[Click HERE for more on Quebec Solidaire.]

By Richard Fidler

May 6, 2013 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- The following are some notes on the the Ninth Congress of Québec Solidaire, held at the University of Quebec in Montréal (UQAM), which I was able to attend on the final day, May 5, when some important decisions were made by the more than 600 delegates. This was the largest congress to date for this party, founded in 2006, which doubled its membership to 14,000 during the past year in the wake of the student upsurge. My account is supplemented by some additional details on the proceedings of the previous two days provided by QS delegate Marc Bonhomme and media reports.

Quebec solidaire: a party of the ballot box or a party of the streets?

The first article below is a translation and slight modification of the original article published in French on Marc Bonhomme’s blog, March 29, 2013. The second article, by Richard Fidler, deals with the New Democratic Party's position on Quebec. Both are posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission.

By Marc Bonhomme

April 8, 2013 -- Local and regional bodies of Québec solidaire are in the process of discussing and taking a first vote on the proposals from the party’s national bodies for its convention to take place at the beginning of May 2013. Political strategy, including the issue of alliances with other parties, as well as the choice of the male spokesperson for the party will undoubtedly be the central points of discussion of the convention.

By Richard Fidler

March 18, 2013 -- Left Streamed/Life on the Left -- Amir Khadir, one of Québec solidaire’s two deputies in Quebec’s National Assembly, was guest speaker at this year’s Phyllis Clarke Memorial Lecture in Toronto. It was a rare opportunity for an Anglophone audience to hear a presentation by a leader of Quebec’s pro-independence party of the left.

Khadir’s lecture was addressed primarily to outlining QS’s approach to international solidarity in the face of neoliberalism and capitalist globalisation. In the wide-ranging discussion period that followed, he spoke about the Quebec student movement, the relation between class and national questions, the aboriginal movement, the environment, how Québec solidaire sees the relation between electoral and mass action, and other topics.

For more on the New Democratic Party, click HERE. For more on politics in Canada, click HERE.

By Richard Fidler

February 19, 2013 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- In the summer of 2012 I drafted an article on the New Democratic Party (NDP) for the purpose of introducing a discussion among some comrades seeking information about the party that now forms the official opposition in Canada’s House of Commons. While by no means a definitive study, the article draws on a number of books, academic papers and other documents addressed to the history and nature of Canadian social democracy, all of which are referenced or linked in the text. A French version of this article, addressed to a Québécois readership, is published in the current issue of the left journal Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme devoted to “La question canadienne”, a critical analysis of the “Harper revolution”.

Translation, introduction and notes by Richard Fidler

January 29, 2013 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- The 2013 edition of the annual Socialist Register, a valuable publication, is devoted to “The Question of Strategy.” It contains 19 articles by more than 20 authors on the Occupy movement, new left parties and electoral strategy in Europe, the new progressive governments and movements in Latin America, and so on. Oddly, however, there is not a single article on the strategic lessons of the Quebec upsurge in 2012 and the massive student strike that shook the province for some six months, helping to bring down the Liberal government. A surprising omission, especially in view of the fact that two of the Register’s three editors are Canadians. There is not even a mention of the Quebec strike and its strategic lessons in the editors’ preface, dated August 2012, written following the strike and in the midst of the Quebec election campaign.

By Geneviève Beaudet and Pierre Beaudet, translated from the French original at Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme by John Bradley

January 25, 20133 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- The blossoming of the Idle No More movement signals the return of native [Indigenous] resistance to the political and social landscape of Canada and Quebec.

With its origins in Saskatchewan in October 2012, this mass movement has taken on the federal government and more specifically the adoption of Bill C-45.[1] Its origins lay not in the work of established organisations such as the Assembly of First Nations (although the AFN supports the initiative), but in a grassroots mobilisation that has arisen in several parts of the country. This process echoes other recent citizen mobilisations such as the student carrés rouges in Quebec and the worldwide Occupy movement.

For more analysis of Quebec politics, click HERE.

By Richard Fidler

September 21, 2012 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Their demonstrations have shaken Quebec in recent months, and on September 20 students and environmentalists won major victories.

At her first news conference as premier, Pauline Marois announced that her Parti Québécois government had cancelled the university tuition fees increase imposed by Jean Charest's defeated Liberal government, and would repeal the repressive provisions of Law 12 (formerly Bill 78) Charest had imposed in his efforts to smash the province’s massive student strike. Among other things, this will remove the restrictions on public demonstrations and the threat of decertification of student associations.

In addition, Marois has ordered the closing of Gentilly-2, Quebec’s only nuclear reactor, while promising funding to promote economic diversification to offset job losses resulting from the shutdown. And she will proceed with her promise to cancel a $58 million government loan to reopen the Jeffrey Mine, Quebec’s last asbestos mining operation.

"Québec solidaire was the only party supporting free education from kindergarten to university. But leaders of this spring’s massive student strike either placed their hopes in a victory for the PQ, which promised to reverse Charest’s fees increase (while indexing future fee increases to the cost of living) or, in the case of the more militant wing of the movement, chose not to intervene in the election."

For more analysis of Quebec politics, click HERE.

By Richard Fidler

September 7, 2012 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- The results of the September 4 general election in Quebec has produced mixed reactions among supporters of all the major parties. Québec solidaire, the left-wing pro-independence party, increased its share of the province-wide vote to 6.03% (263,233) from its 3.78% (122,618) in the 2008 election.

July 27, 2012 -- GreenLeftTV -- Guillaume Legault is a leading member of Quebec's CLASSE, a radical student organisation at the forefront of a months-long student strike against tuition fee hikes. Legault toured Australia and New Zealand in July-August 2012 as a guest of the socialist youth organisation Resistance. Above is Legault's address to the Resistance national conference, held in Adelaide.

[August 3, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The following document is the manifesto of Quebec's militant student union, Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale (CLASSE). For more on the student struggle in Quebec, click HERE.]

By Roger Annis

June 21, 2012 -- Rabble.ca, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission -- On June 20, the National Coordination Committee of Québec solidaire issued a statement in response to a "Call for a United Front" in the next election in Quebec, saying it is open to a “limited and timely electoral arrangement” with two other pro-Quebec sovereignty parties. The statement is titled (translation), "Defeat the Liberals, yes. But above all, build a progressive Quebec!"

The call has received close to 11,000 signatures online. It urges the three pro-sovereignty parties – Parti québécois, Québec solidaire and Option nationale – to enter into an electoral agreement such that only one candidate of the parties would contest electoral districts against the ruling Liberal Party and the right-wing Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec (CAQ).

The mandate of the current Liberal government ends in 17 months. Widespread speculation has it calling an election as soon as August.

By Richard Fidler

June 7, 2012 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission -- Despite massive mobilisations throughout Quebec in opposition to Law 78 and the Quebec provincial government of Premier Charest, the student struggle is once again at an impasse.

At the end of May, the government terminated the latest round of negotiations with the four college and university student associations without offering any concessions on the students’ key demands: for repeal of the tuition fee increases and repeal of its “bludgeon law” aimed at smashing student unionism in the province.

The student negotiators had bent over backwards to find some acceptable compromise. They agreed not to discuss Law 78 pending an agreement on the fees. They put aside the proposal of the CLASSE, the most militant student group,[1] that a tax on banks be substituted for the fee increase, proposing instead that the funds in question be found through increasing the existing education savings program. All to no avail.

Quebec solidaire leader Amir Khadir was arrested and handcuffed at a protest on June 5, 2012, in Quebec City.

For more coverage of the Quebec students' struggle, click HERE.

By Roger Annis

STOP PRESS: June 7, 2012 -- Rabble -- According to a report in La Presse and Radio Canada, at 6 am this morning, Montreal police arrived at the home of Quebec National Aseembly member Amir Khadir and his wife, Nima Machouf, with arrest and search warrants. They arrested the couple's daughter, Yalda Machouf-Khadir, and her partner, Xavier Beauchamp. The two are among 11 student activists arrested in early morning police raids in the city. 

"Pots and pans" protests -- casseroles -- have erupted in neighbourhoods across Quebec and are spreading in the rest of Canada.

For more analysis of the Quebec students' struggle, click HERE.

By Roger Annis

June 4, 2012 -- Rabble -- On Saturday, June 2, several tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Montreal in answer to the Quebec government breaking off negotiations two days earlier with the province's striking student movement.

According to the CLASSE student association (Coalition large de l'association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante, Coalition of the Association for Student Union Solidarity), which called the march and is the largest of the four student groups that were involved in talks, the march began with 5000 or so people rallying at Parc Jeanne Mance and then swelled to 25,000 as it wound its way through city streets. A banner at the front of the march read, "This isn't a student strike, it's the awakening of society."

By John Riddell

May 28, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/johnriddell.wordpress.com -- Some familiar issues were addressed with originality and new vigour at the Historical Materialism conference in Toronto on May 11–13. Attendance at the three sessions on revolutionary history, organised by Abigail Bakan (Queen’s University), ranged between 30 and 75 of the 400 conference participants.

Given that eight of 11 presentations had a European focus, the discussions were opened fittingly by Montreal scholar Daria Dyakonova with a paper on a little-studied aspect of revolutionary history here in Canada: the birth of communism in Quebec.

The pioneers of this movement faced objective obstacles, including severe repression and formidable opposition by the Catholic Church. In addition, Dyakonova explained, “after Lenin and especially after 1929”, the Canadian Communist Party’s “policies were determined from Moscow”. The line dictated by the leadership of the Communist International (Comintern) was “often at odds with national or local needs”.

Jérémie, would you please describe for us what events have unfolded?

For more coverage and analysis of the Quebec students' struggle, visit Life on the Left.

By Roger Annis, Montreal

May 19, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The strike of post-secondary students in Quebec has taken a dramatic turn with the May 18 approval by the provincial government of a special law to cancel the school year at strike-bound institutions and outlaw protest activity deemed disruptive of institutions not participating in the strike.

Details of Bill 78 were unveiled the day before and debated in a special, overnight session of Quebec’s National Assembly. They include a ban on demonstrations within 50 metres of a post-secondary institution and severe financial penalties on students or teachers and their organisations if they picket or otherwise protest in a manner declared “illegal”. Demonstrations of ten or more people must submit their intended route of march to police eight hours in advance.

April 28, 2012 -- The following is a statement issued recently by CLASSE. CLASSE is the largest of the student coalitions or federations leading the student strike movement that has spread across Quebec. It represents more than half of the 180,000 students now on strike. The statement was translated by Richard Fidler for the Life on the Left web site.

* * *

Toward a social strike: It’s a student strike, a people’s struggle

Hike in tuition fees is part of “the cultural revolution”

Photo by Marc Bonhomme.

By Richard Fidler

April 23, 2012 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission --  A crowd estimated at 250,000 people or more wound its way through Montréal April 22 in Quebec’s largest ever Earth Day march. They raised many demands: an end to tar sands and shale gas development, opposition to the Quebec government’s Plan Nord mining expansion, support for radical measures to protect ecosystems, and other causes. And many wore the red felt square symbolising support to the province’s students fighting the Liberal Party government’s 75 per cent increase in post-secondary education fees over the next five years. The Earth Day march was the largest mobilisation to date in a mounting wave of citizen protest throughout the province.

"Thomas Mulcair is a man of the establishment, not of the social movements."

[Read more on Canada's New Democratic Party HERE.]

By Paul Kellogg

March 27, 2012 -- PolEcon.net, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission -- Canada's social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) has a new federal leader. Thomas Mulcair, has no roots in the social movements, a long history of being a senior Liberal Party member and is someone  openly committed to pushing the NDP considerably to the right. The implications for all interested in progressive social change are sobering.