MONTREAL -- Former federal MP, now political analyst at LCN, Pierre Nantel, is looking to make the jump to the Quebec political scene.
The Parti Québécois announced his candidacy for the nomination in the riding of Marie-Victorin in the upcoming by-election.
PQ leader Paul St-Pierre-Plamondon made a point of announcing Nantel's candidacy himself. As a sign of the importance that the party gives to this candidacy, five of the seven members of the caucus were present at the announcement.
"Pierre Nantel has dedicated many years of his life to the environment. He has been able to test the limits of Canada's transition to a green and fair economy as well as culture and language," said St-Pierre-Plamondon.
Nantel was elected as part of Jack Layton's NDP orange wave in 2011 and was reelected in 2015 before switching to the Green Party. He finished behind the Bloc Quebecois and Liberal candidates in the 2019 election.
St-Pierre-Plamondon also said he was pleased to see a personality go "from orange to blue," saying that "blue offers credible, pragmatic solutions that inspire confidence, particularly on the issue of independence and language."
Although he recalled the current climate emergency, Nantel emphasized the cultural issue. He blamed the federal government for the decline of French in Montreal and elsewhere and the loss of attachment of young people to French.
"We're not out of the woods yet," he said. "I don't want to leave our cultural industries, the lever and the bulwark that they represent for our culture. Only bringing these powers back to Quebec can make a difference. Independence, autonomy, as soon as possible! We need it."
In response to an English-speaking journalist, he said he had always been a sovereignist. He chose to run for the Green Party of Canada in 2019 because of the climate emergency, he explained. He recalled his efforts to depoliticize the environmental issue.
Nantel will not be an unknown for the voters of Marie-Victorin. He was elected NDP MP for the federal riding of Longueuil--Pierre-Boucher in the 2011 Orange Wave. He was re-elected in 2015, but in the same riding renamed Longueuil--Saint-Hubert.
He was expelled from the NDP ranks a few weeks before the 2019 general election while negotiating his move to the Greens. Nantel became a candidate for that party and had to settle for third place, obtaining only 11.3 per cent of the vote.
St-Pierre-Plamondon insisted on "the real anchoring" of Nantel in the region having sat in the federal Longueuil-Pierre-Boucher riding, later named Longueuil-Saint-Hubert.
The Marie-Victorin riding has been vacant since Catherine Fournier resigned after she was elected mayor of Longueuil. She had been re-elected in 2018 under the Parti Québécois banner, but left the caucus a few months later to sit as an independent.
Premier François Legault announced on November 13 that the by-election would be held after Christmas.
Even if he is defeated in the by-election, Nantel pledged to try again in the general election scheduled for 2022.
The riding has historically been a PQ stronghold since 1985. Yet in the 2018 election, Fournier won it by only 705 votes, less than 3 per cent more than her CAQ opponent.
-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Nov. 21, 2021.
