2023-05-21 16:42:11
Involved for a decade in the NDP, Jérémy Gabriel is now an activist for the Bloc Québécois. Secularism, language, Pauline Marois and even the Supreme Court are among the reasons that led him to espouse the cause of independence.
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“It was by dint of being an activist in a federalist party that I realized how sovereigntist I was. There are many sovereignists for whom this is the case,” he said in an interview at the Bloc convention in Drummondville.
Like many Quebecers, young Jérémy was bewitched by the orange wave that swept over the province in 2011. Initially an activist then political attaché in the 2019 elections, he wanted to make the leap as a candidate for the 2021 elections, an adventure which fell into the water. In a publication on his social networks at the time, he announced that all of this was only “a postponement”.
Almost two years later, the main interested party takes a harder look at the party with which the “disagreement” was growing, “especially” because of his convictions on secularism.
“In the NDP there is a big rejection of that,” he believes. “I have been called xenophobic, racist and so on.”
The young man who calls himself “deeply leftist” was also once morest what he describes as “totalitarianism at the level of ideas”. “We don’t really accept diverging from the party line, and that didn’t suit me.”
Like former New Democrat Pierre Nantel and other Québec solidaire activists, working for the NDP did not prevent Jérémy Gabriel from secretly espousing the idea of an independent Québec.
It is to Pauline Marois that he attributes the origin of his feelings.
When he was around ten years old, Jérémy Gabriel went to the National Assembly, where he received a fleur-de-lis badge from the leader of the official opposition at the time.
“She knelt down and she said to me: ‘Jérémy, I know that you travel a lot and I want you to be proud of your origins, so wear your fleur-de-lis on you wherever you go'”, says- he.
“I dragged her everywhere I went in the world and that’s what made me become a sovereignist over time.”
The pro-independence seed was planted, but Jérémy Gabriel evokes another completely unexpected and very personal reason that led to the “click”: the decision of the Supreme Court in favor of Mike Ward, which occurred in October 2021, shortly following his misadventure in the federal election.
“It’s a shame, but that’s really what happened,” he says.
“On a personal note, I did not take it, but my political interpretation of this judgment is that the Supreme Court is a foreign court, it interprets the Quebec charter from the outside and its interpretation is erroneous”, claims Jeremy Gabriel.
In his mind, it is “completely” clear that the Supreme Court “erred” and that a Quebec Supreme Court would have agreed with him, in particular because of the decisions favorable to his case from the highest court in Quebec, the Cour Appeals of Quebec, and the Human Rights Tribunal.
“Social justice, gender equality, the fight once morest poverty is very important to me,” explained Jérémy Gabriel.
Today, Quebec is “at a crossroads in terms of language and immigration,” he added, and he would like “an integration model that will ensure that no matter if someone one comes from elsewhere or from here, that he succeeds in having his full freedom.
“We will have no choice but to return to this sovereigntist/federalist political axis”, he thinks, “because it is either the loss of political power and assimilation in Canada, or the emancipation of our nation, our people. The choice between the two is easy to make when you are a lover of Quebec.”
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