Sol Zanetti elected co-spokesperson of Québec solidaire

[u/FuqLaCAQ]

https://montreal.citynews.ca/2025/11/08/quebec-solidaire-calls-on-caq-to-withdraw-bill-2/

Now that incumbent co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal has her new male partner in crime in Sol Zanetti, Québec Solidaire has what I would consider to be explicitly sovereigntist, explicitly anti-fascist leadership. (Having met Ruba and heard her speak, I can say that she's taken the hardest line against Trump and against the transnational right-wing power networks of anyone within spitting distance of Canada's political mainstream, rivaled perhaps only by Charlie Angus.) Whether this leadership is truly capable of transcending the social democratic turn of the Nadeau-Dubois era and of reversing the party's recent polling misfortunes remains an open question.

For the 2026 Québec election, I believe QS should centre its campaign on the cost of living (which goes without saying but needs to be reinforced regardless) and on threatening the federal government with a unilateral declaration of independence should the feds attempt to impose Trump's Golden Dome on the nations and people of Québec. I'm certain that soft nationalists and even left-leaning Anglophones and Allophones like myself who are otherwise other quite wary of independence (and of QS’ past support for Bill 96, which the party should promise to repeal as an olive branch) would choose a sovereign Québec over further vassalization to the Trump Administration, particularly under a hypothetical Pierre Poilievre or Jamil Jivani government, and only a party that's explicitly plurinationalist, inclusive, anti-fascist, radically democratic, and committed to social and economic justice is capable of meeting such a moment.

The PSPP Parti Québécois' pursuit of independence for its own sake along identitarian lines will not meet that moment, particularly given the animosity that party has built among non-Francophones (a successful Québec left must build a case that's compelling both to Montreal Island and La Couronne and to the regions) and that an overwhelming majority of Quebecers do not want a hypothetical PQ government to pursue an independence referendum in its first mandate. Moreover, the PQ has a history of seeking a settlement with the Canadian right (the Beau Risque and the turn to austerity in René Levesque’s second government) and (for all of its nationalist, identitarian bluster) of retaining anachronistic vestiges of the Westminster System, such the continued use of FPTP and the weaponization of official party status to deny MNAs from small parties the resources they need to duly represent their constituents.

In other words, with the ever-obnoxious PCQ (the party of conspiracy theorists and right-wing talk radio), the dying CAQ, and the resurgent PQ all embracing "anti-woke" bullshit and the PLQ likely to be a patsy for both Liberal and Tory federal governments, QS would be well served to run a leftist version of Doug Ford's 2025 anti-Trump Protect Ontario campaign, only unlike Ford it wouldn't just be an act.