As the CAQ government continues to peddle privatization as the solution to the Québec’s health care woes, progressive organizations are sounding the alarm about the creeping establishment of a two-tier system. This overview is a translation of the fourth part of a series on health care in Québec published in April 2022 by IRIS, Québec’s leading progressive research institute.

What Québecers need more than anything is a chance to finally break with a stale orthodoxy, one which says that housing is not only out of our control, but that its priority is to be an investment opportunity above all else. As Gavin Armitage-Ackerman writes, Québec Solidaire’s platform offers a chance to finally reject that status quo.

In advance of the October 3 provincial election in Québec, CD editorial board member André Frappier provides a critical review of the CAQ government’s policies over the past four years, and sounds a call to mobilize and support Québec Solidaire as the only political alternative equipped to improve society and protect the rights of the vulnerable and the environment.

Québec Solidaire was born fifteen ears ago from the unification of the principal left forces in Québec that adopted a common progressive and independentist program. As it grows, having elected 10 Members of the National Assembly in 2018, the party is tempted by the lure of power and a tendency toward the concentration of power internally. These tendencies were in evidence at the party’s May 15-16 National Council meeting.

The federal government’s addition of the far-right group the Proud Boys to the Criminal Code list of terrorist entities has sparked some debate among progressive groups, including in the pages of Canadian Dimension. While street mobilization is important and necessary, it alone will not be enough to defeat the extreme right. We take this opportunity to reflect on the necessary perspectives for the left.

While it is undeniable that the virus has reached a critical stage in recent weeks, the adoption of authoritarian measures ought to be viewed critically. With this latest lockdown, the Québec government has failed to show humanity by policing the health crisis and putting vulnerable people at increased risk. In particular, Legault’s refusal to exempt unhoused people from the curfew only accentuated the inequities spawned by the pandemic.

A major challenge for Québec solidaire is to refocus public attention on climate change and the environment as an essential part of the solution to the COVID-19 crisis and of any vision of genuine social transformation. This was the primary issue for QS during its last election campaign, but it is also a determining factor in how the party is positioning itself on Québec’s political stage at the current time.

50 years ago this month, the federal government, invoking the War Measures Act, occupied Québec with 12,000 troops, arrested almost 500 citizens without a warrant, and carried out 36,000 police searches of homes, organizations and publications. That year marked a turning point in the federalist response to Québec’s “Quiet Revolution” and the rapidly growing popular mobilization in favour of making Québec an independent state.

Tommy Douglas was right to denounce the internment of Japanese Canadians under the War Measures Act in 1940. He was also dead right to denounce the act again in 1970, following two politically-motivated kidnappings by the Front de libération du Québec. 50 years on, the time has come for the Government of Canada to recognize this injustice and apologize.

What does a budget cut for the University of Alberta have to do with honouring the continuation of the linguistic and cultural communities that make up a multinational federation like Canada? It starts with the fact that this university is home to the only French speaking centre for higher education west of Manitoba—Faculté Saint-Jean.