Leaders of Quebec's labour and student movements have banded together in a fight to protect social programs from a recent surge of right-wing forces in the province.
The new Social Alliance announced on Friday is taking aim at the conservative ideology that has gained momentum in recent months through a newly formed protest group that is calling for lower taxes and privatization of public services.
At stake, according to the alliance, are the principles of solidarity and sharing that have characterized Quebec over the past half century.
"It's the difference between being human beings and animals," said Michel Arsenault, president of the Quebec Federation of Labour, the province's biggest labour organization. "With animals, when one of them gets old, they let it die, they eat it. We want to take care of our people, our youths, our students our elderly."
Labour leaders representing private and public sector unions acknowledged that taxes are higher in Quebec than anywhere else. But Quebeckers pay them for a reason, the union leaders argued: they have access to publicly subsidized daycare services, a generous parental leave program, a universal drug plan and the lowest university tuition fees in the country.
"We are the most egalitarian society in North America and we want to keep it that way," Mr. Arsenault said. "Our social services cost $7-billion a year. When you compare with Ontario, it is costing Ontarians, through the private sector, $17.5-billion for the same services. We are getting more for our money with the public sector than Ontarians are getting with the private sector."
One of the alliance's first objectives will be to press Premier Jean Charest's government to repeal the $200-a-year health-care fee introduced in last spring's provincial budget.
The union leaders predicted that over the coming months, the Social Alliance will become the voice of progressive forces in the province and fight what they called the "lies" and "right-wing intoxication" spread by some news organizations about the cost of Quebec's social programs.
"Quebec needs something other than a Tea Party," said Claudette Carbonneau, the president of the Conférération des syndicats nationaux labour organization and one of the most vocal anti-conservative voices in the province.
The alliance intends to lock horns with the newly formed right-wing Réseau-Liberté-Québec, which claims that labour organizations are drawing Quebec deeper and deeper into debt.
Similar arguments have been made by prominent right-wingers such as former Parti Québécois ministers François Legault and Joseph Facal, who want to put the sovereignty debate on the backburner and steer Quebec down a more pro-business and "pragmatic" political path.
The right-wing Action démocratique du Québec, which has adopted a staunch anti-labour position, welcomed the confrontation. ADQ Leader Gérard Deltell predicted that the emergence of the conservative grassroots Tea Party movement in the United States as a force in this week's mid-term U.S. elections will spread north of the border and give his slumping party a new lease on life.
"What we are seeing in Quebec is an interest, an effervescence and an appeal for right-of-centre ideas," Mr. Deltell said on Friday. "There's nothing new in seeing unions fight against this, it's part of their folklore. But what we are now seeing is that Quebeckers are standing up against them and that's good."
As the ADQ prepares for a convention next week, Mr. Deltell said he hopes to persuade the newly emerging right-wing forces to use his party as their political vehicle.