Ask-The-Contestants!

There is only one way to achieve proportional representation and that is to make it worthwhile to the other political parties. As long as the two major traditional parties believe they can win majority governments, and as long as the NDP is content with handouts from the Trudeau Liberals in exchange for its confidence and supply agreement, these parties will sweep proportional representation under the carpet. To achieve PR, we must do four things and in this order: 1) first, we must win a sufficient number of seats to hold the balance of power in parliament; 2) second, we must learn how to negotiate coalition agreements with the other parties; 3) third, we must stay firm on not entering a coalition agreement without first the commitment to hold a referendum on proportional representation, and 4) fourth, we must organize ourselves to support a yes vote in that referendum.

Winning a sufficient number of seats to convince the other parties to agree to proportional representation is not twelve seats, as my fellow candidates are suggesting; it is at least 20 seats. How do we go from two seats to twenty? We certainly will not do that by recycling the leadership of the past or by positioning ourselves as a protest party or the political embodiment of wokeism as Annamie Paul tried to do. Nor will we achieve our goals by offering Canadians wishful thinking unconnected to their daily economic worries. We will certainly never win twenty seats by alienating 21% of the electorate that is francophone by suggesting that there is no need for protect the future of Quebec as a francophone secular society and no need to support the rights of the more than one million French Canadians who live outside Quebec. We might as well write a blank cheque to the Liberals if we continue to bash Quebec.

We can win these twenty seats and more by focussing our energy on the five areas of Canada where a campaign based on promoting Green Social Democracy will resonate loudest. I firmly believe that we can win big in Quebec where at the federal level, the parties are splintered with the Liberals at 31%, Bloc Québécois (29%) and Conservatives (23%), and where the NDP (13%) is no longer a political force. Quebec is not only the province with a history of mass swings in voting, but it is also the province where the vast majority of voters understand the benefits of renewable energy and have the greatest concerns about the social and cultural future of their society. However, we will not win big in Quebec without a francophone leader, and I cannot see how we can win in any of the anglophone ridings on the island of Montreal, given the stranglehold of the Liberals on them. I believe that the ridings won by the NDP in 2011 and again in 2015 are highly winnable provided we field credible candidates well connected to their communities. The NDP is finished as a party in Quebec. Many of its former members like myself are now with the GPC. We are capable of consolidating most of the former NDP voters behind us, attracting progressive voters from the Bloc Québécois and appealing to new voters who hunger for a credible pro-environment federalist party, which at the same time supports a francophone secular society in Quebec. I believe that under my leadership, we can take at least fifteen ridings in Quebec in 2025.

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