Introduction and translations by Richard Fidler for Life on the Left.
For a comprehensive account of the issues, outcomes and shifting political trends and alignments revealed in Quebec’s October 5 general election, I recommend “A dangerous liaison looms in Québec”. The authors, Andrea Levy and André Frappier, are active members of Québec solidaire, the party formed in 2006 by veterans of previous left-wing formations, feminists, environmentalists, independentists and international solidarity activists. As they note,
QS stood out markedly from the four other parties in its robust defence of public services, call to raise the minimum wage, opposition to privatization, and plea for progressive taxation. And indeed, since the election, it has doubled down on its pledge to serve as a bulwark against austerity. On other issues, however, its commitments were patently unequal to the challenges of the current moment…
Overall, Québec Solidaire waged a respectable campaign for a party that remains social democratic in its orientation. However, its discourse reflected a gradual shift to the centre that has occurred particularly in the last nine years, spearheaded by former party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau Dubois (GND). Once a firebrand student leader, GND reversed course as the head of QS, appealing for pragmatism and positioning QS as a ‘party of government’ (he has since resigned and retired from politics for the time being). This exacerbated the internal tensions between the forces within the party seeking ‘legitimacy’ and a foothold in Québec’s political class and the party’s left-wing members, who insisted that QS should live up to its slogan of being “un parti de la rue et des urnes” (a party of the streets and the ballot box) — that is, a democratic party whose political orientations are rooted in the social movements working for fundamental social change. Some of these party members came together to form what was initially an informal internal dissident sub-group calling itself the Parti de la rue, which has lately evolved into a more formal organization operating within and outside QS.
Translated below are two articles by members of the Parti de la rue critically analyzing the challenges ahead for Quebec working people and Québec solidaire in light of the election result. They were published in the left-wing online journal Presse-toi à gauche, which supports QS while urging it to turn left around an anticapitalist program of radical social change.
The evolution of Quebec election results over the last decade is illustrated in the table I have composed and published at the conclusion of this blog post, below. The figures for party votes and seats won in 2026 have been corrected according to recounts in some electoral districts, as reported by Quebec’s chief electoral officer.
What are the prospects, given the rise of the right? What role can Québec solidaire play in this context?
André Frappier and Bernard Rioux
With the PQ’s accession to government, we are entering a political period that risks accentuating the rise of the conservative right in Quebec if we fail to provide a clear and radical response
Highlights
The election campaign ends with an unprecedented distortion of the vote. The PQ came to power with only 28.02% of the vote and won 59 seats, forming a minority government. The Liberal Party won 40 seats with 24.23%, the Conservative Party 19 with 20.66% and Québec solidaire 9 with 12.42%. The CAQ did not win any seats with 13.35%.
Given the anti-immigration policies of the PQ’s Paul St-Pierre Plamondon (PSPP, as the PQ leader is often named) as well as its conservative policies (increase in the military budget and armaments, etc.), it will find support among Éric Duhaime’s Conservatives, who will thus strengthen their positions.
The role of the trade union and popular movement and of all social movements
The labour and grassroots movements have been special targets of the Legault government’s attacks. Anti-union laws have been adopted in quick succession. Insufficient investment in both the health and education sectors has led to a significant deterioration of hospital and school infrastructure. Privatization policies in the health sector have reduced access to care. This government’s denial of the housing crisis has been the terrain on which homelessness has developed. The promises made by all political parties during the election campaign, with the exception of Québec solidaire, to reduce the size of the state, indicate that austerity policies will continue to prevail. The PQ’s minority government will be pressured by the Conservative Party of Quebec to continue to deepen these policies. To believe, in this context, that the PQ government will be open to proposals from unions, grassroots groups and civil society as a whole appears more and more to be a denial of reality.
And the attacks will not only come from the Quebec government. Already, the Carney government’s major projects in terms of fossil fuels, the militarization of the economy and the implementation of artificial intelligence in as many companies as possible entail reducing the rights of the labour movement, as the federal government’s Bill 39 illustrates, as well as denying the rights of First Nations.
Our agenda must focus on building a broad front of resistance.
Sovereignty and the trap of calling for unity for a referendum
Sovereignty will be a key issue in the next period, for several reasons. First, because it is the framework in which the project of social change in Quebec will be defined. Secondly, because it is also the main component of the strategy for social change in the Canadian state. Thirdly, because it will be the objective of the traps launched by the PQ against QS.
The text published in Le Devoir, “For the construction of a progressive independentist alliance,” already indicates the trap in which we must not fall and the challenge of the political campaign to be built. In this article, the authors, including the former president of the CSN, Jacques Létourneau, call for an alliance between the Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire to achieve independence. They invite Québec solidaire to exit the debate on secularism and to reconsider its position on immigration, a debate they term ideological.
Québec solidaire must not fall into this trap, which would serve to normalize and endorse the PQ’s retrograde policies. QS would suffer the same fate as Jagmeet Singh’s NDP, which condoned the policies of the Liberal Party, and would lose all credibility with the population looking for an inclusive, feminist and anti-globalization alternative.
Accordingly, QS must more than ever assume its role as an anti-capitalist left-wing party
We must give meaning to the struggle for independence, which is linked as well to the emancipation of the Indigenous peoples and is also addressed to the question of our relationship with progressives, trade unionists and feminists in the Rest of Canada. The Canadian state in its present form must be defined as the shared fetter on the working class of English Canada and Quebec, and on the Indigenous peoples.
The rise of the far right under the Trump administration in the United States has many progressives fearing that independence would isolate and weaken Quebec and put it in danger. They believe that, in this context, independence must be postponed.
The position put forward by the QS leadership during the election campaign was not convincing in this regard. We talk about the constituent assembly as the democratic way to achieve independence, but we don’t see it as a class struggle where we have to work with allies, first and foremost our trade unionist and feminist comrades in the Rest of Canada. We must not forget, as well, the PQ’s failures with regard to the repatriation of powers.
Canada today is a state dominated by a powerful imperialist bourgeoisie. Canadian banks and companies invested $1,288,860 billion in assets abroad in 2018. The national struggle in Quebec cannot, in this context, be conceived as the repatriation of powers. The logic of that conception would be the reproduction of the same infrastructural pattern as that of Canadian capitalism, but under Quebec control. In a way, this was the experience of Québec Inc. But in the end, the rules of the globalized economy got the better of Rona, Saint-Hubert, Cirque du Soleil and Bombardier’s C Series, which became foreign assets.
The successive austerity policies of the PQ have contributed to amputating the PQ’s sovereigntist project of its dimension as a social project in favour of the popular majority. Let us remember the cuts in health care, with the elimination of 12,000 nursing positions in 1996. Today, the PQ of PSPP is going even further with its infamous promises to “deburocratize” the state and to reduce immigration to Quebec under its leadership.
Québec solidaire must fight for an independence that promises popular sovereignty throughout
The economic, fossil-fuel and environmental crisis will deepen the offensive of the various governments and the intransigence of the bosses. These tensions will fuel the far right, which is seeking to channel popular anger to its advantage. It will be impossible to counter this situation if there is no left-wing alternative. If QS does not situate the struggle for sovereignty within the anti-imperialist framework, if it does not situate the environmental struggle within an internationalist framework, it will necessarily be limited to fighting for reforms in Quebec, within the framework of Canadian federalism, a path that others have trodden before it. This situation would only leave the door open to a nationalist politics which, as we have seen in the last period, has led to an identitarian nationalism. And this is what the Parti québécois proposes in its Blue Book. What this document shows is not a break with the North American imperial order, but its reconfiguration: the transition from a Canadian federalism to a formal sovereignty that reclothes the same relations of economic dependency, the same Western military alignments, the same structures of class and gender domination and the same depridation of nature.
To think of a uniquely Québécois strategy for social change is to ignore the power of financial institutions and corporations. Let us remember the fate that the European Central Bank reserved for Greece (which is nevertheless a sovereign state).
Québec solidaire must defend an independence that is based on popular sovereignty and is a true national liberation. It presupposes a break with the circuits of financial dependency that bind Quebec to Wall Street and Bay Street; the collective appropriation of financial institutions rather than their simple repatriation for the benefit of a national bourgeoisie; disarmament rather than the race for military spending in the order of 5% of GDP; the full and complete recognition of the sovereignty of Indigenous nations over their territories rather than the unilateral codification of borders; and a reorganization of the economy around care and ecological limits rather than around the stability of markets.
October 20, 2026
What are the post-election prospects for Québec solidaire?
Roger Rashi
The Quebec election of October 5 gave us some very unusual results, thanks to the current fragmentation of the political field and the archaic voting system that elects the “first-past-the-post” candidate with the highest plurality.
With only 28 per cent of the vote, the Parti Québécois won 59 seats and will form a minority government. This is an ambivalent result: last December, opinion polls gave the party 39% of the vote and a probable majority of seats. Its shift to the right and its anti-immigration rhetoric have helped make the PQ “the most badly elected government in history” in Quebec. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), the party in power from 2018 to 2026, is the big loser in this election: it is completely wiped off the map, losing all 90 seats won in 2022 while retaining 13.35% of the total vote. The Quebec Liberal Party, with a modest 24 per cent, won 40 seats and will form the official opposition. The big winner was undoubtedly the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), a hard-right party, which entered the National Assembly for the first time with 19 MNAs and 20.6% of the vote. As for Québec solidaire, it avoided the rout that so many observers predicted, retaining 9 of its 11 seats and winning 12.43% of the vote.
Becoming the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary bulwark against austerity
The only left-wing party in the National Assembly — the other three embracing, to varying degrees, right-wing programs and austerity policies — QS claims to be the sole representative of popular interests in Parliament and the bulwark against austerity. How will it play its cards in a minority Parliament where it could hold the balance of power, just like the PCQ for that matter.
Already, some are advising QS to make an “independentist and progressive alliance” with the PQ in power. Others believe that it should turn even further towards the centre to increase its support and avoid the decline it faces. However, these are precisely the orientations that QS must avoid by all means; they are the result of a poor analysis of the situation and could definitively ruin it.
The PQ is no longer a partially social democratic party or even a vaguely progressive party. Under its current leader, its trajectory is clearly moving to the right, and it has adopted a program that is openly pro-austerity (reduction in the size of the government, cuts in the public service, return to a balanced budget within two years) and fiercely anti-immigration, which will inevitably lead it to form an alliance on these issues with the PCQ. The PQ must seek additional electoral support, and to do so, it will try to tap into the 13 per cent of the right-wing electorate who supported the CAQ. In addition, the PQ has postponed its promised referendum on independence until Trump’s departure, which brings us to 2029 at the earliest. However, a minority government lasts an average of 18 to 24 months, and the PQ will want to obtain a majority mandate in the next election. It will have neither the time nor the interest, while support for sovereignty is lagging in the polls at 29%, to launch a referendum campaign in a shortened mandate.
For all these reasons, Québec solidaire must reject the misleading recommendations and adopt an incisive opposition role in Parliament as well as a combative and dynamic posture outside the National Assembly. Nine MNAs out of 127 cannot, on their own, block an austerity program. But, in alliance with the community, tenant, trade union, anti-racist, feminist and ecological movements — all the social forces that austerity is already mobilizing — a real bulwark can be erected against reactionary forces.
Québec solidaire must no longer limit itself to a role of representing the social opposition in Parliament. It must also see itself and act as a party of social mobilization.
Becoming a party of the workers and the working classes
While demonstrating great resilience in keeping six of its nine seats in Montreal as well as its representation outside Montreal, QS has nevertheless experienced a slow and gradual decline since the 2018 election, when it obtained its best result with 16.10% of the vote and ten MNAs. In 2022, the decline in the popular vote (0.60%) was minimal and relatively obscured by the number of seats won (11). But in 2026, the decline is now clear and undeniable: a loss of 3%, or more than 100,000 votes compared to the two previous elections.
A lucid and sober assessment is necessary: QS's electoralist and centralizing turn, which began in 2021, has been a failure, both at the ballot box and internally. This turn, described as “pragmatic,” has provoked multiple internal crises, all stemming from conflicts originating in the parliamentary wing. It has seriously weakened the party’s activist core and, ultimately, electoral support for the party.
However, the campaign that just ended has sparked a revival of activism and mobilization around QS, something that we have not seen for a long time. How can this progress be consolidated?
First, it is imperative that the party return to the practice of launching political campaigns outside of election periods, in order to maintain the mobilization of its members and expand its recruitment pool. The coming period will be rich in social mobilizations. This will be the ideal opportunity to bring social movement activists back into the fold of QS and to make our party a real party of the ballot box and the street.
Second, we must strengthen the identity of QS as the party of the workers and the working classes. We said it over and over during the election campaign: we are the only party that fights against austerity, wants to tax wealth and defend social and trade union rights. We must push this logic forward and affirm that we are a party of the working class and the working classes, and then support this call with sustained work in all regions of Quebec, in urban and rural areas, as well as around the major economic, social and ecological issues that affect the people: affordable housing, cost of living, improved public services, climate change, working conditions and equal rights.
To reverse its decline, our party must adopt a policy that gives it a clear identity and strong social roots.
Becoming a Left of rupture
In 2011, Québec solidaire included in its program a call to go beyond capitalism and eventually establish the socialization of the economy. This was followed by a series of political proposals on the nationalization of strategic natural resources, national and democratic planning, workers’ self-management, the establishment of a state bank, etc. Unfortunately, these orientations were not deepened and remained more or less a dead letter until the process of revising the programme launched at the end of 2024, which unfortunately led to a weakening of the anti-capitalist proposals and the adoption of a clearly reformist programme. It is this moderate vision that has underpinned the positions of the QS leadership since 2021. The departure of [former QS co-leader] Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois at the end of 2024 has not changed anything in substance.
However, the left-wing parties that are experiencing some success in this period of the rise of the right are those that have adopted a program of rupture with the current system and that often define themselves as parties that are socialist, democratic, ecological and anti-imperialist. This is the case of Die Linke, in Germany, which has just won the mayoralty of Berlin, or Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), victorious in New York. Not to mention Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise, which openly proclaims itself to be a breakaway left. In this period of acute crises of capitalism and the rise of the right, it is the uninhibited and confident left-wing formations that are making progress, while social-democratic reformism is everywhere in crisis. It is their anti-systemic program that provides a compelling and mobilizing character to the immediate proposals of the radical left parties, while giving hope to the popular classes and the social movements that support them.
To establish itself as a real bulwark against austerity and the rise of the right, Québec solidaire will have to deepen its anti-systemic positions. The orientations of its 2011 programme must be updated in the light of recent upheavals in order to lead to a proposal for profound social transformation.
Montreal, October 12, 2026
