Inhabited by a sense of urgency due to the collapse of public services, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois wants the left to start winning elections to be “at the service of the people”, he pleads in an open letter.
At the heart of a crisis affecting Québec Solidaire, a male spokesperson adds another log to the blaze: he repeats that the left-wing party must be more pragmatic.
“Let’s choose our battles and prove that we will be able to deliver the goods. It is this pragmatism that the left must reappropriate,” writes Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
Since the resignation of female co-spokesperson Émilise Lessard-Terrien, Mr. Nadeau-Dubois has launched a debate. According to him, QS must become a government party.
“Quebec has tried the Liberal Party, the Parti Québécois and now, the Coalition Avenir Québec. We owe it to the hundreds of thousands of women and men who voted for this different party, Québec solidaire, to make a difference where we have the means to do so: in government,” points out the head of the parliamentary wing of Solidarity in Quebec. “I fully embrace my sense of urgency. All over the world, the left is losing its battles. At home, it’s time for her to start winning her elections.”
Three fronts
Mr. Nadeau-Dubois believes that Quebec public services are collapsing “before our eyes.”
He says public schools lack love and are “downright broken.” He adds that “the public health system” is “so sick that we are forced to pay for it twice: once on our taxes, another time by going to the private sector.”
The parliamentary leader of QS is also worried about three crises: climate, housing and the cost of living.
“Not a day goes by without people knocking on my office door asking for help. A rent increase, an eviction notice, an empty fridge. Often, all three at once (…) Last year, almost a million of us, a third of whom are children, resorted to food aid.”
He maintains that the left fought to create the conditions of the middle class in Quebec.
“The material security of workers is our bread and butter. Today, when the middle class takes stock, it realizes its fragility. Quebecers are right to worry about their standard of living, and this is never more true than for young people of my generation in the midst of a housing crisis,” he said, believing that people dream of things “down to earth” such as fairly priced housing, decent salaries, dignified pensions, good schools and free quality health services.
“It is by recreating these conditions, not in fifteen, thirty or fifty years, that we will be able to start dreaming collectively again,” he maintains.
Internal debate
Remember that in a letter published two weeks ago, around forty solidarity activists attacked the standardization of QS led by the parliamentary caucus and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
“If QS continues its standardization and continues to concentrate power at its head, like this system of domination that it was created to combat, it will have to be considered as what it has clearly been for too many activists and numerous activists: a snuffer rather than a catalyst for hope,” concludes the letter signed in particular by Catherine Dorion and ex-candidates.
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