ADQ leader Mario Dumont at the party’s Old Montreal headquarters. Concordia’s notion of diversity, says the alumnus, “is perfectly in accordance with ours. “We want to make an effort to integrate within the public sector and public agencies people from the English and cultural communities. Right now they are not only underrepresented, but in many fields completely absent.”
He was 2002’s “Homme de l’année”
according to l’Actualité magazine, which credits him
with reawakening a fervour for politics that has lain dormant in Quebec
since the 1995 referendum. No less an authoritative organ than The
Economist asserts that he has rearranged the province’s “sterile
political pattern of the past thirty years.” Not bad for a guy
who turns a mere 33 in May.
Despite his youth, Mario Dumont, BA 93, has been a player in provincial
politics for a decade now, and has spent his entire adulthood in the
public eye. If he isn’t elected premier in the provincial elections
that must be held this year (likely very soon), he’s young enough,
and seems to have enough staying power, to be around to contest many
a future battle. The party he helped found in 1994, l’Action
Démocratique du Québec, aka the ADQ, was perched at
Christmastime atop the heap of provincial contenders with 39 per cent
support among decided voters — although, admittedly, this could
change during the real poll, an election.
National fame, or at least a vague sort of notoriety, descended upon
Dumont while he was still a student at Concordia’s School of
Community and Public Affairs. In 1991, as the new leader of the Quebec
Young Liberals, he endorsed the controversial Allaire report, defining
the government’s stand on constitutional matters. In 1992, he
led the same Young Liberals to break with Robert Bourassa’s
government on the Charlottetown Accord and to support the No campaign
during the subsequent national referendum. Charlottetown divided the
Liberals — not in half, certainly, but splintering off a goodly
portion of “soft” nationalists. In 1994 Dumont gathered
together these splinters to construct the ADQ, and he’s been
their leader ever since.
With distinction
Mario Dumont, centre, wishes Quebec Liberal leader Jean Charest, left, and Premier Bernard Landry a Merry Christmas during question period at the Quebec National Assembly, December 18, 2002. CP PHOTO/ JACQUES BOISSINOT
Despite increasing demands on his time, Dumont sat down to speak to
Concordia University Magazine in January. He comes across as engaging,
professional — and likeable. He retains a fondness for his alma
mater; he’s participated in a lecture series sponsored by the
School of Community and Public Affairs and once met some visiting
Concordia students in Quebec City. Dumont says he originally chose
to attend the university for a few reasons: political advancement
within the Liberal youth wing required his presence in Montreal, but
also, he explains, “I wanted to study economics in English to
improve my vocabulary.” He liked what he had heard about Concordia’s
approach and how it reflected the diversity of its city.“ Sometimes
you read that a university will be helpful and attend to your needs;
then you realize those are just words in the PR material,” he
says. “But that was not my experience at Concordia. I got what
I was promised — especially as I was always running across Quebec,
going to conferences, and I had to miss a number of lectures.”
Dumont did not merely survive, but prospered. “I received my
BA ‘with great distinction,’ as they say in the English
system,” he points out with a trace of pride.
“My entire career as a Young Liberal occurred while I was at
Concordia,” he recalls. “I became coordinator of political
affairs, president, and resigned as president, all while I was a student
”— making his undergraduate years memorable indeed. “The
period between when I resigned from the Liberal party and co-founded
the ADQ was also my last semester,” he says. “It was a
good coincidence — a couple of courses in the last year, such
as econometrics, required a bit more focus than I could give as president.”
Despite his relative fame — none of his classmates were appearing
on The National, after all — Dumont did not spend his
time at Concordia in a maelstrom of political discussion. “It
would have been different, I think, if I had been at a French-speaking
university,” he says. “But at Concordia many students
don’t come from Quebec, and international affairs take a greater
place. My best friend was a guy from Norway.”
Perry Calce, now assistant to the principal at the School of Community
and Public Affairs, was Dumont’s academic advisor and internship
coordinator, and he remembers Dumont ’s studious and reserved
classroom demeanour. Calce says, “Mario never dominated the
discussion. Unless he was asked for an opinion he was quiet. He seemed
to be very focused on what he was doing.” While Dumont was able
to continue his studies without the burden of celebrity, Calce recalls
that his activism was “a point of interest, for teachers as
well as for other students.”
Alone no more
Dumont makes a point in the National Assembly.
CP PHOTO/ JACQUES BOISSINOT
Born in Cacouna near Rivière-du-Loup, Dumont now lives with
his wife and two children on the family farm. For seven years, his
riding of Rivière-du-Loup returned the sole ADQ seat in the
National Assembly, but Dumont still managed to garner attention —
for instance, by sharing platforms with Jacques Parizeau and Lucien
Bouchard in support of the Yes side for the 1995 referendum. But in
the divisive world of Quebec politics, Dumont has successfully avoided
labels. He says, “I definitely believe that Quebec must defend
and protect its French culture, but I think that the focus of the
future involves uniting people and joining our energy together.”
On April 15, 2002, his lonely years in the National Assembly came
to an end— a second ADQ representative, François Corriveau,
won what had previously been a safe Parti Québécois
seat. In June, another three ADQ members came in through by-elections,
and the party now rests at five seats in the Assembly — still
far from a majority government, even from official party recognition
(which requires 12 seats), but definitely an improvement.
Today, as onlookers try to parse the ADQ, comparisons abound: the
ADQ is Quebec’s Conservative Party, some say, or, more frequently,
it is likened to the Canadian Alliance. Gilles Vigneault, singer and
nationalist icon, has suggested that the closest analogue might be
Réal Caouette’s Créditistes of the 1950s to ’70s,
a notably unflattering association. But then Lysiane Gagnon, in the
Globe and Mail, suggested that the ADQ “could be a
revival of Duplessis’s Union Nationale,” the rightist
party that ruled Quebec, with one interruption, from 1936 to 1959.
The Economist has implied that the ADQ is a purveyor of “American-style
neo-conservatism.”
But no one can deny that whatever its political lineage, the ADQ has
snapped the towel in the staid dressing room of political discourse,
and people are paying attention.
What’s in it for us?
Much focus in the education world has been placed on the question
of what an ADQ victory would mean for Quebec universities. Dumont
is a successful politician and, characteristic of the species, his
intent can sometimes be rather elusive. “We’re moving
toward a society of knowledge,” he says, “so education
is one of the top priorities. We would like to have a bill on the
funding of universities that will reduce the year-by-year worries
about public financing, and would clarify how funding from the private
sector works: what should be accepted, and what shouldn’t. We
would make funding more secure and predictable, so that management
is possible.” This translates into, among other things, a rise
in tuition fees — something that Quebec university administrations
predictably support, and student groups predictably oppose. The ADQ
has also put on record in the past an equally or perhaps more controversial
proposal — that programs preparing graduates to integrate successfully
into the workforce should receive more funding, while those whose
job-preparation success is lower should receive less.
Notably absent from Dumont’s political rhetoric is the great
bugbear of the Quebec scene: “People are tired of hearing about
the constitution,” he stresses. “Politics had become about
it alone. We cannot keep having divisions within the government that
are disappearing in society.” He goes on, “In the high-tech
business in Montreal, there are anglophones, francophones, Vietnamese,
Italians — all working together, ready to attack the world with
their products. They’re open-minded, but the government is far
behind.”
Despite supporting the Yes side in 1995, Dumont has committed to neither
the federalist nor the sovereignist camp. In a recent interview on
Montreal English adio station CJAD, he stated, “My nation is
Quebec and I live in a country called Canada. And I have no problem
with that.” Such positions have brought derision from some sources
— Gagnon has called him a “walking, breathing version
of the old joke about Quebecers wanting ‘an independent Quebec
in a strong Canada’”— but recent opinion polls show
that his statement is close to the beliefs of many young Québécois.
Election choice
Will English and ethnic communities, traditionally Liberal voters,
soon be crossing their Xs next to ADQ candidates’ names? Dumont
says of these groups, “Before, they had only one party talking
to them. This will change in the next election, where we will have
candidates from different ethnic communities. We don’t know
what the results will be, but we do know that the people will have
a choice.”
The choice may be something along the lines that those in constituencies
outside Quebec have experienced for years: a division along left and
right wing positions. But Dumont contests this dichotomy. “The
social right doesn’t really exist in Quebec at all,” he
insists. “We know we have certain measures that could be associated
with the economic right. When we talk about downsizing bureaucracy,
it could be considered ‘right,’” he concedes. “But
if you look at intergenerational fairness, you raise other issues.
The machine now is so big that it cannot even channel the money towards
the needs. So a new dynamic is necessary; we have to improve the lives
of the people, for the long run. I don’t know if that’s
left or right, but for us that’s certainly a social responsibility,”
he says.
Quebecers will certainly continue to hear more from and about
Mario Dumont in the coming months. Since the ADQ still lacks official
party status, speculation about an ADQ government, or even an ADQ
official opposition, may be premature. But one cannot help but be
impressed by the party’s recent successes. Dumont’s message
will become, if not sharper, more broadly disseminated, and should
he occupy the premier’s seat in the National Assembly, Quebecers
will have a chance to see if the acts can match the rhetoric. But,
for the first time in years, voters may actually care about this question
— and that in itself would be an impressive accomplishment.
Almost as impressive as the unexpected political rise of the Concordia
grad from Cacouna.
Patrick McDonagh, PhD 98, is a Montreal freelance writer.
Do you know of a Concordia graduate who’d make an interesting
profile? Contact Howard Bokser, (514) 848-3826, Howard.Bokser@concordia.ca.
