Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois must change things, says Vincent Marissal

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois needs to change the way he manages Québec Solidaire (QS), MP Vincent Marissal suggested on Tuesday.

Nadeau-Dubois was absent from parliament on Tuesday and QS said he was shaken by the break-up of the party’s two-headed leadership and needed a moment to himself.

Some members of his caucus came to his defence, however, saying that the criticism levelled at him was unfair, but others avoided answering journalists’ questions. None of the MPs dared to go so far as to clearly question the singular model of two co-spokespersons, one male and one female.

In her resignation message posted on social networks on Monday, Lessard-Therrien suggested that the party leadership was infiltrated by Nadeau-Dubois’ entourage and that she had had difficulty finding her “space” there.

Should the co-spokesman change his leadership style?

“The short answer is yes,” replied Marissal in a press scrum before the caucus meeting, while reiterating his confidence in him.

“The long answer is: what are we changing? We change every day. He adjusts every day. He’s in a position that’s not always easy.”

I think the criticism levelled at him is unfair at the moment, and I have every confidence in him,” said Christine Labrie. I think we need him for the future.

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RELATED: Émilise Lessard-Therrien resigns as Quebec Solidaire’s co-spokesperson

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Labrie, who is Lessard-Therrien’s opponent in the race for the co-sponsorship, would have preferred Lessard-Therrien, who was elected to her new post at the end of November, to stay on a little longer. She pointed out that she had a budget of several tens of thousands of dollars to pay for her travel and carry out her mandates.

“I find it regrettable that, in the current discussion, we are looking for someone to blame at all costs,” continued her colleague Alexandre Leduc.

For his part, Marissal, who was the only MP to have publicly supported Lessard-Therrien in the race for the position of women’s spokesperson last year, even felt guilty for not having supported her enough when she expressed her discomfort.

“It’s a failure” for the party, he concluded, while his colleagues Leduc and Labrie reminded us of the cumbersome nature of the party’s bodies.

Some MPs rushed to their caucus meeting and refused to speak to the parliamentary press, including Sol Zanetti and Alejandra Zaga-Mendez.

Lessard-Therrien, a former MP for Rouyn-Noranda-Témiscamingue who was defeated in the 2022 election, was elected women’s co-spokesperson by a narrow margin in the run-off against MP Ruba Ghazal.

She had made it her mission to root her party in the regions, despite the fact that the majority of QS seats are on the island of Montreal and that the party has plateaued well below 20% in the polls, poll after poll.

In her letter of resignation, she said that she wanted to “try to breathe new life into the party, or at least the life it had before”, but that her vision had “come up against an organisational blockage”.

At the end of March, she announced that she was taking a leave of absence for health reasons. And it was on Monday that she finally threw in the towel.

Of her experience, she writes: “I felt quite alone and had difficulty finding my place. The different visions collided, and I found it hard to reconcile them, and in the process I scratched at my deepest motivations for being co-spokesperson for Québec Solidaire”.

She also said that she was reprimanded and not listened to.

“(….) I’ve been scolded or made to feel guilty for speaking out sincerely, giving opinions, or following my intuition. I was invalidated when I named needs.”

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews