, the last progressive Quebec government was in 1976, 42 years ago. How can you argue that a people who haven't voted for a progressive government in 42 years are progressive?

There are definitely some progressive aspects of Quebec (cheap daycare, cheap tuition, publicly owned electric utility.)  At the same time though we have Quebec that will soon be the only province that bans certain minorities from having certain jobs in the civil service. Quebec's political parties (including the beloved Quebec Solidaire) have twisted themselves into a knot to argue that banning religious minorities from certain jobs is the progressive position, in reality its far right bigotry that you would expect from Alabama. Racist nonsense that will be the bullets in the gun of the next Alexandre Bissonnette.

But I'm sorry, pointing out the laws that Quebecers voted for in the last election is "Quebec bashing".

I recently spent a year in Montreal, which is far too short to make any sweeping comments. But two examples come to mind. First the employee rights in Quebec are not just legally better than elsewhere, but the bureaucracy actually actively stands behind them.  On the other side recycling was almost non-existent, most garbage seems to end up in the same place (even if it seperated initially). 

So whether a place is more progressive than other places really depends on what policies you value.

..i have never looked at electoral victory as the measure of progressive. anti-capitalistic governments have not been a possibility in canada for as long as i've been alive. electoral politics, party politics in my experience divides people. that is how the status quo remains in power. by keeping people polarized. as opposed to coming together to resolve issues.

..my measuring stick has always been the level of struggle..which you can see clearly in what i post to this board. this very moment you can see the clear difference between the response to right wing governments of ontario and quebec. the large and recent demonstrations in que by coalitions coming together and calling for just transition. in comparison to what? coming out of ont. on top of this the que coalitions have embraced indigenous rights and said no trans mountain pipeline. this is a perspective that is looking at the larger picture and understanding how we must not stay divided if we want things to improve.     

..i'd also like to point to some of the stuff i posted in the qs thread. the dialogue going on in the party to continue organizing with the mass movements and not just focusing on the parliamentary side which isolates it from the people. this is again looking at the larger picture and acknowledging how to get to a better place.  

By the logic of this thread, we'd have to conclude that B.C. isn't progressive, even with its century-long radical activist tradition, simply because most of the provincial governments in that century were NOT progressive.  

You can't judge the political character of a place solely by which party forms government there, and nobody has actually CLAIMED that Quebec has had nothing but progressive governance.  Babblers have been denouncing the PQ, the last party to form anything close to a progressive government(the first Levesque ministry)since it drank the neoliberal koolaid in the Eighties.

That is true, and there are similar differences between regions in Québec, and I'm sure we could find such differences elsewhere. Other than Québec, I'm most familiar with eastern Ontario.