BY MICHEL PRAIRIE
MONTREAL - On October 28, the Parti Quebecois (PQ) government of Prime Minister Lucien Bouchard called a November 30 provincial election for the renewal of Quebec's National Assembly. The timing of this move is clearly aimed at taking advantage of the falling support for the PQ's main electoral opponent, the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) headed by Jean Charest.

Unlike most provincial elections, these are a national event in Canadian bourgeois politics. Charest was the head of the Conservative Party of Canada in the federal parliament in Ottawa. Last March he resigned in order to become the head of the Liberal Party of Quebec, at the urging of large sections of Canada's ruling class who viewed him as the only political figure able to chase the PQ from office in Quebec. Their overt goal was to put to rest the PQ's plan to hold a new referendum on Quebec sovereignty.

Quebec is the second most populous and industrialized of Canada's 10 provinces, with 7 million inhabitants. Of these, 6 million are Quebecois and form an oppressed nationality on the basis of their language, French. For the past six decades, since the movement to form industrial unions in Canada at the end of the 1930s, the struggle by Quebecois against the oppression and discrimination they face has been central to politics in this country.

The PQ is a bourgeois nationalist party formed in 1968 as a split-off from the PLQ, the Canadian rulers' main political instrument in Quebec. It promotes greater powers for Quebec, including up to what it describes as "sovereignty," in the framework of a new "association" to be negotiated with the rest of Canada. It has held two referendums on Quebec's sovereignty, in 1980 and 1995. The first lost by a margin of close to 20 percent; the 1995 vote lost by less than 2 percent - a major political setback for the imperialist rulers in Ottawa.

Following the 1995 referendum, Canada's rulers were divided over how to quell the resistance of the Quebecois. The wing led by Premier Jean Chrétien refuses to make any new concessions to Quebecois demands and has renewed its economic blackmail and ultimate threats of military intervention against Quebec. This has helped fuel a sharp rise of anti-Quebec chauvinist demagogy across the country.

Another wing of Canada's ruling class sees this confrontational course as ineffective, and pushed Charest, who was dubbed a "pro-Quebec" politician in Ottawa, to jump into the Quebec arena as the chief representative of Canadian imperialism.

Earlier this year, the publicity around Charest's move and deep anger among working people against the PQ government's assault on health services over the last three years, boosted the Liberal Party of Quebec to 52 percent in the polls, well ahead of the PQ. Seven months later, this initial impact has evaporated. The two parties are currently nose-to-nose.

Liberals, PQ both push social cuts
Ten days before the election call, the PLQ adopted a new conservative economic program, a shift to the right for this party. They call for the end of what is known in Quebec as the "Quiet Revolution" era - the period when important gains were made by working people in health, education, and other social services through the big struggles they led for union rights and against national oppression in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Charest proposes instead a massive reduction of the size of the provincial state apparatus, a 10 percent tax cut over five years, the deregulation of the labor code, the increased privatization of heath services, and the financing of schools and hospital according to their performance. He has repeatedly given as his model the Conservative government of Michael Harris in Ontario, which cut taxes by 30 percent in three years and laid off thousands of working people.

While the PLQ's new economic program was loudly applauded by sections of the ruling class, the PQ and the labor officialdom in Quebec immediately denounced it as a "neoliberal" attack against the social gains of the Quiet Revolution - failing to mention that the PQ government has been responsible for major assaults on the very same services, especially health care.

The second question that came to the fore was that of Quebec itself. For months, Charest opposed any new referendum on Quebec sovereignty, claiming that would be a factor of political and economic uncertainty and a diversion from the real question - jobs and the economy. Unemployment in Quebec remains above 10 percent several years into an economic upturn. Charest also claimed his election as prime minister of Quebec would make easier to get concessions from the federal government.

Under the impact of this campaign, the PQ adopted in September what it called a "winning referendum" strategy. In other words, not holding a new referendum without having "winning conditions." This was understood by most people as putting it off indefinitely. But in the week leading to the election call, Bouchard stated that the PQ will hold a third referendum if reelected and will make sure to win it.

A few days later, Canada's premier Chrétien said in a front- page interview in the Montreal daily La Presse that "the list of Quebec's traditional demands has been fulfilled" by Ottawa over the last five years. Thus, there is no need, he added, to include a clause recognizing Quebec as a "unique society" in the Canadian constitution, a central aspect of the PLQ's constitutional platform. Chrétien went as far as to say that the election of a Liberal government in Quebec City won't change the relations between the two governments that much.

These comments were immediately denounced by PLQ top spokespersons, all federalist parties, and the media in Ottawa and across the country as "a stab in the back" of Charest, as La Presse editorialized on October 27. Chrétien felt pressured to retreat, saying that he would consider including the "unique society" clause in the constitution if a federalist party - in other words one that supports the imperialist domination of Quebec by the Ottawa government - were elected in Quebec.

Ongoing labor resistance
Meanwhile, there are ongoing pockets of labor resistance across Quebec.

On October 23, the negotiating committee representing 4,500 pulp and paper workers organized by the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union broke off contract talks with the giant paper producer Abitibi-Consolidated over the questions of wage increase. These workers have been on strike since June 15 at 10 plants across Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland. After several months, strikers have forced the company to agree to negotiate a common contract for all plants.

On October 24, 15,000 members of the Quebec Teachers Federation (CEQ) marched in Quebec City in one of the biggest and most youthful demonstration of public workers in a decade in Quebec. They demanded the Quebec government negotiate new contracts with 300,000 teachers, hospital workers, and other public workers.

The teachers also pressed their two main demands in the coming negotiations, which they label as "pay equity" - the recognition of experience in their wage structure so teachers with less years of education can eventually reach the same wage maximum - and that they be paid for the number of hours they work in their school, not just in class as is currently the case. The difference could add up to several thousand dollars a year in the first case, and up to 15 hours' pay a week in the second.

On October 26, after a meeting with Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard, top officials of the three main union federations involved in the public sector negotiations announced a "social truce" during the election campaign. The labor officialdom in Quebec have supported the PQ and collaborated with it since the early 1970s.  
 
 
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