Things haven’t been that bad for the Parti Québécois lately.
Its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, breathed new life into it.
The party stands out in the polls as a (distant) alternative to CAQ.
Support for sovereignty also solidified at around 37%, which we hadn’t seen in years.
More recent good news: For the first time in a long time, the PQ chair was invited to a Bloc Québécois convention in Drummondville last month.
The Sovereignists are closing their ranks before a “historical window,” to use Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s phrase, could soon open.
Finally some Sovereignists, not all.
The reality is that uneasiness persists within the movement surrounding the debate on secularism.
And this malaise is marring the National Day celebrations.
The Parti Québécois refuses to be seen with the evening’s host, Émile Bilodeau, as the latter is an activist from Québec Solidaire who hates the Secularism Act.
There is nothing to gain for the PQ
Émile Bilodeau may have spoken out harshly about the PQ, but the party has nothing to gain by ignoring the event.
The Parti Québécois will one day need to find a way to speak to those who do not share its vision of secularism, especially among young people.
At the bloc’s convention last month, a young activist told me how uncomfortable he was to see his party establishing secularism as a religion.
“Yes to Quebec’s inalienable right to make its laws, but yes, also to the right to challenge them, including the right over the state’s secularism,” he confided to me.
Quebec Solidaire, in turn, must also stop engaging, as Emile Bilodeau did, with racists and xenophobia, those who cling to secularism, if it is to raise its support cap.
The sovereignty movement will certainly not be able to maintain its modest momentum with boycotts and harassment.
