Lorenzo Fiorito
for The Awaj
April 15-May 15, 2008 issue

It seems as if nothing is predictable anymore in Quebec politics. Since the spring 2007 election, we’ve seen the decline of the Charest Liberals, the identity crisis of the Parti Quebecois, the dramatic ascent and rapid depreciation of the ADQ’s popularity- and there’s no telling where it goes from here. The spring 2007 election also introduced Quebeckers to a new political voice: Québec solidaire. At the end of March, in a small café on Parc Avenue, The Awaj spoke with one of two spokespeople for QS - the personable Dr. Amir Khadir.

Khadir’s profile was raised alongside that of QS when he polled a close second place in the constituency of Mercier last spring. But his political career began as a teenager in the 70’s, with the international Iranian student movement against the Shah’s dictatorship. Even from abroad, the movement was a powerful force on Iran’s politics, said Khadir; its gravity influenced him to switch from studying physics to medicine - “a more appropriate path to change society.”

In the year 2000, Khadir, now a recognized figure in the Arab and Muslim community, ran for the Bloc Quebécois in the riding of Outremont. He was asked to represent a project within the Bloc which strove to redefine debate on the Quebec identity: "not about ethnicity, but citizens’ rights and social rights…to represent citizens from immigration” as well as those born Québecois.

But provincial premier Lucien Bouchard’s programme of counter-reforms, in the name of eliminating the budget deficit, repulsed Khadir. Bouchard “used the national project…[to] blackmail the Quebec social and union movement,” said Khadir. The price of a politically unified Quebec, he added, was for these sectors to agree to a 25% cut in social spending.

A decade later, the province has lost over 100,000 manufacturing jobs, and its rural forestry industry also faces a crisis. Much of the anger felt by workers in these sectors has been headed off by the partnership between business, labour and government which Bouchard cobbled together.

“For the last 25 years, the political elite of Quebec has abandoned society, especially the political left in the PQ…You have a whole sector of your economy, especially the [rural] regions, going downhill. There is a sense of crisis that can be easily recuperated by right-wing demagogic elements.”

When ADQ leader Mario Dumont grabbed media headlines for supporting Herouxville’s “immigrant code,” says Khadir, it linked Quebecers’ disaffection for mainstream politics with Islamophobia. This was certainly a potent brew - especially in the climate of America’s war on terror. “Throughout the West, we see the same roots, the same causes of xenophobia. Arabs and Muslims are ‘the other,’ the ‘possible enemy’.... Of course, the media knows it is easier to accelerate the right-wing agenda when the ADQ has momentum - it becomes a feedback loop….Reasonable accommodation is the tip of a general trend in Western society; Mario Dumont uses it as a hook.”

Khadir doesn’t believe that his party’s support for Quebec’s sovereignty should alienate cultural communities. “We can build this nation on common values,” he emphasized. “The best way to integrate is to economically and socially integrate: through quality jobs, support for learning French, a dignified integration.”

It’s interesting to trace the development that Khadir outlines. When some were seeking to expand the Quebec’s national dream to include its cultural communities, other “political elites” (like Bouchard) diverted the project into counter-reforms, creating economic crisis and political alienation. This crisis drove Khadir, and others like him, out of the Bloc and toward forming a new left-wing party - while it also created a receptive climate for Dumont’s immigrant-skeptic ADQ.

Khadir is tough on the labour unions for their participation in Bouchard’s “Zero Deficit” intiative. “Unfortunately, the most combative parts of the movement were not part of the workers’ unions. The unions bought in.” Asked if Quebec solidaire could really be “a party of the workers” (as co-spokesperson Francoise David recently claimed) without the backing of the main labour unions, Khadir responded, “I used to think that it can’t. [But] I would welcome it - it is desirable that it would be linked with the unions.”

Despite his doubts, Dr. Khadir may get his wish. As he pointed out, the Montreal Council of the CSN has been helping to build Quebec solidaire from the beginning. The CSN, though, began as a tightly conservative Catholic union; in the early 1960’s, a surge in its rank-and-file transformed it into one of the most combative unions in North American history. It’s a story that could be repeated.

Still in its infancy, members describe QS as a “party of the streets and a party of the ballot box.” It’s a slogan that speaks to its origins in social movements like those which Amir Khadir has been involved in for most of his life. With malaise infecting all the mainstream parties, the ADQ now included, it speaks volumes about where Québec solidaire might be headed, in this turbulent time.