Montreal- Darine Houmani

Alex Tyrrell, leader of the Green Party of Quebec since 2013 and a candidate in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, is campaigning on an eco-socialist platform that combines environmental protection with social justice. In this interview with Sadaonline, he discusses the party's priorities and proposals to address the rising cost of living and to tackle rising living costs, strengthen public services, and defend cultural diversity, alongside its positions on immigration, racial profiling, and militarization.

He says: “Whether we are inside or outside the National Assembly, we will do everything that we can to represent the people that voted for us.”

And “why should we, at a time when the United States is engaged in a trade war that is having deep economic consequences on the country, why would we take the limited funds that we have and invest them in militarism on the request of the United States when people are losing their jobs?

And he defines his position on Israel: “we need to stop doing business with the genocidal state, and any continued trade between Quebec and Israel is only going to serve to further enable Israel to continue conducting this genocide.”

***

You have described yourself as a progressive alternative to the Liberals in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. What would you do differently for the residents, and what would be your first local priority if elected?

Well, if elected in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, I would be a stronger voice for the community because, for many decades, the district has been represented by the Liberals, who have really, in their time in government, installed austerity measures, taken decisions against the environment and have at times failed to stand up for the diverse communities of Montreal, including the Anglophone community.

I'm running there because that's the district that has the highest level of support for the Green Party. We've received as much as 15% of the votes in previous elections.

It's also an interesting mix of many different cultures from all over the world that converge in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. I also have family roots dating back three generations in the district, and I've lived there for many years myself.

And my first priority for the community, if elected, is to improve public transport because the western part of NDG is not sufficiently served by public transport, and we'd like to build a metro line—the pink line—that would bring the metro to the western part of the district.

Regarding your political vision, you describe your party as eco-socialist. What does that mean in practical terms for someone worried about rent, groceries, and job security?

Eco-socialism for us means taking care of the environment, but also the population at the same time. Making sure that everybody has access to quality healthcare and education. Making sure that there's a social safety net in place where nobody is left behind.

Of course, the affordability crisis is central to that. So, some of the things that we're proposing for the election include reducing rent by 20% over four years.

We want to bring down the cost of housing. And despite the fact that we're in this affordability crisis, all the other parties are proposing to increase rent.

We think that things should go in the opposite direction. We already have some rent control mechanisms. We want to mandate that it goes down by 5% per year for four years.

We want to form more cooperative housing. If there are renters that are in an apartment building and they want to organize to purchase the building and form a cooperative, we would give them the power to expropriate those landlords with compensation, and the Quebec government would help provide capital, loans to be able to do that.

We also want to create a public network of grocery stores, including the distribution network. So really, from the farmer to the plate, having groceries being moved on public infrastructure. And we expect that this would bring the price down by about 30%.

Of course, a longstanding position of the Green Party of Quebec is to have free public transport so that we can liberate people from their car payments, from the burden of having to buy gasoline just to get to work and to take out loans towards car companies. For us, it's about merging the environment, affordability, social justice.

What's the first change you will make to help people access primary healthcare and alleviate the pressure on emergency rooms?

Healthcare is at a crisis point, especially with the aging population, and the state is not fulfilling its side of the social contract. So often there are people who walk into hospitals and clinics, and there are not doctors and nurses there to take care of them.

We need to reinvest in the public healthcare system to match the aging demographics. Over the past few years, we've had clinics, frontline clinics, close, pushing more people to the emergency room. And people need to have access to care quickly because there are so many health problems, whether it's physical health or mental health, that, if they're addressed quickly, you can avoid spiraling into something more severe.

If people don't have quick, easy, and cost-free access to healthcare when they need it, then it can end up becoming a lot more expensive and burdensome in the future.

All these promises and projects need funding. Where will the funding come from if revenues are insufficient, or do you think that there are revenues but they are going elsewhere?

Well, it's a combination of both.

On the revenue side, people in Quebec often have the impression, rightly so, that people are very taxed, right?

The middle class particularly. Like, somebody who makes $75,000 or $80,000 per year pays a huge amount of tax. And one of the things is that the tax brackets have not increased with inflation.

20 years ago, $80,000 was a substantial salary. Today, it's not really that much, yet we're paying the same percentage as 20 years ago. We don't want to tax the middle class more. We want to go after the money that's above the middle class. The people that are making $100,000 and more need to pay their fair share, and especially the people at the top of that. The top 2% of the wealthiest people in the province need to pay their fair share.

There are so many loopholes. For example, the fact that capital gains are not taxed at the same rate as earned income. And the wealthier people are, the more ways they tend to have to hide money or to place it in different companies and that sort of thing. So definitely the top 2%, the big corporations, the mining companies, the multinationals all need to pay their fair share.

Quebec is a rich society, and there's no reason that we can't provide doctors and hospitals. That we have children going to school that don't have qualified teachers to take care of them. Quebec is a rich society. And it comes down to a question of priorities.

There are also doubts surrounding road improvement projects. Huge sums are being spent on specific projects while the entire city suffers from poor roads riddled with potholes. What do you think?

Potholes are very frustrating, and a lot of people look at the potholes and they say, “the government appears to be dysfunctional. How can it be that we can have thousands and thousands of people driving down a road with massive holes in it, and that there's nobody there to fix it?” So I think that that is a huge problem.

People want cities that function. Meanwhile, the overreliance on the private automobile increases the cost of road maintenance.

Not only that, but the reliance on automobiles forces people to spend an average of $10,000 per year on a vehicle.

Now, with the increased fuel prices, it's going to rise even more. So that's why, at the Green Party, we want to take some of that money for those big projects and really put it into public transit and expand all of the metro lines and build a pink metro line across the city of Montreal, build metros in Quebec City and Gatineau, really have a public transport revolution so that we can bring down the road maintenance costs. We can have a positive impact on people's family budgets by not obliging them to purchase a vehicle.

Getting people to make the switch to public transit will advantage even the people who want to stay in their cars because there'll be less traffic.

You support repeal of Bill 21 and laws that prohibit religious symbols and restrict the practice of religious rights. How do you assess the impact of these laws on employment opportunities and the sense of belonging of religious minorities?

For far too long in Quebec politics, the minority communities of this province have been a target of right-wing nationalist policies that really seek to divide the population on cultural, religious, and ethnic lines. And the Green Party of Quebec stands strongly in opposition to all of those so-called secularism laws that really just remove rights and seek to divide the population.

I believe that we're the only party that's committed to repealing Bill 21 and Bill 9 and all of these different laws that have been passed over the last few years that restrict liberties. I think that those laws send absolutely the wrong message about Quebec's inclusiveness. It's an embarrassment for Quebec on the international stage, and it's an embarrassment to me as a Quebecker.

At the Green Party of Quebec, we feel very strongly that those laws were a step in the absolute wrong direction, and that they need to be repealed, and that the Quebec government needs to recognize that cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity are big strengths of the province, not weaknesses.

We need to work together to build a multicultural society where everybody has their place.

What immigration policies do you support, and what specific changes would you make to help newcomers overcome barriers to employment and work in their fields of expertise?

The Green Party of Quebec is pro-immigration. And to address the employment issue, well, there are a lot of people who come to Quebec expecting to be able to practice their profession, whether it's medicine or engineering or architecture, many different fields. But unfortunately, often when they get here, they find that the professional orders make it very difficult to get accredited to be able to practice here. And the professional orders have a vested interest in limiting the number of people that can practice a given profession. The Quebec government needs to take legislative action to stop these professional orders from blocking people who are qualified from practicing their profession.

That's a huge injustice. You know, the number of times that we take a taxi, and the person is an engineer and they're driving the taxi or the Uber instead, that's really a waste of talent. We need to make sure that people can excel to their full potential. And another important thing for us on immigration is, we have a lot of temporary foreign workers that have come to Quebec, particularly for agriculture.

This program has been compared to modern-day slavery.

And the workers are often not allowed to change employer once they get here, which opens the door to a lot of abuse.

They also don't have a path to Canadian citizenship. At the Green Party of Quebec, we want to give the temporary foreign workers a path to obtaining Canadian citizenship after working three seasons in the agricultural industry. And we think it's a huge injustice that we're bringing people here to work in these fields and then sending them back home with no chance of being able to join Canadian society.

That's another important change that we would like to make.

Following allegations concerning officers in Montreal North, you called for independent investigations. What specific reforms will you introduce to address racial profiling in general?

Racial profiling is a huge injustice in Montreal and in Quebec. And the Green Party is proposing really a zero-tolerance policy for racism in the police force, in the healthcare system, and really in all public services. Right now, the Quebec government is tolerating racism. They refuse to recognize that systemic racism exists, and they treat each case as if it's an isolated incident, when really, we know that this is part of a larger problem and a pattern.

Even the chief of police says that he personally used to engage in racial profiling, so this is real. And it's also worth noting that the courts have, restricted the police's ability to conduct random roadside stops.

In other words, their ability to pull people over without a reason, on the basis that this leads to racial profiling. And despite this, the Quebec government has appealed that judgment at both the Superior Court, the Appeal Court, and now the Supreme Court of Canada.

We think that that is completely deplorable and that the practice of pulling people over for no reason needs to be stopped, particularly when you have so many people that complain that they have issues with domestic violence, for example, and that the police do not take it seriously and they do not invest the resources, yet they spend their time pulling people over for no reason.

There are big changes to make.

Now, specifically with the independent investigation unit, the Green Party pushed very hard to have this unit established over a decade ago. But unfortunately, it lacks a lot of independence and credibility because about half of the investigators are retired police officers. Also, the reports that are written by this independent investigation unit are never made public.

They're only given to prosecutors, who then decide not to press charges pretty much in every single case. The public is left without explanations of what took place, and particularly in the case of the 15-year-old boy who was killed in Longueuil, Nooran Rezayi.

In the press release following that incident, the independent investigation unit tried to suggest that there was a firearm recovered from the scene, implicating the youth, kind of suggesting that the firearm could have come from the victim.

When in reality it was the firearm that was used to kill the victim.

This leaves us with a lot of questions about the real independence of this independent investigation unit from the police forces themselves.

And when it comes to Montreal North, those incidents about the police collecting dreads and abusing Arab and Black residents are not even being handled by the independent investigation unit. It's being handled by the police force itself.

This is a huge problem. The independent investigations have to apply to allegations of racism as well. They can't be reserved only for death or serious injury. There are many other situations that require independent eyes to get to the bottom of what happened.

You have called for severing ties with Israel. What concrete actions do you ask the Quebec government to take, particularly regarding public investment and institutional agreements?

We know that Israel is perpetuating a genocide, that they're targeting children and that they seek ethnic cleansing and colonial expansion of the state of Israel onto Palestinian land.

One thing that is really shameful for Quebec is that the National Assembly refused to call for a ceasefire for a very long time, and even went and opened up a diplomatic office in Tel Aviv in the middle of this genocide.

Our premier, Christine Fréchette was seen just before the election campaign drinking with the Israeli consulate in Montreal. It seems clear that the governing party in Quebec is really deepening ties with Israel at a time when they should be doing the complete opposite.

For us, definitely closing that diplomatic office is very important. Also, the Green Party wants to stop the flow of arms to Israel.

There are several weapons factories around Quebec that are participating in arming Israel, and we think those factories should be completely shut down. Quebec has no interest in joining the global arms race, and I find it deplorable that Quebec has taken steps to attract the NATO bank, war bank, to be set up in Montreal and really double down on the militarization of Montreal and of Quebec in general.

But to come back to Israel more specifically, we think that all economic ties should be severed.

I believe that we're the only party in this election, perhaps apart from the Communist Party, that says that it's not enough just to issue words or to say an arms embargo only. No, we need to stop doing business with the genocidal state, and any continued trade between Quebec and Israel is only going to serve to further enable Israel to continue conducting this genocide.

You advocate withdrawing from NATO and closing or converting arms factories. What can you accomplish as a regional representative?

Well, this is a complex domain because, of course, the military is a federal jurisdiction. However, Quebec has influence on the Canadian federation, and I find it unfortunate that the Green Party is a federalist party, right? But even the sovereigntist parties, who really criticize Canada for so many things, refuse to criticize Canadian militarism at a time when the federal government has committed to spending 5% of GDP on militarism. We're not talking about 5% of government spending.

We're talking about 5% of the entire economy. That 5% would come out to about one-third of the federal budget. Now, this is a radical militaristic plan.

And it lacks a purpose because no amount of investment in militarism will protect Canada from an invasion from the United States or really any other superpower that would choose to invade us.

So even if we put 20 years of our economy towards militarism, we would not be able to hold off such an invasion. It begs the question: why should we, at a time when the United States is engaged in a trade war that is having deep economic consequences on the country, why would we take the limited funds that we have and invest them in militarism on the request of the United States when people are losing their jobs?

People need a social safety net. They need a government that's going to make sure that everybody has access to food and to water and to healthcare and education despite the trade war and despite the economic downturn that's going to come with the long-term effects of this trade war.

We need to put that money into the people. We can't afford to bankrupt the Canadian state on militarism at a time when the social needs are growing.

You mentioned the US military's investment in the Lac-du-Plage and Duhamel modification project in the Ottawa area, where you believe the proposed graphite mine threatens a mountain, several lakes, and a watershed. It's a big issue, but the question that arises here is: why is the US military investing in this project?

That's a very important issue there. They want to completely remove the top of a mountain and replace it with two open-pit mines over one kilometer long each. This is at the top of a drainage basin in an area where, in the surrounding lakes of this mountain, the water is so clean that it's possible to drink the water right from the lake.

They want to destroy all that for this graphite mine, and people are particularly concerned, especially when they hear Mark Carney talking about critical minerals as a part of Canada's commitment to NATO. In this area, 95% of the people in the surrounding municipalities voted no in a referendum. Well, the result of the referendum was 95% against the mine.

The local population has spoken very clearly. And the Green Party's position, for one, we're against this mine because of its location and the environmental sensibilities, but also because of the involvement of the US military.

In our platform, we've taken a position that Quebec's critical minerals should not be used for the global arms race and certainly not given to the US military.

Turning votes into results, what do you say to voters who support your ideas? If elected as the sole representative of your party in the National Assembly, which proposal would you seek support for first?

I think that would depend on the context of which government is in place and what can be done. It is difficult for the Green Party to win seats in the National Assembly, given the voting system that we have.

But what people should remember is that a vote for the Green Party is certainly not a wasted vote. Whether we are inside or outside the National Assembly, we will do everything that we can to represent the people that voted for us. Now, if enough people vote for us, that could mean being in the National Assembly and representing them there.

However, if we fail to win a seat in the National Assembly, we will continue representing the people who voted for us from the outside, by speaking out, by promoting the positions that we defended in the election, by engaging in protests and so on. So, a vote for the Green Party is a vote to resist the right-wing nationalist agenda of the large political parties in Quebec, to stand up for multiculturalism, to stand against war and for the environment and social justice. We have a whole set of priorities that we would like to get to work on if given the mandate.

Photos: Alex Tyrrell’s Facebook page.