Alexandre Boulerice, Quebec’s only remaining federal NDP MP, announced on Monday morning his intention to leave the party and run provincially for Québec Solidaire.
“I hope there will be some progressists or left-wing people in the Parliament of Canada, and I will be happy when Quebec will be sovereign to work with them for a better North America,” Boulerice said.
He made the announcement from his current federal riding of RosemontâLa Petite-Patrie, which he’s held since 2011. He was flanked by Québec Solidaire’s co-spokespersons Ruba Ghazal and Sol Zanetti, who welcomed him into the left-leaning and sovereigntist party.
Zanetti says his party’s new recruit represents a strong endorsement of its pro-independence platform.
“Itâs very good and important news,” said Ghazal. “Not only for Québec Solidaire, but also for Quebecers. We need progressive people like Alexandre.”
Boulerice said he will immediately sit as an Independent and will formally resign the day before the provincial campaign is called.
He confirmed he would run in Montreal in the riding of Gouin, which overlaps with his federal riding. Gouin is the current riding of former co-spokesperson for Québec Solidaire Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, who has said he will leave politics at the end of his mandate.
The Gouin riding has consistently voted Québec Solidaire since 2012, but the party has lagged in the polls recently. Earlier this month, poll aggregator Qc125 showed the party polling at around eight per cent of the vote, behind all other major parties.
Boulerice said he’s not concerned about polls, though, and doesn’t let them determine his political actions.
For Boulerice, this move is a sort of homecoming, he said. And it will allow him to continue representing his political values as a progressist and humanist â values he feels are aligned with Québec Solidaire, which focuses on public services, workers’ rights and women’s rights.
Québec Solidaire was founded 20 years ago, with the merger of several progressive provincial parties, some of whose roots trace back to a disbanded Quebec wing of the NDP.
The departure of Boulerice is a major blow to the federal NDP, which had relied on him to “reconnect with progressives in Quebec.” As the party’s deputy leader since 2019, he was considered by some to be “Quebec’s best-known MP.”
Without him, the party will hold only five seats out of a total of 343 in the House of Commons. Those five seats are all west of Ontario.
When Boulerice was asked how he felt to essentially “erase the NDP from the province,” he responded that sometimes in the history of a party, there are ups and downs. But he said he has faith in new NDP Leader Avi Lewis’s ability to “reconnect with the hearts and minds of Quebecers.”
Boulerice had expressed interest in making the leap to provincial politics prior to Lewis’s NDP leadership win last month. At a recent byelection event, Lewis admitted he’d asked Boulerice to “please stay.”
Following the Monday morning announcement, Lewis released a statement in which he expressed his “immense respect” for Boulerice, whom he said had been an “exceptional representative for the people of RosemontâLa Petite-Patrie ⦠standing up for workers, for affordability, and for action on the climate crisis” for the past 15 years.
“This is a principled move by Alexandre to fight for progressive values in a new terrain,” he said.
NDP MP’s switch to Quebec provincial politics ‘a move of principle,’ Lewis says
Boulerice was the last remaining Quebec MP from Jack Layton’s 2011 “Orange Wave,” which catapulted the party to official Opposition status in the House of Commons.
Québec Solidaire would love to see a repeat of that success at the October provincial elections.
Zanetti said on Monday that since Boulerice has already been part of an Orange Wave, “why not [do] another one?”
“Heâs giving us a lot of hope,” he said.
Ghazal hinted on Monday that there will be more announcements coming from Québec Solidaire, as the party aims to grow its presence at Quebec’s National Assembly this fall.
