Ex-candidates, activists and former MP Catherine Dorion fear that male co-spokesperson will distort the party to gain power
Published at 12:54 a.m.
Updated at 5:00 a.m.
(Quebec) The diagnosis of parliamentary leader and co-spokesperson for Québec solidaire (QS) Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, wanting his party to take a “pragmatic” turn if it wants to embody a government in waiting, is contested by a forty former candidates, former employees and former MP Catherine Dorion, who fear that the political party will become “a snuffer rather than a catalyst for hope”.
In an open letter sent to The Press and which is published this Thursday in the Dialogue section, personalities like the former MP for Taschereau Catherine Dorion, the former president and ex-co-spokesperson André Frappier, as well as the former candidate for Rimouski Carol- Ann Kack and accounting professor Christine Gilbert, whom the party wanted to have as a candidate during the last by-election in Jean-Talon, respond to the parliamentary leader.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, THE PRESS
Former MP Catherine Dorion
Firstly, the signatories accuse Mr. Nadeau-Dubois of having misled the public by suggesting “that there existed within Québec Solidaire another left which did not really seek to put the party in power », they write.
When the political party was founded, they add, “the idea was that QS would not come to power by relying solely on the usual political rules, this kind of horse race settled by polls, commentary. and the division of the people into electoral clienteles and microtargeting”, but that he is elected to the helm of the State thanks to a people “well mobilized and well awakened, ready to face the capitalist rout with their government”.
Confining ourselves to current parliamentary institutions as well as submission to media and algorithmic demands would be the equivalent of magically waiting for a strong social movement to arise and for QS to simply take over from it. National Assembly.
Excerpt from the open letter
“It would mean waiting, once again, for “winning conditions” or the “opportune moment” to finally realize this ambitious social transformation project which is shared by a very large number of Quebecers in search of meaning. That would be to elect QS and then put it in mode stand-by… and ensure that the party slips within the system, disappoints and loses its soul, and that everything has to start again,” they warn.
Reject the “pragmatic left”
After the shock resignation of his female co-spokesperson Émilise Lessard-Therrien last week, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois invited solidarity activists to rally so that the party modernizes its statutes, makes its program more pragmatic and displays the image of a government in waiting. At the next National Council, at the end of May at the Jonquière CEGEP, QS will propose the adoption of the Saguenay Declaration, which is presented as the “base” from which it will refresh its ideas and set aside certain more radical, such as the nationalization of the forestry industry.
Read the article “Québec solidaire lays the foundations of its simplified “new program””
The tone of the open letter which was sent to The Press gives an overview of the climate that reigns these days at Québec solidaire, almost two weeks before the National Council where the debates will take place. In recent days, some signatories have publicly shown their support for Mme Lessard-Therrien.
After his resignation, they write, “Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois had to respond to the crisis that was raging at QS”, but also “respond to the rain of denunciations on social networks which followed regarding the concentration of power in the hands of of her loved ones and the exodus of women linked to an unhealthy climate. According to them, he “rather diverted and changed the subject, which is precisely the opposite of ‘listening’.”
On Tuesday, the National Commission for Women (CNF) of Québec solidaire affirmed that it was “imperative to let women speak and to stop muzzling their ideas and their interventions”.
The party has launched an “internal diagnosis on the climate of activism and the place of women” in its ranks.
“‘The pragmatic left’, the word was thrown around. Gabriel had chosen his side. The citizen movement to build had disappeared from his speech – it hasn’t been there for a long time. We must therefore reach the government, regardless of the conditions. It is up to others to work to build a popular movement and create “winning conditions”, denounce the signatories.
“But we must remember that the “pragmatic”, “effective” and calculating left, the one which treats others as dreamers and idealists – as if they were faults – is being overtaken at the moment that it East […] everywhere in the West. […] Where will this fearful choice of remaining within the limits of “pragmatism” dictated by the media and economic elites lead us? Our ambition is much greater than that,” they say.
