By Daniel Béland

May 2, 2026

On April 27, after several months of speculation, Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice finally announced he would run for the independence-advocating Québec Solidaire (QS) in the October 5th Quebec general election.

Until the official beginning of the Quebec campaign, Boulerice will sit as an independent MP rather than staying in the NDP caucus, which has shrunk to only five members. He is the second MP the federal NDP has lost in barely six weeks. Nunavut MP Lori Idlout crossed the floor to join the Liberals on March 20th.

On March 29th, Avi Lewis became leader of the NDP. Lewis, who is not an MP, has said he will not run in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie or in North Vancouver-Capilano, where Liberal MP Jonathan Wilkinson is stepping down to become Canada’s ambassador to the European Union.

Boulerice was the NDP’s only Quebec MP, and the sole survivor of the 2011 Orange Wave under the late Jack Layton that swept 59 seats in the province. Layton’s personal popularity, combined with growing dissatisfaction towards the Bloc Québecois among francophone voters, triggered the unprecedented gains for the NDP in a province where it had only ever elected two MPs in total — consumer advocate Phil Edmonston in 1990 and Tom Mulcair in 2007 and 2008.

For Lewis and the NDP, it was bad enough to lose the only survivor of the Orange Wave and see their caucus reduced to five MPs, all of the from Western Canada (three from BC, one from Alberta and one from Manitoba).

The manner of Boulerice’s departure to join the sovereignist camp ahead of an election that could change the political landscape in the province also exposed Lewis to criticism for embracing his only Quebec MP’s departure as though it were a grand new adventure.

During his news conference on Monday, Boulerice, flanked by the QS co-spokespersons Ruba Ghazal and Sol Zanetti, stated that his move from the NDP to QS was a “continuation of” his “progressive, ecological, and humanist commitments.”

Zanetti added that the new QS recruit was “extremely sovereigntist,” adding that Boulerice “campaigned for the ‘Yes’ side in 1995” and “spent 15 years having witnessed Ottawa’s failures and setbacks on all the important issues. He is in a strong position to testify to just how much Quebec should leave Canada and become its own country.”

A few days later, during a CPAC interview, Boulerice himself stressed his sovereigntist convictions and stated that “of course” he would join the “yes” camp if there was a new independence referendum in Quebec.

Lewis praised Boulerice on social media, saying that he “is leaving our caucus but not our common struggle. After 15 years as a champion for affordability, climate action, and workers’ rights in Ottawa, he’s taking the fight provincial, in a critical moment for Quebec. We wish you well, Alex. We’ll miss you in the House but we’ll see you in the streets!”

In a scathing Toronto Star column titled “Praising a separatist, Avi Lewis sinks to less than zero,” Martin Regg Cohn strongly criticized the new NDP leader not only for saying nice things about Boulerice despite his sovereigntist leanings but also for refusing “to specify whether any future NDP candidate in Boulerice’s riding must have federalist loyalties”.

What is good news for the left (QS) within Quebec provincial politics is bad news for the federal left (NDP) in la belle province.

What Regg Cohn finds both puzzling and revolting in Levis’s stance is easily explained when you know about the history of the left in Quebec, which has been closely intertwined with the sovereignty movement since the 1960s and 1970s.

For instance, the PQ initially built strong ties with Quebec’s labour and feminist movements in a post-Quiet Revolution era during which sovereignty and social democracy often went hand and hand, as the push for independence and the socio-economic emancipation of francophones converged.

When in power, the PQ typically embraced progressive social policies, which among other things led to the creation of subsidized universal childcare in 1997, when Pauline Marois was Quebec’s education minister. More recently, at the federal level, especially under the leadership of Gilles Duceppe, a former union official, the Bloc also embraced left-wing positions in  environmental and social policy.

Over the last two decades in Quebec, the relationship between the PQ and progressive fiscal and social policy somewhat declined and, since its creation in 2006, it is Québec Solidaire that has revitalized the close association between progressivism and the sovereigntist cause, as its “key principles and values are the environment, social justice, feminism, alter-globalization, democracy, pluralism, sovereignty and solidarity.”

Ideologically, QS is further to the left than many provincial NDP parties and, if we remove sovereignty — an issue less central for QS on average than for the PQ — from the mix, it aligns quite neatly with the “ecosocialism” that Lewis has long embraced.

Perhaps more important, in the absence of a politically prominent provincial NDP, which disbanded in late 2024, members, supporters, staffers, and candidates of QS and the federal NDP frequently overlap. This reality is illustrated by Boulerice’s own trajectory, as he belonged to the QS when he ran for federal office under the NDP banner back in 2011.

In fact, as he recalled earlier this week, on the day of he was first elected federally on May 2 of that year, he had his “Québec solidaire membership card” in his wallet. This is why he also said that, “After 15 years as an NDP MP,” running for QS will be “a kind of homecoming.”

For QS, having Boulerice run in the riding of Gouin is a great “catch,” as the party, which is struggling in the polls at around 10% of popular support, is seeking to recruit well-known candidates like the ex-NDP MP with the goal of preserving the 11 seats the party holds in the National Assembly.

This is why QS did not hesitate to hold a special vote in February to make an exception to its strict gender parity rules so that a man (i.e., Boulerice) could run for QS in Gouin, as an attempt to keep that riding, which is currently held by departing former QS co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.

As for the anticipated federal by-election in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, unless perhaps the NDP can find a star candidate, the Liberals have a clear shot at winning. They finished in second place last year, fewer than 10 percentage points behind Boulerice and far ahead of the Bloc candidate.

More than being an excellent catch for QS, Boulerice’s departure from the federal scene could help the Carney Liberal government increase its new majority while making Quebec an electoral desert for the federal NDP, at least in the short run.

What is good news for the left (QS) within Quebec provincial politics is bad news for the federal left (NDP) in la belle province.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.