Here's a little lore drop for you all: the very first conversation my life partner and I had, all the way back in 2011 over some really stale coffee on a dreary afternoon, was about the federal NDP leadership convention. Suffice to say, I've been paying attention to federal NDP politics for a long time and (among other activities) I supported and voted for Laverdière before her retirement when I still lived in her riding. I'm used to the idea of a federal NDP presence in Québec – they've had a tangible political presence here since I came of voting age.

Based on the disastrous results of the last federal elections (we only have one orange MP in the whole province, Alexandre Boulerice, and he's currently the only orange guy east of Winnipeg), I was very curious about the party's future now that Jagmeet Singh stepped down and the NDP have lost official party status (kind of a big deal). Naturally, I tuned into the Montréal NDP leadership debate to get an idea of where the party is going.

A couple of hours later, and we have our heading: nowhere.

Or, at least, nowhere in Québec.

Let's back up just a second: getting a working URL to the debate's livestream was not an easy task. The NDP website was throwing 504 nginx errors and the party's bsky and YouTube accounts haven't been updated in six or seven months. Someone on Mastodon finally sent me a bootleg (?) YouTube link to the English livestream. I was later sent a link to the French one, which was...

I'm going to get this out of the way right away: Yeah. The French was BAD. Unsatisfactory at times bordering on insulting. I saw a handful of anglo journalists from Ontario reacting on bsky along the lines of "it's nice that they at least made the effort" and frankly I just live on another planet. I'd rather listen to interpreters flawlessly translate English into French than have the tone and content of the debate devolve into a halting conversation that, when comprehensible, even primary schoolers would find insipid. And when the moderator tried encouraging the politicians to respect the rules and answer the questions in French, well, for example, Rob Ashton visibly rolled his eyes on camera at the request. Is eye rolling a "nice" "effort" ? 🙃

This doesn't just insult Québec: this touches upon acadien.ne.s in New Brunswick and the rest of the Maritimes, franco-ontarians, and francophones all over the other territories and provinces. Frankly, it affects any speaker of a language that isn't English. Since francophones are one of the country's largest linguistic minorities (considering that Québec is roughly 20% of Canada's population), well, good luck if your linguistic minority doesn't have the same kind of demographic voting power as Québs, you know?

But also, I've lived in this world long enough to know that anglo Canadians who don't speak French is hardly newsworthy or even an interesting factoid.

(I want to make sure I am excruciatingly clear on this point: I have a lot of respect for Indigenous people who — like candidate Tanille Johnston of the We Wai Kai nation — have been working on keeping their Indigenous languages alive. I really do believe that rising tides raise all ships: linguistic inclusion is not a zero sum game.)

So, moving on. At least, the leadership candidates have something to say about Québec and why they're still relevant to Québec voters, even without official party status, right?

Right?

...Right?

Well.

There was, of course, some good stuff mentioned. Such as the need for proportional representation and the abolition of first-past-the-post voting (I agree). The need for public grocery stores (I agree). The need for way more coop and public housing. (I agree.) The need for free secondary education. (I agree, carré rouge toujours!!!)

But... was there stuff that speaks to the political situation in Québec? Errr... I heard quite a bit about the Albertan and BC provincial NDP (Rachel Notley was name-dropped at least once), but I don't think I heard a single Québec-specific talking point. I did not hear a convincing explanation for what the vision is for engaging Québec voters and getting them back on board with the orange party. I did not hear a single candidate speak to the day to day reality of the Montréal working-class person who can't afford groceries, can't pay rent because it's effectively doubled since 2019, and can't even get an Uber to work because our transit workers have been on strike for a month at time of writing.

I know the francophone reporters and other regular suspects examining this debate are going to be leaning sharply on how the French language was butchered throughout the evening. (And, obviously, I agree: it's bad!) But at this point it's almost a tangent that distracts from the fact that the federal NDP candidates evidently don't have a game plan when it comes to Québec. It should be a no-brainer that a pro-labour, pro-student, pro-Indigenous, pro-LGBTQIA+, pro-diversity, pro-social-safety-nets leftist social democrat party has a strong presence in Québec. And yet.

And yet! The federal oranges have become the parties of BC and Alberta, and seem quite content with that, despite only holding 7 out of 343 seats in the House of Commons. I guess they're happy with what they're doing.

Maybe I expected too much from a leadership debate.

My bsky posts touching on the debate:

• Nov 27, 2025 at 7:34 PM "It will never stop being shocking how poorly Anglo politicians speak French during French-language debates. Honestly, I would rather they just speak in English and give up the pretence of inclusion towards French speakers."
• Nov 27, 2025 at 7:55 PM "Bon, je ferme le live du débat des cheffes du NDP. J'en peux plus." (This was a lie I went right back because I am a masochist.)
• Nov 27, 2025 at 8:08 PM "This is actually a skit"
• Nov 27, 2025 at 8:24 PM (Quoted above)
• Nov 27, 2025 at 8:29 PM (Quoted above, though there are a few extra posts below)
• Nov 27, 2025 at 8:51 PM "I respect Rachel's work a whole lot, but she and I saw something so different tonight. I've been following NDP politics since 2010, and tonight, the aspiring Federal NDP leadership convincingly seemed to wash their hands of Québec. Tonally, content-wise, the messaging, was so bizarre."
• Nov 27, 2025 at 8:54 PM (Quoted above)