Or a great base on which to expand the existing Quebec Solidaire Party, into which the Quebecn NDP's members merged years ago. 

In my riding,there's soon to be a Québec by-election.Today I saw  political posters for a candidate for the Conservative party of Québec.

Question. How many fucking right wing parties does Québec need? Last count we now have 4 out of 5.

Québec NEEDS a provincial NDP party. Why it hasn't materialized yet is beyond me.

Swallow, there needs to be a federalist alternative on the left to Couillard's Liberals. Solidaire was a sovereignist splinter from the NPD. The federalist splinter abandoned provincial politics. Pierre Ducasse is the current leader of the new NPD.

QS is far more radical than the NDP and they are sovereignist to use Lagatta's preferred terminology.

Quebec needs a moderate left non-sovereignist party. We don't have one. That is why the Liberals win so often and why they have a majority now and QS has less than 8% of the vote. 

This informal "deal" Quebec solidaire seems to think they have with the federal NDP sounds like dirty backroom politics to me if it's to prevent the emergence of a moderate left party. The lack of one is not forcing us to choose QS, it's forcing us to choose the right-wing Liberal party.

I didn't even know it had been formed!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democratic_Party_of_Quebec#Electoral_r...

On January 30, 2014 the Directeur général des élections du Québec registered the New Democratic Party of Quebec as a provincial political party.[9] Former federal NDP leadership candidate and federal and Gatineau municipal election candidate Pierre Ducasse was listed as the party leader.[10]

This is terrific news.

Smoke and mirrors, I'm afraid. Mulcair promised a provincial NDP would be formed some years ago. Ducasse formed it a while back. It has done nothing. It sat out the last Quebec elections. Mulcair voted Liberal, stating that his local PLQ member was really a New Democrat. 

Pondering, you can find existing threads that discuss this at length, if you're interested in reading what others think. 

QS is not a splinter of anything, it's a federation merging pre-existing parties, including the UFP, which absorbed the remnants of the last provincial NDP. 

We've been discussing this for 3 years in this thread.

It isn't a backroom anything, it is just what goes on here. It is well known that many QS supporters vote NDP, and vice-versa, and many work on each others campaigns. And they tend to support Projet Montréal, which scrupulously takes NO stance on the constitutional/national question. I worked for Boulerice on election day, and ran into at least three people I knew from QS in my Québec riding.

If anyone would vote for the corrupt PLQ rather than Québec solidaire, that is their problem. And inexcusable now as the Québec Green Party has become ecosocialist and has pretty much the same orientation as QS, except that they are silent or neutral on the national question.

Several federalists belong to QS, and several sovereignists belong to the Québec NDP. Not to mention the many people nowadays who would take a very different approach to the whole national question, and all the left is putting more emphasis on the recognition of sovereignty and the need for reparations to Indigenous natons.

Enough to split the vote further

It's quite a dingleberry. Québec is totally fucked up. I live here and I just don't get it. Federally people here lean one way (centre-left) and provincially? What a fucking embarrassment. The only leftist option can't best 13% support. Meanwhile,the other parties are just different shades of shit brown.

Unionist, the discussion may have begun 3 years ago, but there is a new twist here. The federal election scene is out of the way for another three or four years and now there is a bunch ex-NDP MPs that may be looking for a new project to join. Also, Couillard may have thought twice about assaulting the NDP senate platform if there had been more pressure in the National Assembly on his left federalist flank.

Stephane Bedard just contentiously resigned his Chicoutimi seat in the legislature. Dany Morin, a dynamic 29 year-old chiropractor and former NDP LGBT issues critic, was just narrowly defeated in his bid for reelection in the overlapping federal riding. Could he shift to provincial politics? I don't really care whether its for a provincial wing of the NDP or Quebec Solidaire or for that matter as a progressive independent, so long as voters can have a left alternative to the Liberals, CAQ and Peladeau-led PQ.

Agreed. Québec politics is a sham. The 4 main parties,3 are right wing,and now there is a Conservative Party of Québec. How many right wing parties does this province need?

It's a joke and an embarrassment.

One for every right wing voter would be about perfect, no?

Good point.

I was thinking of doing a parody right wing party called Les Chavaliers. We would have horses and crowns and heraldry, and campaign for Quebec's own monarchy.

Chantal Hébert has basically said that it would be counter-productive for there to be a provincial NDP party in Quebec.

You say that as if you think it will convince people on babble, Debater. Surely you've learned that the best way to provoke many people here is to make an appeal to pundit authority? Do you do it on purpose? 

I agree with Hebert on that, of course. But I do think the NDP might do some good for progressive politics by endorsing a left-wing party in the provincial arena rather than a right-wing party, as the current NDP leadership does. 

Would make for a nice change. But I'm trying to visualize Tom Mulcair voting for Québec Solidaire... trying... trying... failed.

I wasn't making an "appeal to pundit authority".

I just thought I would mention the fact that Hébert wrote about the provincial dynamics in Québec a while back and that she pointed out that many progressive policies were achieved in Québec (eg. child care) without the existence of a provincial NDP.

Btw, I don't consider Chantal Hébert to be just some talking head "pundit".  She's someone who has written extensively about Québec and who has interviewed many of its provincial & federal leaders.  So she is an author and not just a useless "pundit" on a t.v. panel.

Anyway, when I find the more detailed piece I am referring to, I will post it here.

I like Chantal Hebert too, but I think your most common rhetorical device is often to back up your arguments or opinions by reference to someone who works in, oh, let's say political analysis. But let me rephrase. 

You say that as if you think it will convince people on babble, Debater. Surely you've learned that the best way to provoke many people here is to post a reference to what Chantal Hebert thinks? 

It's not easy, but I can manage to picture him voting QS and then lying and say he voted Liberal, thinking this would assist in his quest for political gain. 

So before the federal election -- and maybe even moreseo in the postmortem after it -- I hear that the NDP should have been further to the left, that the electorate would have handed them a mandate if they'd been more progressive than the Liberals.

And I occasionally hear that Quebec is a generation or so ahead of the RoC in various contexts, like accessible child care, or gender parity or what have you.

So how come QS only has 3 of 125 seats?

Aren't they basically what I keep hearing the electorate really wants?

oh, you're going to bother the Liberal propagandists who want the NDP to go away and those who want the NDP to be some kind of purist vehicle which is not possible to exist in this current world no matter how much we wish.

No, I'm just curious why, if the electorate is holding their breath for a progressive alternative, and there is one, why its fortunes are so small.

So anyway, I've been thinking about how little we heard about the defeated Bloc and Liberal deputies who lost their seats in 2011, though a few of the Liberals are now back. I wonder if three of the NDP'ers who lost their seats will go back to McGill? 

People have been rapidly devolving since the '70's

The Quebec Liberals & the PQ both held their incumbent seats in this week's by-elections, whereas the CAQ & QS did not make any new ground.

Status quo for Quebec Provincial politics for now?

Actually, in my riding of Saint-Henri-Ste-Anne,the QS finished third not too far from the PQ and Liberals. They won a bit over 20%. No victory but certianly ground was made.CAQ finished below them with something like 5.9%

When people have finally had enough with Couillard and his clowns they may find the PQ far too simialr and that can work to the advantage of QS, appealing to old school péquistes.

It's going to be a long 4 years but people will eventually tire to this needless austerity and finally Québec will demnd 'real' change.That real change is QS. But because the PLQ are so far to the right,CAQ has been sounding mighty leftish defending public sector workersand te PQ defending the EMSB right to hold elections.So I imagine there will be a lot of half hearted opposition and heavyweight  pandering at the National Assembly for a while. Enough time for the 2 opposition parties (PQ CAQ) reveal themselves as anything BUT change.

There is enough time to create an Orange wave over here, I feel it's possible.

I'm alan smithee and I approve this message.