Quebec Left Debates Independence Strategy

  1. blake 3:17
    blake 3:17
    Quebec Left Debates
    Independence Strategy


    Richard Fidler

    LAVAL — Québec solidaire, the left-wing party founded almost four years ago, held its fifth convention in this Montréal suburb on November 20-22. About 300 elected delegates debated and adopted resolutions on the Quebec national question, electoral reform, immigration policy and secularism. The convention clarified the party's position on some important questions at the heart of its strategic orientation that had been left unresolved at its founding.
    Québec solidaire is the product of a fusion process lasting several years among various organizations and left-wing groups that had developed in the context of major actions by the women's, student, global justice and antiwar movements in the 1990s and the early years of this decade. But the party has faced many obstacles as it struggled to establish a visible presence in Quebec's political landscape.[1]
    As in other parts of North America, Quebec experienced a general downturn in extraparliamentary mobilizations after 9-11, with the notable exception of the massive antiwar actions prior to the Iraq war. Added to this was the political demoralization of many militants following almost a decade of neoliberal austerity under a Parti Québécois government that for many discredited the very idea of Quebec “sovereignty” as envisaged by the PQ. Shortly after Québec solidaire was launched, the trade union movement suffered major defeats in the face of an antilabour offensive by the newly elected Liberal government. The student movement has been relatively quiescent since a successful mobilization against tuition fee increases in 2005. Although antiwar sentiment remains high, mass actions are fewer and smaller.
    Aware that “politics” is conventionally viewed as electoral and parliamentary activity, Québec solidaire quickly established itself as an officially recognized party under Quebec law. It soon found its attention, energy and finances absorbed by electoral activity to the detriment of actions outside the electoral arena – contesting two general elections and several by-elections within its first three years, on a limited platform of demands.
    Exactly a year ago, however, it scored a significant breakthrough when, despite an undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system, it managed to elect a member to the National Assembly, Quebec's legislature. The election of Amir Khadir in the Montréal constituency of Mercier brought welcome media attention to the party, while increasing the pressure on it to develop a more comprehensive program on the key issues of the day.
    Early this year, the party launched what promises to be a lengthy process aimed at producing a formal program. This convention concluded the first stage of the process.
    Under the complex procedure established by the national leadership, members were urged to form “citizens' circles” or affinity groups, which would include non-members. The idea was to use the debate as a means of reaching out to social movement activists. In later stages, a policy commission was to assemble and “synthesize” the proposals from these groups in a series of resolutions that would either reflect a consensus view or offer alternative positions on the various topics, to be debated in the local and regional associations and later at the convention.
    About 70 citizens' circles were formed. But since many were organized around specific views or areas of interest, there was little exchange with others in the initial period. It was only quite late in the process, with the publication of the draft resolutions in September, that the major preconvention debates could begin. The proposals and amendments were then put together in a synthesis booklet for debate at the convention.
    National Question

    The major objective at this convention was to define a clear position on the Quebec national question. Although there is today little mention in Québec solidaire – or, indeed, in Quebec society as a whole – of “national oppression,” the issues that motivate the thrust for national sovereignty or independence testify to the existence of a distinct Francophone nation whose language and culture are under constant attack from the Canadian constitutional and political regimes. For decades now, the people of Quebec have stopped referring to themselves as “French Canadians”; they self-define as “Québécois” and they overwhelmingly reject the existing federal system even though they are divided on whether to reform it or repudiate it altogether by establishing an independent country. That is what is meant by the “national question”: the need to resolve this problem, the major fault line in the Canadian state and the major source of instability in the politics of Canada.
    The first task in the Québec solidaire debate, then, was to define what is meant by the Quebec nation. This issue has been much debated since the federal Parliament voted in 2006 that “the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.”[2] The Harper government motion was widely recognized as a politically opportunist ruse. Québec solidaire approached the issue in a much more serious way.
    First, the delegates discussed what the Quebec nation does not include. They acknowledged the sovereignty of “the ten Amerindian peoples and the Inuit people who also inhabit Quebec territory,” and pledged Québec solidaire's support to their “fundamental right” to national self-determination, however they choose to exercise that right – whether through self-government within a Quebec state or through their own independence.
    Ghislain Picard, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, was a keynote speaker at the convention on its opening night. He has praised Québec solidaire as the only party in Quebec that addresses native concerns.
    Delegates then adopted an inclusive definition of the “Quebec people” that specifically rejects the concept of an ethnic nation favoured by the Parti Québécois and other nationalists. “Quebec nationality,” it says, “is essentially defined by living in the nation and participating in its life.” The Quebec nation is “ethnically and culturally diversified, with French as the common language of use and factor of integration..., the Francophone community [being] transformed throughout its history by the successive integration of elements originating from the other communities who have been added to it.” This nation “is based not on ethnic origin but on voluntary membership in the Québécois political community.”
    The Anglophone community was defined as “an important minority that is an integral part of the Quebec nation and shares its political fate.”
    For Sovereignty... and Independence

    The major debate was on how Québec solidaire should define its position on Quebec's constitutional status. Four options were proposed for decision: “independence”; “sovereignty”; “independence or sovereignty”; or “neither independence nor sovereignty for the time being.”
    Why this debate? Up to now, Québec solidaire has identified Quebec sovereignty as one of its defining objectives. However, “sovereignty,” the term popularized by the Parti Québécois, is an ambiguous concept, especially when coupled with a proposal for “association” or “partnership” with the rest of Canada, as the PQ proposed in the 1980 and 1995 referendum questions. As a draft convention resolution noted, this tends to trivialize the national question by limiting the implications of a break with the Canadian constitutional setup, presenting Quebec sovereignty as a mere continuation of past fights for provincial autonomy or an extension of Quebec's existing powers within a new, decentralized federation. Moreover, linking sovereignty with association or partnership in a referendum requires a definitive answer from Québécois on something they do not ultimately control: namely, the character of any future relations with Canada, which can only be the subject of later negotiations. This undermines the very concept of “self-determination.”
    The federal government took advantage of this ambiguity when, in 2000, it got Parliament to enact the Clarity Act, which allows Parliament to refuse to recognize the result of a referendum decision on Quebec's constitutional status. Québec solidaire opposes the Clarity Act as a violation of Quebec's right to self-determination. But the delegates recognized the political problem: the confusion among many Québécois as a result of the PQ's ambiguities, and the need for an approach that clearly articulates the unilateral right of the Québécois to determine their own future.
    Most of the delegates who spoke in the QS debate declared their personal support of Quebec independence. An adopted resolution states: “Canadian federalism is basically unreformable. It is impossible for Quebec to obtain all the powers it wants and needs for the profound changes proposed by Québec solidaire.” A new relationship with the rest of Canada can only be negotiated once the Québécois have clearly established their intent and ability to form an independent state.
    However, many were reluctant to confine the description of the QS position to the word “independence.” Some noted that “sovereignty,” the one objective that unites all PQ members notwithstanding (or perhaps because of) their differences on other questions, is the all-important Article 1 in the PQ program. Was there not a danger, they asked, that if “independence” was chosen as the QS goal, to the exclusion of “sovereignty,” this would become, in effect, Québec solidaire's “article 1,” its defining difference with the PQ – and thus obscure what all agree is the new party's underlying conviction: that any new constitutional status for Quebec must be accompanied by a fundamental change in its social conditions, and that for Québec solidaire the national question is indissolubly linked with its “projet de société,” its social agenda.
    Beyond the Provincial Framework?

    Because the party has not yet adopted a developed program on economic and social issues, or international affairs, there was an air of abstraction to much of the debate, as there had been throughout the precongress discussion (and indeed, since the party's founding). During its two provincial election campaigns, QS deliberately limited its “platform” to proposals that were (as it admitted) confined to the “provincial and neoliberal” framework. This approach tended to inhibit thinking in the party about what an anticapitalist program for an independent Quebec might entail.
    A case in point was the May Day Manifesto published this year by the QS top leadership. Although its overview of the economic crisis was couched in anticapitalist rhetoric, the manifesto's specific proposals to overcome the crisis failed to go beyond a timid social liberalism.[3]
    An anticapitalist and ecosocialist strategy and program would necessarily challenge the existing federal regime. Nationalize the banks? Banking is a federal jurisdiction. Break from the capitalist trade and investment agreements like NAFTA? Trade and commerce are federal jurisdictions. Introduce a comprehensive unemployment insurance program guaranteeing a living income and retraining to those who lose their jobs and livelihoods through capitalist “rationalization”? Unemployment insurance is a federal jurisdiction. Nation-to-nation relations with the indigenous peoples? “Indian affairs” are an exclusive federal jurisdiction. A rehabilitation-based approach to criminal justice? Defense of the right to abortion? Criminal law is a federal jurisdiction. Break from the imperialist military alliances, NATO and NORAD? Support the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela? Foreign affairs and the military are federal jurisdictions. And so on.
    Delegates adopted a resolution that outlines in very general terms how Québec solidaire envisages an independent Quebec.
    The case for an independent Quebec is immeasurably strengthened when placed in the context of a program for fundamental social change, for building “another Quebec,” a new country that is free of both national oppression and class exploitation. But “class” is a concept that gets little recognition in Québec solidaire's perspectives. As a party with a leadership that has developed largely in the feminist, community and NGO milieu, it is highly conscious of the need to create an inclusive coalition of interests that can fight to overcome the inequalities of Quebec's diverse society, but seems little cognizant of the most inclusive concept of all: that of the working class, which embraces – in their diversity of colour, gender, national and ethnic origin, sexual orientation, etc. – all who must sell their labour power in order to live. The Québécois are oppressed not only by Canada's federal regime but by Capital; national liberation is incomplete without anticapitalist social liberation, the establishment of a government by and for working people.
    Quebec solidaire's piecemeal approach to program development, by leaving key questions of social and economic policy, including the ecological crisis, to later debate, tends to separate the national from the social. Yet it was precisely the Parti Québécois' failure to address the need for major social change prior to the achievement of sovereignty that prompted many movement activists to found Québec solidaire.
    In the end, after several hours of debate, the convention rejected proposals by small numbers of delegates that QS favour neither sovereignty nor independence, or define its orientation as sovereigntist alone. But it also rejected a proposal, advanced by a substantial number, that QS define its orientation on the national question exclusively as “independentist,” and voted by close to a two-thirds majority that it use both terms to describe its position, depending on context.


    Full article: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/284.php