Who are you going to vote for? Here is a list of the major political parties and some information to help you make your voting decision. Happy voting!

Jean Charest, the current leader of the Liberal Party, is hoping to achieve another victory in Quebec. Last election, he barely held onto his Sherbrooke seat as he has been dubbed the “most disliked leader in Quebec’s history.” Charest has been focusing on the economy and how his party will be able to tackle the world financial crisis. The other major issue is the fact that there are many new immigrants who do not know French and the French language is losing its place in the province. Charest welcomes the new immigrants and diverse languages and will not reopen the language debates.

Mario Dumont, the leader of the ADQ Party, is hoping to build upon his success in 2007 where he won 41 seats, causing Charest’s party to form a minority government. Dumont is a far more conservative leader whose party advocates autonomy of Quebec within Canada. His immigration policy is stricter than that of Charest. He advocates reasonable accommodation for immigrants although he insists that he will not allow immigrants to interfere with Quebec’s culture, values, and language. As well, his policies towards topics such as in-vetro fertilization are much more conservative than the Liberal Party in that he believes this is a degrading procedure and should not be funded. The ADQ Party was dealt a major blow recently, when two of its members defected to the Liberal Party.

Pauline Marois is the current PQ leader. The PQ party finished in 3rd place in the last election and is looking to rebuild itself under Marois. Marois is the leading separatist in Quebec, advocating sovereignty for the province of Quebec. Preservation of the French language and identity is one of the largest aspects of the party’s platform and Marois wants immigrants to be able to show an “appropriate” working knowledge of the French language. The PQ was criticized for creating a divide between the English speaking Quebecers and the Francophones as she has explicitly said, “No,” to bilingualism in Quebec.

Guy Rainville, the leader of the Green Party in Quebec, is hoping to expand his party’s membership and is hoping to finally win a seat in the upcoming election. With nearly 4% of the popular vote in the last election, this is a realistic goal. The party promotes Green values and has a number of policies it hopes to implement in order to help the environment.

Lastly, the Quebec Solidaire party, created in 2006, hopes to become more recognized in the upcoming election. Founded on sovereignty, feminism, social equality, pluralism, and ecology, this party also received nearly 4% of the popular vote in 2007. The party chooses to have no official leader, rather, they have two spokespeople, Francoise David and Amir Khadir. The party hopes to create an economic shift in Quebec to reduce the influence of multinational companies and allow for local businesses to prosper.

It is a privilege to vote. On December 8, 2008, make your opinion count.

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Tags: 2008, adq, bloc, information, liberal, pq, quebec, solidaire, vote

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 1:48 am and is filed under Provincial Election. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.