(The following article is from the December 1-31, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

PV Québec Bureau

     "Enough of defeatism and small steps, re-mobilize Québecers around independence" has become the final slogan of Québec Solidaire's recent policy congress in Laval, held in late November after months of debate. The declaration marks a shift by the new left political party on the national question towards a clear pro-separation position.

     Until this congress, Québec Solidaire was a united party of the left, incorporating different perspectives on the question of Québec's relationship with Canada. "Before, they viewed the project of sovereignty as a secondary tool to realize a social and environmental program," Pierre Fontaine, leader of the Communist Party of Québec, told People's Voice. "From a means, sovereignty has became a goal in itself."

     Québec Solidaire was formed in 2006 from a fusion of Option Citoyenne and the Union des forces progressistes (a federated party including the Communist Party). It has come under increasing pressure to adopt a more nationalist position since Amir Khadir's breakthrough victory as the QS candidate in the Montreal riding of Mercier in the November 2008 provincial election.

     "The door is now open for compromises with nationalist bourgeois forces - like the Parti Québécois (PQ)," Fontaine said. Part of the discussion proposed a united front with groups like the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, trade unions, students, environmentalists, feminists, and "sovereigntist parties" for national independence.

     "Jacques Parizeau discusses the absolute necessity to renew the discourse on sovereignty. In Québec Solidaire, we totally agree. Over the years, the rhetoric of independence has been rendered meaningless by some separatists who wanted to make Quebec a country without a [social justice] project," president and spokesperson for Québec Solidaire, Francoise David, said in a statement to the media.

     This position, however, will likely lose support among progressives who do not consider separation the primary question today. The proposal was opposed by various speakers from the floor. Arthur Sandborn, former leader of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (Montreal Council) announced his resignation after the final resolution passed.

     "In fact, the claim that Canadian federalism can not be reformed presumes that the bourgeoisie will forever be in power and the actual political conditions will never change," Fontaine said. "Change is only possible because in Québec there exists a bourgeois movement for sovereignty. The question of fundamental social transformation isn't asked."

     "Those responsible for national oppression are the ruling class in Canada, and the capitalist system," Fontaine said. "Communists defend, within the working class, the right of self-determination, including separation, to promote the unity of the working people and their allies against their common enemy."

     Fontaine highlighted the Communist Party's long-standing proposal that these rights be enshrined in a new, democratic and equal constitution for all nations in Canada. "This is necessarily linked to the fight for socialism."

     Québec's grievances and discontents are again under discussion following October's Supreme Court ruling striking down Bill 104, on the contentious issue of the choice of school where parents, especially immigrant parents, send their children.

     Given the benefits of speaking English in Quebec, including a higher salary and higher quality of life, immigrant communities have long opted to send their children to English-speaking schools, integrating into the English-Canadian minority rather the French majority. In response to this pressure on the French language, the PQ brought in legislation restricting access to English-language schools.

     Quebec's Charter of the French Language says that children should receive, without exception, instruction in French. Article 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, however, stipulates that citizens of Canada "who have received their primary school instruction in Canada in English or French ... have the right to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in that language in that province."

     "The problem is that you have formal equality in an unequal situation between the two languages," Fontaine said. "If it were up to the Canadian Constitution, French would be condemned to steadily disappear."

     Before Bill 104 was passed, many parents sent their children to private English schools (unsubsidized by the Ministry of Education) for a short time to claim the constitutional right to education in English. Sisters, brothers and possible descendants of a student who won the right to an education in English could, in turn, legally attend an English school in Quebec.

     This loophole raised a public outcry, since it allowed immigrants to circumvent the law. Bill 104 closed the loophole, the Supreme Court decision has opened it again. The response from Québecers has been great concern. Several hundred nationalists and trade unionists organized a rally against the decision a few days after it took place.

     "The Québec nation should have the right to defend the French language," Fontaine said. "This is another example of the failure of the Canadian constitution to recognize Québec's right to self-determination."