By LF

On March 26, the face of Quebec politics changed dramatically. The Parti Quebecois saw a massive defeat, falling to 36 seats and forcing leader Andre Boisclair to declare that sovereignty was off the agenda "for the short term." The right-wing Action Democratique du Quebec jumped from five seats to 41. This put them only seven seats behind the ruling Liberals.

It's the first minority government here since 1878.

The Parties as they Stand

The Liberals had arrogantly pointed to economic indicators as evidence of a strong track record. However, working Quebecers saw it differently, as they were on the receiving end of neo-liberal policy that saw 100,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector, a chronic unemployment problem, and cuts to health, education, and social programs. The Liberals' own election in 2003 nearly precipitated a general strike in Quebec, which the overwhelming majority of unionized workers voted for and was only stalled by the upper leadership. Furthermore, a massive general student strike demonstrated the inability of the government to control the anger resulting from their education policy. All of this contributed to the stern rebuke voters handed them on election day.

Forbes.com republished an analysis of the elections by Oxford Analytica, "a strategic-consulting firm" based at Oxford University. It brings forward several very valuable points.

In the short term, the election signals a period of flux. In the longer term, the results may have wide-ranging implications for the future of Quebec politics and are a particularly telling blow to the PQ. Beyond Quebec, it signals to Conservative federal Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the province's voters may be primed to increase their support for his party's mix of conservative policies and more decentralized approach to federalism....

The most significant near-term consequence of the ADQ's rise is that it may convince Harper to engineer the defeat of his minority Conservative government in the federal House of Commons, as the Conservative electorate largely intersects with that of the ADQ. Given the generally positive political reaction to his federal budget, and difficulties experienced by the new Liberal leader Stephane Dion, there is a widespread perception that Harper is poised to go to the polls.

The decline of the PQ has only been accelerated by this last period. With an ineffective bureaucratic selection as their leader, whose history was marred by cocaine use while a government minister, no one can take this party very seriously anymore. Even the usual talk of sovereignty is getting old; it is clear that the present leadership's strategy has been to use support for sovereignty to bully Ottawa into granting concessions for Quebec, while never actually following through with building a real sovereigntist movement. Furthermore, this party's shift to the right during their last period in power raises questions in the minds of voters who want a free Quebec on the basis of progressive values and social progress, not the same capitalist status quo. By the election, there was little in this party's platform to hold the interest of working Quebecers.

An internal faction of the PQ, Syndicalistes et progressistes pour un Quebec libre (Unionists and Progessives for a Free Quebec), has been gaining momentum within the party, and got massive support in the PQ pre-election convention. The faction even has a free newspaper, l'Aut' journal, which receives submissions from all the prominent Quebec intellectuals, including Leo-Paul Lauzon, Michel Chossudovsky, and notably, grandfather of radical Quebec unionism, Michel Chartrand. Boisclair, however, vetoed their resolutions, including the one calling for the nationalization of wind energy, in the name of "good business sense."

Following the electoral defeat, Pierre Dubuc, editor of l'Aut' journal and secretary of the SPQ-Libre, is calling for the head of Andre Boisclair on a platter.

The business community probably saw this coming. That's most likely why the ADQ kept getting favourable media coverage during the election. All the economic signs have been pointing to a coming global "market correction," and these times are usually associated with social unrest. For a province with a history of labour and student militancy like Quebec, that could be a problem for business interests. They need a strong hand to keep things under control.

The Ascension: ADQ and Quebecers

Mario Dumont, leader of the ADQ, has been compared by just about everyone with Maurice Duplessis - and he takes it as a compliment. The Duplessis years (from 1936 to 1959, except between 1939 and 1944) are known by many Quebecers as "la grande noirceur" - the great darkness. Duplessis' reign was characterized by keeping working-class Quebecers subservient to anglophone bosses and the Catholic Church (who even set up "confessional unions" to channel labour unrest into unproductive paths). He scapegoated religious minorities and Communists, going as far as instituting a "Padlock Law" which authorized police to evict Communists from their homes while they were at work. His death in 1959 signaled the beginning of the "Quiet Revolution" which completely overturned Quebec's political, social, and cultural existence. The means of control he had over society during his time in office was close in many ways to outright dictatorial.

It's no coincidence that Dumont referred to his party's electoral success as "a revolt of the middle class and the rural areas." The middle class has often been used throughout history to serve the interests of the business and political elite against the working class. As middle-class and rural Quebecers are squeezed out of employment by the ruling class, they look for solutions to the crises they are facing. Since the genuine left wasn't organized enough to take advantage of this discontent with a serious criticism of capitalism, the ruling class was able to exploit the vacuum and influence these social groups. It is clear that the ruling class has studied history and understands what is necessary to combat the rising militancy of the renewed workers' movement.

This election was the most vicious and uncivilized campaign in recent Canadian history, and shows exactly what lengths the ruling class is willing to go to in order to secure their hold on power.

Mario Dumont and the ADQ rode into their present position on a wave of racist propaganda which was known as the "accomodation debate" - a reference to the recent constitutional decision that religious and ethnic minorities deserve "reasonable accomodation" of their culture and traditions. Not a day passed, from about a month before the elections until election day, where there was not some media reference to Muslim women wanting to wear headscarves, Orthodox Jews who oppressed women, immigrant men who abused their wives, and so on, and so on, and so on. A popular radio host in the Saguenay region called the PQ "un club de tapettes" (a slur on the sexual orientation of Boisclair and the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean MNA) and publicly questioned whether "most workers would vote for an outfit like that." The Saguenay is a rural area which saw a factory occupation at the Alcan aluminum plant in 2004, continuing production under workers' control.

Sovereignty

The ADQ's position on the national question is one of "provincial autonomy," one that plays nicely into Stephen Harper's "decentralized federalism." This effectively means that an ADQ government, a real possibility in the near future, will take Ottawa's line, rather than asserting itself and realizing the aspirations of ordinary Quebecers. To return to the Oxford Analytica analysis:

The election was a major setback for the PQ and the sovereignty movement, but the movement is not dead: support for sovereignty remains strong in recent polls. Studies have also shown that the attitudes that form the basis for supporting sovereignty are slowly advancing. Moreover, younger generations are more favorably disposed to sovereignty than older ones.

With the decline of the PQ, the sovereignty movement will have to find new channels.

The SPQ-Libre is one avenue for sovereigntist sentiment, and it will be strengthened. However, it may find tough opposition; the struggle could result in a victory for the faction and a return to the 1970's style left-populism linked with the labour unions, but equally a bureaucratically-engineered defeat and possibly a split. Certainly, if they are defeated, workers and progressives willl never again place the same trust in the PQ.

The new left-wing Quebec Solidaire made promising increases in this election, with spokesperson Amir Khadir coming within 1% of victory in his riding. They also stand for sovereignty, and they have some informal support from Montreal-area unions. Their support is isolated to the stratum of intellectuals, students, and as one newspaper put it, "Plateau bohemians" (hippies who don't vote Green).

Another channel is more frightening. The "accomodation debate" propaganda campaign, while helping the ADQ's meteoric rise, also created a climate which emboldened far-right neo-nazis in East Montreal, Longeuil and Sherbrooke: violent attacks on immigrants increased during this period. Similar to the National Bolshevik movement in Russia, some of these neo-nazis even use the nationalist imagery of the 1970's nationalist terrorists, the FLQ, drawing on disenfranchised working-class youth as their base. A new party, the Parti République du Québec, was started after the election. It will make the ADQ look moderate by flanking it on the right and channeling the votes of what it calls "québecois d'origine" against, in their words, the "flood of immigration."

All of this points to a huge crisis building within Quebec society. Traditional working-class PQ strongholds are going to the ADQ, who will eventually frustrate their sovereigntist aspirations and attack their position as workers. The PQ itself is going through a crisis that has its roots in the division between business interests and labour interests within the party. Meanwhile, relations between Quebecers and immigrants are increasingly strained, particularly in the capital, Quebec City, where the ADQ made huge gains. In a metropolis like Montreal, working and living conditions bring a variety of ethnic groups together, but extremists on both sides are more and more angered by the intransigence of the other.

However, labour and youth, increasingly repelled by the PQ as it stands, are more and more searching for alternative avenues of expressing their interests, particularly as economic and social pressures increase. The coming economic downturn will provide the impetus for increased militancy, a conclusion the ruling class is trying to forstall by backing the ADQ. Already, there is talk of another general student strike if the tuition freeze is lifted - and labour and student unions are getting closer by the day. However, there is as yet no electoral outlet for this movement: the SPQ-Libre has not triumphed and Quebec Solidaire has no significant connection to the labour movement - something which points to the ever more urgent need for a real Quebec Labour Party. The minority government can't last for long. A social explosion is on the horizon.

The Quebec we knew is no more.