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QUEBEC COMMUNISTS SET AMBITIOUS AGENDA
By Liz Rowley
(This article is from the Jan. 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
MONTREAL - On Dec. 3-5, the Parti communiste du Quebec held its first Convention in almost ten years, and by every benchmark it was a roaring success!
Close to 50 delegates and guests packed the two motor hotels where the convention split its working time. Delegates came from Québec City, Joliette, and Montreal, spanning the workforce from computer specialists and health care workers to seamen, students and professors.
Young and old, men and women, delegates were active on the convention floor and in the hallways between sessions, debating ideas and proposals in four or five different languages.
"We are internationalists in every sense!" said Antonio, laughing at the animated discussions he had helped facilitate by doing much of the translation and interpreting from French into English and Spanish. Giota played the same tri-lingual role for delegates from Montreal's Belogiannis Club, the PCQ's large and growing Greek-speaking section.
That enthusiasm carried over the three days of work, including extensive amending and adoption of convention documents: the PCQ constitution; Main Political Resolution; Plan of Work; Reports on Work in the Labour Movement, the Social Movements, and the Peace Solidarity Movements; Special Resolution on the End of the Crisis in the PCQ; and on changing the name of the newspaper. The convention also adopted an ambitious budget and a proposal to put an organizer on staff early in the New Year.
A short opening address by André Parizeau, on behalf of the outgoing National Committee, set the tone when he welcomed delegates and guests, and spoke about the PCQ's role in Quebec as a principled force for unity, for struggle, and for social advance for the working class and working people.
The extensive pre-convention discussion on almost 100 pages of documents had been very sharp and positive, he said, resulting in dozens of amendments to consider, indicating the Party's theoretical and political rigour and strength.
The crisis in the PCQ created by Malek Khouri and John Manolis last summer is behind the party now, Parizeau said, urging delegates to dig into the work and to set a course that will help the party continue to build and grow.
"We have already recruited ten new members in the last four months," he said, noting the National Committee's target of a further 20 new members by December 2000. "We aim high! But we can get it, I'm sure of it!" he told People's Voice in an interview.
The Convention also voted to substantially increase the circulation of La Nouvelle Forge, and to change the paper's name.
"This is a newspaper with a recognizable history, which is a good history, but it's now part of the past. It's time to move on," said one delegate.
"We're going to invite our readers, over the next months, to make their suggestions," said Parizeau, "and then we'll decide on the new name next spring."
Delegates debated and then adopted a budget for the coming year. Well aware of the heavy load it will put on each member and on the incoming National Committee, they were adamant about the need for a full time organizer.
"We can't continue putting out a national newspaper, issuing literature and organizing campaigns without any staff at all," said one.
"Our organization is too big now, with clubs in two cities and our languages. We have to work collectively, and we have to have an organizer to make sure we do all the work we need to do, and for our clubs to grow," said a delegate from the Belogiannis Club.
Delegates were delighted to hear that the CPC Central Committee had pledged last spring to make the fight for a Quebec Organizer a top priority in 2000.
"This convention, and the decisions taken here to put an organizer on staff, will have the support of Communists across Canada," said CPC Leader Miguel Figueroa. "We've been waiting for this day for a long time. I think you will see members and friends from all parts of Canada expressing their full support and looking for the best, most effective ways to express their solidarity. We'll be coming with some ideas and suggestions early in the New Year to speed things along."
One of the first items of convention business was to re-establish ties to the Communist Party of Canada severed almost ten years ago. Since May 1997, Communists in Quebec have restored those ties "in life" pending this constitutional convention. Once again, members of the PCQ will also be members of the Communist Party of Canada according to the PCQ Constitution, a development warmly welcomed by Figueroa.
"We are very pleased that the relationship that the PCQ has decided it wants to have with us is one in which members of the PCQ will also be members of the CPC. We think this change in the PCQ constitution will help to strengthen the work of both the CPC and the PCQ," he said.
The constitutional changes stipulate that the PCQ has complete control over its policies and structures within Quebec as decided by the National Convention and the National Committee. The PCQ will also nominate members to the CPC Central Committee, to be elected at the party's next Central Convention a year from now.
A new National Committee of nine, including two women, was elected. The NC elected an Executive of four, including a trade union activist and a lawyer along with newly-elected Party President (and secretary/organizer) André Parizeau, and re-elected Party Leader (with Elections Quebec) André Cloutier.
At the Convention's close, delegates felt the PCQ had emerged from the Convention stronger and more united. One had two friends waiting back home in Joliette for a report on the convention.
"I'm going home to sign them up!" he said. "The PCQ is the place to be."
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