Our National Vision

The English version of a letter written to Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.

I am writing to express my fear at the threats I and my community feel in the present moment, where the likely next ruling party of Québec and inheritor of René Lévesque's national project, is expressing fringe beliefs that threaten queer- and immigrant-identifying citizens like myself. So with this letter I reach out to share a vision for a Québec national project, in the shadow of political and personal annihilation.

The emergence of open fascism in the United States, and its specific territorial focus on Canada, Greenland and other allies, has been a stressful constant of our lives the past few months. The lack of any international voices calling for the support of an independent Canada with its own interests, or of any actual geopolitical consequences for the United States, makes the worries feel more concrete. The keystone of these threats is made clear at the American use of a fake fentanyl crisis caused by Canada as a pretext for war (similar to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2003), and the fact that Canada’s own leadership seems fully incapable of rallying a Canadian national project behind anything but the same neoliberal platitudes that got our world to this point.

A national vision is needed to bring people together to believe in and live for a nation that they feel they belong to. Donald Trump knows this and has organized his nation-building coalition behind an ideology that asserts a natural right for white men to control the levers of power, and sees current global power structures and hierarchies as natural and right. Being queer, and holding strong belief structures based around anti-oppression, bodily autonomy, and anti-capitalism, the national projects around the world today are almost universally in opposition to us. But one reason left-wing national projects are so few today seems to be a lack of organizing skills, combined with the conscious capitalist-class suppression of worker rights and erosion of worker financial security, which have conspired to make left-wing organizing difficult and dispiriting to engage in.

Among parties with access to power, our personal political ideals align most closely with Québec Solidaire provincially, and Bloc Québécois federally. We would love to feel differently about the Parti Québécois, but when its candidates fail to support queer youth and subscribe to sound bites popularized by far right online trolls, we feel René Lévesque would be ashamed of what his party has become. We must emphasize that agreeing in full with everything in a leader’s or party’s platform is likely impossible. We choose the ones who most closely align with us and do our best to bend them in our direction through participation. We expect this from the parties as well, and would not support a party that we felt could not thus include us and our beliefs. So whilst we do find occasional policies and strategies of these parties wrong, we will say so publicly and try to change them, as long as these two parties still represent our best hopes in political activism.

We can also make a difference if we organize as community leaders. Leading with the respect of our students, neighbours, and colleagues requires a positive, authentic and public example of a queer leftist identity. Being our authentic selves and leaving no doubt about it means queer and questioning members of our communities (particularly youths) can follow our example, feel safe, and know they can be an important part of their community too. Non-queer people can also quickly and easily see that we are an important part of their community, and will think twice before engaging in exclusionary or harmful political action. Being creators of culture and ideas as community leaders means we can ensure our community operates from a position of inclusion, care and anti-oppression.

A common American joke that even Canadians use is that “Canadians are just Americans with healthcare and without guns,” and outside of Québec, this is pretty accurate! Québec is a bit different, in that it never really gave up on having a national project. Like the Canadian and American national projects, Québec’s was largely a white supremecist project. It was dependent on the growth of a settler society at the expense of an Indigenous one. It had a specific ideal of what a citizen was. Like the US and Canada, Québec’s national project didn’t change or soften to incorporate anti-oppression or pluralism out of ethical considerations, but as a side effect of neoliberal economics. But free trade, global supply chains, financialization and weakening of worker rights all demand weaker national identities, and encouraging both legal and irregular migration has been vital to reducing worker solidarity in the post-Soviet decades. Québec’s national project has not been immune to this dereliction, but remains relatively intact primarily due to passing its most vital and successful decades with the anti-imperial wave of the late 20th-century rather than the empire period of the 19th- and early 20th-centuries like Canada and the US. But what can a national project be that would include the immigrants living here, and match our ideals and queer identity, and be in any way politically feasible? What is the Québec nation, if not an etho-nationalist project?

Even if Québec were to resist the English-colonial “Canadianism,” it remains a settler society living on land stolen from Indigenous nations who still inhabit the regions around us. The unifying feature of the people in this settler society is the French language - a colonial language itself. So whilst French could and should be a feature of nation-building here, Québec must also make peace with its colonial origin story to move forward. To build a strong, pluralistic and multi-ethnic state centred on anti-oppression (as opposed to a white nationalist ethno-state which would by its nature require the oppression of those unable to conform), unifying features must be found for the various identities that coexist in that plurality. I really think that the French language remains the best and only realistic candidate for such a feature. But how do we rally around our national language without empowering the ethno-nationalist origin story behind it?

A signature of anti-oppression movements is the voluntary (though often under the threat of violence or social upheaval) relinquishing of power by the powerful. On a global scale, the Québécois are not especially powerful, but on the territory called Québec there is a clear oppressive power structure dominated by white men of Franco-European heritage. The first steps toward a renewed and ethical nationalism here need to involve the dissolving of this structure through reconciliation with Indigenous nations and a national dedication to immigration and immigrant identity.

The vast majority of what is now Québec must be the sovereign recognized territory of the First Nations. This must include recognition of the right for those nations to opt-out of participation in the Québec national project, whether they favour their own independent nationhood or alliance with Canada (or, for that matter, the United States or any other country). This will mean that lots of settlers will become the subjects of First Nations governments, and it will mean turning over to First Nations the legal and operational title to the resources, industries and enterprises located on that land. This will be part of that “relinquishing power” thing, and it’s the only real way to achieve reconciliation.

It’s important to address why an immigrant national identity will be essential to the success of French as our nation’s unifying feature, since white ethno-nationalists strongly oppose immigration under the guise of protecting French. Most important is that having a language be our national feature means putting power and resources behind that language, to such an overwhelming degree that it is impossible to endanger it. Protecting French from immigration implies that our French culture is weak and that our society makes it difficult to learn and use this language for those not born into it. So our culture must be so strong that neither the number nor origin of newcomers can shake its hold.

Of course, this requires that we define what our culture consists of so that we can focus our resources to strengthen and solidify it in the face of change. We can start with the territory inhabited by the Québécois people today - maybe 200km on either side of the St-Laurent and Ottawa rivers. This place is very culturally homogenous: it is urban, multiethnic, industrial and Francophone. Those things together make a nation.

An urban nation ensures everyone is affordably and adequately housed. It invests in integrated public mass transportation networks. It must ensure food security through trade, technology, intensive agriculture and protection of land from urban sprawl. It invests in human capital: universities, concert venues, low-cost artist space, movie studios and technical training colleges to keep its urban infrastructure running smoothly regardless of global supply chains.

A multiethnic nation explicitly makes diversity of cultural output an essential characteristic of its creative capital. High universal guaranteed income can free youth and immigrants to create and invent, rather than requiring they “hustle” through multiple precarious jobs to get by. The novel and strange in art and performance are subsidized in order to activate untapped talent and create a destination for both consumers and producers of this culture. New voices are amplified early, and quality Francophone journalism is given the resources it needs to be independent of the capital, government or cultural figures it reports on.

An industrial nation maintains a clear and identifiable industrial policy, including multiple government ministries dedicated to the health and flourishing of the industrial sector. Those sectors in which a local advantage is identified are given the resources they need to quickly grow to serve a national and global market. A focus on quality of finished goods, rather than raw materials extraction, ensures that the highest-value portion of every industry is held in highest esteem. For Québec in the 2020s-2030s, I would guess these would be things like renewable energy technologies, transportation, greenhouse agriculture and gaming, but these decisions would depend on constant review by government leaders and democratic feedback.

A Francophone nation wants everyone learning, using and creating with French. It invests in youth education and does not sacrifice the humanities to STEM fields. It makes Francisation classes free and long-term, bringing non-native speakers from zero to Victor Hugo if that’s how far they want to go. French learners don’t need to work low-skilled and low-pay jobs to get by until their French is good enough - generous welfare ensures they can dedicate the many hours per day perfecting their language that native speakers had advantage of in their youth education. Generous and stable funding is provided to libraries, archives, galleries and museums. French-language cinema, television, theatre, radio, concert and music content is ubiquitous and accessible to everyone. Something like the Académie Française or Göthe Institut is created to project this cultural content outside of Québec, to showcase our national project, teach our language beyond our frontiers, and to tempt other creators to come here and contribute to it.

None of this will be cheap. All of it will require ditching neoliberal economics and its dedication to low taxes, low regulation and easy cross-border transactions. It will require heavy state integration in the economy, very high taxes on anyone making more than a basic middle-class income, and definancialization of housing, pensions and government spending. But if we can build this nation, who will need all that extra wealth? Great personal wealth and the hoarding of resources are a feedback loop caused by failed nations. When your country gives you nothing to be proud of, no social safety net and no infrastructure, you focus on creating your own. When your country creates no worthy cultural wonders, you surround yourself with the nicnacs and artifacts money can buy. When your only defense against chaos is sitting on a massive mountain of money in case the “shit hits the fan,” you hoard.

But if we have a country and society dedicated to supporting and inspiring us, where the greatest pleasures of life are accessible and ubiquitous, we will feel rich with every step we take though our world. We will feel richer than ever when we can pop into a virtuoso’s concert in a small suburb on a weeknight using our cheap speedy mass transit, grab a restaurant meal that is affordable and rest assured that it’s safe and the employees are paid, protected and speaking perfect French. We won’t fear for our identity because all identities are protected and celebrated. We won’t have to settle for a terrible job that we hate because terrible jobs won’t exist, and we can do a job we love because our country nurtures the talents of its citizens. We can learn French, learn a new skill or retrain for a new job without blowing our life savings or taking on a mountain of debt. We will be the envy of other rich countries, not because we have rich people, but because we have a rich, cohesive, coherent, consistent nation.