The night she was elected in October 2018, Catherine Dorion ran up onto the stage in Quebec City and briefly stared at the crowd, shaking her fists in the air and laughing with tears in her eyes.
“I’m not the one who won in Taschereau, we did. It’s everyone who is here and it’s everyone in Taschereau!” she said in her victory speech.
She wore a black tuque and a cropped pink t-shirt with three white flamingos on it. The campaign signs intentionally placed inside the venue were grafittied, including one that featured a defaced portrait of Dorion.
Throughout her four years as a member of Quebec’s National Assembly for the democratic-socialist Québec Solidaire, Dorion often spoke about wanting to be close to her constituents, who live in Quebec City’s La Cité-Limoulou borough and the town of Notre-Dame-des-Anges.
In the legislature’s Salon bleu full of suits and crew cuts, Dorion’s roughly chopped strawberry blond hair stood out So did her thick Quebec City accent — even if it matches the way the people of her riding speak.
Her clothes (in no particular order: a hoodie, Doc Martens boots, a short skirt, a graphic tee) stoked controversy and sparked debates about dress codes. She defended them, saying she wanted the National Assembly to be a more inclusive place.
The 2018 provincial election that saw Dorion elected was one which a record number of Quebec women made their way to the National Assembly. They represented 52 of the province’s 125 seats. Since then, thanks to byelections, there are three more women occupying those seats, for a total of 55, about 44 per cent.
But already, 14 of them have announced they will not be running again in this year’s provincial elections. Five of the women leaving hold seats for the governing party, Coalition Avenir Québec, nine for the Official Opposition Quebec Liberal Party, one for the Parti Québécois and one for Québec Solidaire.
Just Friday, Paule Robitaille, the Liberal MNA for Bourassa-Sauvé in Montreal, said she would be leaving, too, after just one term.
In all, one in four women elected in the National Assembly will leave public office this year. The number of men who have announced their departure pales in comparison at four out of 70, with three departing from the Liberal Party and one from the CAQ.
After that historic 2018 provincial election for women politicians, some worry the 2022 Quebec provincial election could be a step back — and they wonder whether the lack of change in the culture of politics could be to blame.
“For us, for women, it’s constant: there are always setbacks,” said Esther Lapointe, the director of Groupe Femmes, Politique et Démocratie. “Look at what is happening the United States,” she added, referring to the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion.
A gathering by the Groupe femmes, politique et démocratie in 2018. (Submitted by Esther Lapointe/Radio-Canada Archives)
Lapointe’s group is a nonpartisan organization that has, every year since 2016, proposed a parity bill at the National Assembly that would ensure 40 to 60 per cent of party candidates be women. The group was inspired by Quebec suffragettes who requested the right of women to vote every year for 14 years until it was achieved in 1940.
“It would help prevent setbacks and women could feel more legitimate in running for office,” Lapointe said of a parity law.
Gender bias in 2018 election coverage
The way Catherine Dorion revealed she would be leaving public office was vintage Dorion: a video of herself posted to Facebook reading a letter to her riding as fellow Q.S. MNA Sol Zanetti strummed a guitar next to her.
The video also featured a clip of the late Gérald Godin, the Quebec poet and politician. Toward the end, the camera pans to a stack of printed articles with headlines about her in French: “Catherine Dorion has no class,” “End the Dorionmania,” “How old is Catherine Dorion?” “The Dorion show,” “Dorion caricatures politics.”
In interviews afterward, Dorion, who is 39, explained she wanted to dedicate herself to art and advocate for political causes through creative work.
“All these four years I spent in the National Assembly were like a really, really interesting experience and all the things I lived there, I would never have chosen not to live them,” she told CBC Daybreak host Sean Henry.
“But what I wanted to do there, I think I’ve done it.”
In the first half of her mandate, when the sensational headlines about the ways she stood out piled on, “it was really hard for me to just stay standing,” Dorion said.
Catherine Dorion printed a pile of Quebecor media headlines about her and showed them in the video announcing her departure. (Catherine Dorion/Facebook)
Melanee Thomas, an associate professor at the University of Calgary whose research focuses on gender-based political inequality, says women in politics are more likely than their male counterparts to encounter a type of animosity that goes beyond partisanship, whether through violent threats on social media or repeated criticism about who they are rather than what they do.
“It is deliberately designed to keep them from doing their job.… and it is motivated by sexism,” Thomas said in an interview. “It’s designed to torment them and to suck up mental energy, and make it harder.”
In the last provincial election, though there were nearly as many female candidates as male candidates, a study published last summer in the Canadian Journal of Political Science found Quebec news media mentioned the women 12 times less often than men.
‘I need to exist outside of politics’
Parti Québécois MNA Véronique Hivon appeared on Radio-Canada’s Tout le monde en parle after she announced she would not be running again this year. (Karine Dufour/Radio-Canada)
Days after Dorion’s video, Véronique Hivon, a mainstay in Quebec provincial politics for more than a decade, also announced her exit.
With three other women MNAs from different parties, Hivon helped create Quebec’s new court specialized in sexual violence and domestic violence in just under four years.
She also helped draft Quebec’s legislation on medical aid in dying and led a highly-praised commission on end-of-life care called “dying with dignity.”
“I need to exist outside of politics,” Hivon, 52, said at the news conference she held to announce her departure after 14 years as the MNA for Joliette, a riding in the Lanaudière region north of Montreal.
“You know, politics isn’t a normal life,” she said, adding that she’s looking for “freedom and normality” in stepping down.
Thomas is wary of seeing every departure of a female politician as them being “pushed out” because of the hostility directed at them. Doing so would be denying them “agency and strategic decision-making.” Plus, not all politicians plan on spending their entire working lives in politics, she said.
“My first question is, what other things do they have going on? What are the things they would rather do?”
Melanee Thomas is an associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary. (David Bell/CBC)
In 2019, when Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée said he would step down after the party’s dismal election results, Hivon announced she wouldn’t join the leadership race, citing family reasons.
Hivon may have sidestepped a tricky mandate. Though she was seen as an obvious choice to revitalize the party, women are often only offered party leadership opportunities when their party’s in trouble, said Thomas.
The PQ has been polling at 10 per cent of the vote, finding itself fifth among the province’s six main parties, below the Quebec Conservative Party, which has enjoyed something of a revival in recent months, at 14 per cent, according to polling aggregator qc125.com.
“When times are good and your party is popular and it looks like you’re going to win, this is where parties just don’t pick women in that context,” Thomas said.
Putting yourself aside
Dominique Anglade, the first Black person at the helm of a major political party in the province, finds herself in that position as Quebec Liberal Party support has slumped to 18 per cent, while the CAQ has a whopping 42 per cent.
In an interview with La Presse canadienne last month, the leader of the Official Opposition denounced a culture of double standards in the legislature, calling Premier François Legault “paternalistic.”
Quebec Liberal Party leader Dominique Anglade says women have not fared well in the current CAQ cabinet. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)
Anglade said that though she tries to ignore the differences in the way she is treated, she lives with the notion that women in politics can be no less than perfect, so she’s always careful about what she says.
“That reflex, it limits you in everything you can be, in everything you can say, in the way you express yourself,” she said in the interview. “It prevents you from being who you really are.”
Anglade also noted Legault pushed three women out of his cabinet, MarieChantal Chassé, Sylvie D’Amours et Marie-Ève Proulx, while other male ministers made several missteps and did not lose their positions. Rumours that Chassé would also not be running again have circulated, although she has not yet made any announcement.
Arash Abizadeh, a political theorist at McGill University, says more politicians may be faced with this internal conflict as a greater plurality of voices are elected. But once inside Canada’s rigid political institutions, it’s easy to see there’s still progress to be made.
“Part of the problem is that we’re operating in a political system that has been developed a couple of hundred years ago. And it’s not necessarily the most well-adapted to the current circumstances that we face,” Abizadeh said.
Despite setbacks over the past 50 years, women have gone from representing one per cent of National Assembly seats to 44 per cent.
Thomas, from the women in politics group, is encouraged by concerted efforts the four main political parties are making to recruit female candidates. The CAQ is the only party of the four not to have committed to supporting a parity law but has told the group it would once again aim for parity in its candidates this year.
What she wants to see next, though, is for parties to recruit outside of elite circles, and for debates in the National Assembly to be more respectful.
“We can never take progress for granted,” Thomas said.
Affecting change from within or outside
Two of Dorion’s main causes before the end of her mandate have been pushing for a tramway in Quebec City, where public transit and mobility in general are in crisis, and for the reform of the status of artist in the province.
When she said she would be leaving, Dorion was asked by several interviewers about whether it is better to affect change from the “inside” or from outside of politics.
“Whether I have more power as an MNA or not, a lot of people in politics can ask themselves that question,” Dorion told Radio-Canada’s Téléjournal host Patrice Roy. “Having power is not what I’m looking for.”
She said she wants to see more people who don’t fit politics’ rigid mould access its institutions.
“There will be others, who talk loud and dress different,” she said, laughing. “I can’t stay forever, telling myself I’m the only one.”
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
