A provincial election was called here last week, which would be the equivalent of state elections in the USA. It will be held on March 26, 2007, and the campaigns have obviously begun. There are 3 major political parties in Quebec: The Liberals, the “Parti Quebecois”, and the ADQ, which is an acronym for “Action Democratique du Quebec”. There are also a few smaller parties, like the Marxist-Leninists and the Green Party, who know they won’t win, but they provide for some entertainment and distraction.

The streetlamps and telephone poles on most Montreal streets, even my small residential one-way avenue near the railroad tracks, are covered with gigantic full-colour, glossy, unbiodegradable campaign placards. Most placards display the party slogan and a larger than life mugshot of the local ridings’ candidate, even though most candidates are completely unrecognizable due to the fact that not many people follow provincial politics – and I can be counted among that majority.

As I was taking my daily walk, I noticed the new campaign posters and how ugly and wasteful they are, when I suddenly got interested in politics. What interested me were the posters of our separatist party, called the “Parti Quebecois”, which did not feature faces or photos of any kind, but only campaign slogans, in French of course.

Each “Parti Quebecois” poster featured one of four different campaign slogans, but the one that caught my eye had a leafy green background with the slogan, “Reconstruisons UN QUÉBEC PLUS VERT”, which translates as “Let us rebuild a greener Quebec”.

I have never really been interested or involved in politics, besides working as a poll clerk, a position for which I have already been recruited for the upcoming election. I believe that no matter what good intentions a politician has, it is difficult to single out the righteous candidates who really want to serve the public good, and in the end he/she will eventually be corrupted and have to be voted out of office. The problem, in my politically uneducated mind, is not getting politicians into office, but rather ensuring that they do their job properly and somehow getting them out of office before they are completely corrupt.

Since I am getting more directly involved in my own food supply and the environment, it interested me that a major political party would actually list the environment as one of their priorities. I visited the website of this environmentally-interested party, who also happen to be separatists (this means they want Quebec to be an independant state, like Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan), and sadly found out that this party does not hold the Anglophone population, to which I belong, in very high regard. There are more than 600,000 English-speaking people in Quebec, and this major political party does not have any English on their website. Sad. Not completely unexpected, but sad.

I called the PQ headquarters and spoke with an official in the “information” department. She informed me that indeed, there was no English on their website, but they did plan to have some on there “in the next few days”, but she couldn’t say when that may happen. I asked if they had a press release or document that described, in English, what their stance on the environment was. I was informed again that no such document exists in English. This pissed me off enough to not want to vote for the PQ.

I guess I should read their environmental manifesto, in French, and see where they stand. Could I be happy in a unilingual French Quebec that separated from Canada if they really were going to rebuild a greener Quebec? Would this new separatist government actually abolish CAFOs? Will they create more bicycle lanes in my city? Will they ban all “inorganic” and GMO foods, resulting in the obsolescence of the term “organic” or whatever new terms the industry comes up with to get our money in their bank accounts with complete disregard for our health or our natural resources? Would I choose this option if it meant giving up my rights as an English speaker? I don’t have an answer yet, but I hope to have one by March 26.

Then, just for fun, I visited the website of the Liberal Party, which, like its’ separatist nemesis, was also lacking an English version of their website. I telephoned their HQ and was told by a Liberal Party official representative that indeed, there was no English version of their website, but there are some English texts scattered throughout the site. I clicked on “Equipe”, the French word for “team”, which hopefully many Quebec Anglophones will recognize from watching hockey games every Saturday night. Clicking on “Equipe” brought me to a page with thumbnail photos of 9 candidates for the Liberals. Of those 9 bios, only 5 had been translated into English, and not very well. This wasn’t looking good.

I’m writing this pretty late at night, so I won’t finish my research right now. I do promise, however, to find out as much as I can from the French versions of each party’s website and to call each party and get an official statement on their party’s environmental agenda.

Tune in next week for my report.