Westmount-Saint-Louis's Chagnon to keep his seat

By P.A.Sévigny, September 5th, 2012

While it wasn’t much of a surprise, Jacques Chagnon will continue  to represent the residents of Westmount-St. Louis in Québec’s National Assembly. Only half an hour after the polls closed, there were only a dozen people in his campaign office when Chagnon was declared to be one of the first to win his seat in this election. However, there was a lot of tension in the room as the results began to define the future of Québec’s government for the next few years. While it was an English room, the television was tuned into Radio-Canada after which the there wasn’t much party talk as more results began to come in. As the director of Montreal’s CRARR (Center for Research-Action on Race Relations), Fo Niemi told The Suburban that he was more than a little concerned about what could happen to the city’s minorities under a new PQ government. When asked about the PQ’s position towards Québec’s minorities, Niemi said the PQ seemed to be leaning towards the idea of what he described as a new ‘civic nationalism’ as opposed to the multi-ethnic nationalism that used to dominate the legal and political thinking of the post-war era.
“We have to be vigilant,” he said. “It’s a reflection of the conservative nationalism that’s beginning to make its way through a lot of modern universities, including Montreal’s UQàM (Université du Québec à Montréal).”
While there were more than a few cheers for a number of Chagnon’s friends and colleagues who managed to keep their seats, there was no doubt that it would be an early night for the Chagnon campaign team. n