An Immigrant in the National Assembly

Quebec gave Ruba Ghazal’s family a chance at a new life. She’s fighting to preserve that.

Artwork: Nadine Abdel Latif (Deenz)

It was the last time Ruba Ghazal would set foot in her childhood home.

She walked alone through the empty apartment, trying to grasp the weight of what lay ahead: a new country, a foreign language and winter winds that cut to the bone. 

As the daughter of Palestinian refugees, Ghazal had never known what it felt like to have a forever home. Her parents grew up in a camp on the outskirts of Beirut and, by the time Ghazal was born, their adopted country was descending into civil war. So they took the family east and settled in Abu Dhabi, where Ghazal’s father found work as an accountant.

Now, at the tender age of 10, she packed her life into a suitcase and prepared to make another move. This time Ghazal, her parents and her three siblings would travel from the Persian Gulf to a place called Quebec.

“Just before we left for the airport, I remember making a conscious decision to walk into every room, every nook and cranny of our apartment so I could hold on to that memory,” said Ghazal. “My parents had red-velvet walls in their bedroom, and I wanted so badly to remember the place where I grew up. No one told me to do that, it’s just the sort of thing a child does, I suppose. And it worked, I’ll never forget that home.

“I thought Canada was just Montreal and Toronto. Those were our choices. We chose to move to Quebec so we could learn two languages. I remember how exciting it was.”

She couldn’t understand French and it would take years for her to learn the rituals of a city that thrives on chaos. But Ghazal remembers the freedom that came with living here, the thrill of riding her bicycle to the park alone and staying out until sundown.

“I couldn’t get over it, how you could just grab your bike and go explore,” said Ghazal. “To me, that was the beginning of falling in love with this place.”

Ghazal’s parents spent their life savings to open a dollar store on St-Hubert Street, where the kids would stock shelves and work the register after school. She learned French, went to university, got a job overseeing worker safety at a Bombardier plant and, somewhere along the line, became a proud Quebecer.

Then, five years ago, Ghazal won a seat in the National Assembly with Québec solidaire. She took her parents to the swearing in ceremony. They cried. Her story, she says, is a testament to the basic goodness of this society and the people who inhabit it. 

Whether it’s Quebec increasingly relying on temporary foreign workers, insisting on building walls at its border crossings or imposing “values tests” on prospective immigrants, stories like Ghazal’s are receding into our past. Now, as Ghazal runs for leadership of Québec solidaire, she’s fighting to preserve the Quebec she grew up in, the one that helped shape that 10-year-old girl into the person she is today.

“Sometimes, I try to imagine a little Ruba arriving here today. Would she really feel like she belongs?” Ghazal said. “She’d learn French, she’d make québécois friends but would she want to be a part of this society? Would she consider herself Québécoise?

“Because you don’t become a Quebecer right when you step off the tarmac. It happens inside your heart, over time. For me, it was gradual and it happened in my teens with a political discourse that was much more inclusive than it is today. But since the charter of values, since the crisis over reasonable accommodations, since the CAQ came to power, the rhetoric towards immigrants is hardening. And I wonder how many people, how many families we’re losing to the rest of Canada? 

“This is a place that welcomed my family when we were in need and, in return, we did our best to integrate into this new society and contribute. 

“That’s something worth fighting for.”

On both sides of the aisle, Ghazal’s colleagues speak of her as an affable but tough legislator — the words “no bullshit” came up in interviews with two of her peers. Now that she’s running to replace Manon Massé as the co-spokesperson of Québec solidaire, Ghazal has the unenviable task of stepping in for one of the province’s most beloved politicians. 

If that’s not hard enough, she’ll have to convince her party that she’s going to win them broader appeal without sacrificing core principles. All this is happening at a time when QS’s poll numbers are stagnant. To do that, she’ll need QS to make gains among among white francophones — a demographic dominated by the CAQ — but also immigrants and anglophones. 

Considering her party wants to make Quebec an independent country, that’s a tall order.

But Ghazal is a grinder, she’s that kid who reinvented herself in a new country and — before politics — cut her teeth fighting for workplace safety on factory floors where foundries burned at 3,000 degrees fahrenheit.

“I came up in an environment of tough men working hard jobs and maybe not being used to having a woman in their midst,” Ghazal said. “But we always ended up getting along because we wanted the same thing: for the workers to be able to go home unharmed every day and keep providing for the people they love.

“That was my job then and it’s a lot like my job today.”

***

There’s a poem etched into the heart of Ghazal’s Plateau Mont-Royal riding.

It’s been painted onto an apartment building that overlooks the metro — subtle enough that you stop seeing it after a while but you’ll catch someone staring up at it every so often.

7:30 AM in the Montreal metro
it’s full of immigrants
they get up early
those people

so if the old heart of the city
is still beating
is it thanks to them

this old tired heart of the city
with its spasms
its attacks
its murmurs
and all its faults

and all the reasons in the world it could find
to stop
to give up

(Translated from French)

A generation before Ghazal won in Mercier, the riding was held by that poem’s author and longtime Parti Québécois member, Gérald Godin. Back then, the PQ stood in solidarity with anti-colonial movements in Palestine, Northern Ireland and across the world.

Ghazal wasn’t yet born when Godin won the riding in 1976 and she was just a teenager when he died of brain cancer 18 years later. But she considers herself “an inheritor” of his politics.

“Imagine someone in the PQ saying that today, that immigrants are the beating heart of the city?” Ghazal said. “These days, when the PQ talks about immigration it’s to depict it as a threat. But all those kids who came here from abroad, the children of immigrants, they’re the ones who will save the nation of Quebec. They’re the ones who will learn French and grow up to represent us on the international stage. 

“As a Palestinian, I come from a people without a country, I understand Quebec’s desire to be sovereign. I’m Palestinian and Québécoise and I can’t untangle those identities. In fact, my French is better than my Arabic. This isn’t a threat to the nation, incorporating these identities is what will save the nation.”

Photo courtesy Ruba Ghazal.

Sovereignty may not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of QS but it’s one of the party’s founding principles. The conventional wisdom is that selling immigrants on Quebec sovereignty can be a challenge considering they owe their citizenship to Canada. After all, the overwhelming majority of immigrants voted against Quebec sovereignty in the 1995 referendum. Plus, it’s hard to forget Jacques Parizeau’s “money and ethnic vote” concession speech on the night of the 1995 referendum.

But that oversimplifies the debate.

There are those who came here from places with their own struggle for independence and see that reflected in Quebec’s sovereignty movement. Others learn about the chronically dysfunctional relationship between Ottawa and Quebec or the colonialism and land theft at the heart of Confederation. 

For Ghazal it was all those things.

“Whether you’re a federalist or sovereigntist, there’s a crisis built into the Canadian Constitution,” Ghazal said. “How can we have a constitution that was adopted without Quebec signing on? How could that ever be an acceptable way to govern a country? This isn’t an attack on Canada. It’s just that all this tension about who gets to be a Quebecer and protecting French, it will never be resolved under this system.

“Having a country takes away a lot of that fear of the other. It gives a people the confidence to assert their rights without taking rights away from others. Our pitch isn’t, ‘Vote for us, we’ll hold a referendum.’ We think the best way toward sovereignty is for Quebecers to come together — and this includes anglophones, immigrants and Indigenous people should they want to participate — and have a constituents’ assembly.

“We elect a group of citizens that come together and shape what an independent Quebec would look like. Not politicians, not hardliners, ordinary people. It’s a long, complicated process but it’s a chance to reshape our politics for the better.”

Ghazal’s faith in the goodness of Quebec comes during a rocky period in our political discourse.

Last year, party leader Paul St-Pierre-Plamondon referred to “mass immigration” as the “demographic drowning” of Quebec by Canada — a phrase that sounds both conspiratorial and dehumanizing. The Coaltion Avenir Québec was swept into power in 2018 on a promise to dramatically reduce the number of immigrants Quebec accepts each year (a vow they broke to help fill a massive shortage in the province’s labour pool).

Quebec Premier François Legault doubled down during his bid for re-election last fall, implying that non-francophone immigrants are a threat to social cohesion and peace in the province. Not to be outdone, Jean Boulet, Quebec’s immigration minister at the time, claimed 80 per cent of new arrivals don’t work, only learn English and move to Montreal, a city that’s become a sort of catchall term for everything the CAQ dislikes about Quebec.

Despite this obvious fabrication — for which Boulet later apologized — he easily won re-election and the CAQ took 89 of the National Assembly’s 125 seats, making it the most powerful provincial government in over a generation. 

Other than QS, the only party calling for a less divisive stance on immigration, the Quebec Liberals (PLQ), saw its share of the popular vote cut to pieces. Ghazal says that while this may be a worrying sign, she has faith in her party’s ability to win over voters who may be lured by inflammatory rhetoric.

“We have to separate the rhetoric from people’s actions,” Ghazal said. “In everyday life, Quebecers are incredibly supportive of immigrants, we’re a generous and kind people. Maybe, in the short term, it pays to play on people’s fear of change but it’s not like you can order québécois women to just make more babies. That era is over. 

“We’re going to have to accept more immigrants — and I support a system that favours French-speaking immigrants — if we’re going to thrive. If given the chance, people will get behind this.”

While the province’s rightward shift has hurt the Liberals and PQ, it’s been a boon for Québec Solidaire. 

Not only have they overtaken the PQ in the National Assembly, QS has been making inroads in former Liberal strongholds. Last fall, Solidaire candidate Alejandra Zaga Mendez — a Peruvian immigrant — took the southwest Montreal riding of Verdun off the Liberals. 

A few months later, in a by-election to replace outgoing Liberal leader Dominique Anglade in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, QS mobilized a small army of volunteers and flipped a riding that voted PLQ for 10 consecutive elections. The winning candidate, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, is an immigration lawyer and fierce critic of this government.

“One of the things that amazes me about Québec solidaire, is that one-third of its (12) MNAs weren’t born in Quebec,” said Daniel Béland, the head of McGill University’s Institute for the Study of Canada. “They’re still what you would consider slightly outside of the mainstream, a party that needs to shift towards the centre if it ever wants to come close to taking power. But they’re a sovereigntist party that’s making gains with immigrants who, in another era, may have voted PQ or Liberal. 

“That takes real commitment from its members, to volunteer, to knock on doors, to craft a message that takes into account the immigrant experience.”

There was a time when the PQ was a natural fit for foreign-born Quebecers and, in the House of Commons, the Bloc Québécois once represented immigrant-heavy ridings like Ahuntsic and Papineau in Montreal. But both parties adopted a populist stance on immigration after the “reasonable accommodation” debates of the late 2000s. 

What emerged from that time — an era when the province’s conservative newspapers flooded the discourse with Islamophobia and other fear-mongering — was a brand of us-versus-them identity politics that left little room for compromise. 

During the PQ’s last stint in power 11 years ago, the party tabled a “secularism law” that would exclude thousands of Muslim women, Sikhs and Jewish men from working for the government. Though it was a transparent attack on religious rights, the bill purported to enforce secularism in the public sphere. 

The PQ was ousted from power before it could enact the law, but its essence — the exclusion of certain religious minorities from certain government jobs — was adopted into law when the CAQ passed Bill 21 in 2019.

The Bloc Québécois, meanwhile, re-emerged on the federal scene in 2019 running as a sort of national version of the CAQ — advocating for Bill 21, limited immigration and whatever CAQ proposal polled well outside of Montreal. They pressed their tough-on-immigration stance in February when they ran a political ad comparing Quebec to an “all inclusive” resort for asylum seekers. Even among Quebec’s conservative nationalist class, that was considered too far.

“I don’t want to say anything bad about my experience with the Bloc but they have work to do if they want to win over immigrant communities,” said Shophika Vaithyanatharasma, who ran for the Bloc in 2021. “My parents came here from Sri Lanka and I’ve had a great life in Quebec but when I speak to people like me … they don’t see themselves or their experiences reflected in that discourse. 

“Even if the goal of this debate over immigration is to protect French, no one wants to feel unwelcome in their home. You might win a few elections like that now but that’s not how you build a country.”

After Vaithyanatharasma lost in 2021, she says Ghazal reached out and that sparked a months-long conversation about her political future.

“I think at a time where parties go for the jugular, Ruba (Ghazal) just has a much more human vision of how to do politics,” said Vaithyanatharasma. “She told me something that stuck with me. She said, ‘All immigrants are grieving something they lost; their country, their language, a life that wasn’t perfect but the only one they ever knew. We’re afraid of losing the things that make us who we are. Quebecers have that fear too. Knowing that we share this really strong feeling, shouldn’t we be able to work together?’” 

Last year, Vaithyanatharasma ran for QS in Montreal’s South Shore, losing the election but confirming she ran for a party that represented her. 

***

When Manon Massé announced she’d be stepping down from Québec solidaire’s leadership team, the province began mourning one of its most beloved and charming politicians.

Where else but here could you get a cigarette-smoking, motorcycle-riding, union-championing lesbian who is both fierce in her politics and loving in her manner? Whether they’re right-wing zealots or big-L liberals, just about everyone in the National Assembly loves Manon.

I remember meeting Massé during the 2018 provincial election and she insisted on being interviewed in English so she could practice for the upcoming leaders’ debate. When I asked her about supply management and Quebec’s dairy farms, she interrupted me.

“Supply management?” she asked. 

“Gestion de l’offre,” I replied.

She nodded, grabbed a pen from her pocket and wrote the words ‘supply management’ onto the palm of her hand. I’d never seen a politician do that before. 

A few weeks later — riding a pair of solid debate performances by Massé — Québec solidaire went from holding three seats in the National Assembly to 10, surpassing the PQ as the province’s main sovereigntist party. 

In the following election, they added another seat to their tally and came (a distant) second in the popular vote count with 15.4 per cent of the electorate casting a ballot for QS. They then added former Liberal leader Anglade’s seat during a March 2023 by-election.

Considering the Coalition Avenir Québec won two-thirds of the province’s ridings in last year’s election, it’ll be an uphill battle for a grassroots leftist party to win power. But stranger things have happened.

Massé announced last month that she’d continue sitting in the legislature while taking a step back from the spotlight. Ghazal is running to replace the popular MNA as co-spokesperson of the party. To clarify: Québec solidaire doesn’t have leaders but co-spokespeople who get their marching orders from the party’s growing membership base. It’s a way they ensure the party doesn’t get taken over and reinvented by one charismatic leader. 

But no matter how the party structures it, Ghazal is under no illusions that she’s got big shoes to fill.

“She broke the mold of what we consider a politician,” Ghazal said. “She’s authentic in a profession where that’s a rare quality. Manon is irreplaceable, she’s a source of inspiration and one of my first friends in this party. We met 20 years ago, back when we were calling this party a citizens’ movement, before it even had a name.

“I was so young, just another activist studying at the school of Manon Massé and Amir Khadir and Françoise David. It’s why I’m in politics today. Ideas are important, the question of social justice, climate change, fighting to make sure everyone has an equal chance to succeed, these are all noble causes. But you need inspiring people to carry those ideas.

“They inspired me to be brave and live those convictions.”

Experts say those convictions will be put to the test if QS wants to gain a wider following.

“The party is at a crossroads, it has a solid base but some of their proposals are scary to older francophones,” Béland said. “If you look, during the election last year, at one of their proposals to tax the purchase of gas-guzzling vehicles like pickup trucks and even minivans. Is there a way of taking some of the sting off that without abandoning the principle? I don’t know but if they’re ever going to grow, as a party, they need to make overtures to rural voters.”

The party’s presence outside Montreal is sparse. QS has a seat in the college town of Sherbrooke, two in downtown Quebec City and they lost their only MNA in “les régions” last year when Émilie Lessard-Therrien was unseated in the copper mining city of Rouyn-Noranda. 

Adding another obstacle to the mix, the PQ has made considerable gains under St-Pierre-Plamondon’s leadership, polling at 23 per cent in a survey published last month compared to 16 for QS. So while the party’s support isn’t eroding, members have their work cut out for them.

But people who’ve worked closely with Ghazal say she isn’t focused on winning it all in one fell swoop. Her style, they say, is to break problems down into pieces and make incremental gains where she can.

“She’s incredibly detail oriented, she doesn’t speak publicly on an issue until she really nails down all the details,” said Gauthier Langevin, Ghazal’s former chief of staff. “And when you think about how fast the news cycle is these days, it’s rare that you see that sort of diligence and restraint in a politician. She has the humility to reach out to people who know more than her and ask them questions. 

“I remember we were working on a file about waste management and Ruba was so granular, in her approach, that she knew what suppliers used what kind of containers and what the lifespan of certain waste is. People might disagree with her on some issues but you can’t deny the value of someone that diligent.

“If you can take that approach to politics and scale it, you have a winning formula.”

In her campaign to join Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois as QS’s co-spokesperson, Ghazal is lagging behind Sherbrooke MNA Christine Labrie — a rassembleuse who has endorsements from four of the party’s MNAs. Ghazal’s closest mentor in the party, Françoise David, — isn’t throwing her support behind any one candidate but Ghazal has netted endorsements from Quebec City MNA Sol Zanetti and former candidate Vaithyanatharasma. Ghazal will try to rally support outside of Montreal until the party chooses its new co-spokesperson in November.

Liberal MNA Greg Kelly says he got to know Ghazal in the hallways of the National Assembly, waiting for question period to start.

“I genuinely enjoy speaking to her,” said Kelly. “She’s a hard worker and we’ve managed to collaborate on a few bills.”

The CAQ’s minister for the fight against racism, Christopher Skeete, calls Ghazal a good ambassador for the “new brand of left wing politics.”

“She’s a wonderful communicator,” Skeete told The Rover. “She can hit hard when she needs to but also be kind when she needs to.”

In an attempt to sway the CAQ’s education minister Bernard Drainville on tougher sexual assault legislation for the province’s schools, Ghazal set up a meeting between him and young women who’d been assaulted in the public school system.

“The CAQ has refused to take action on the culture of silence surrounding sexual assault in school but they’re listening,” said Ghazal. “Minister Drainville sat with these young women for an hour and, he still hasn’t committed to any action, but he listened and I could see he was touched by their experience. We were members of all four parties, sitting together and at least hearing each other out. That’s how I want to do politics.”

The harshest criticism from Ghazal has, oddly, come from federal politics, where Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet implied Ghazal was an apostate to the sovereigntist cause. The reason? Ghazal said she votes for the New Democratic Party in federal elections.

“You support the NDP which unconditionally supports the Liberal government,” Blanchet wrote, on Twitter. “(The NDP) are hostile towards Quebec … and say Quebec is racist. The QS members inside our party know.”

Though Blanchet’s criticism has a kernel of truth to it — roughly half of QS’s supporters are not sovereigntists — Ghazal dismissed his remark as cheap politics.

“Yves-François Blanchet isn’t the arbiter of who is and who isn’t a sovereigntist,” Ghazal said. “To start examining everyone’s ideological purity like you’re the pope of sovereignty, I don’t have time for that. What does that sort of debate even accomplish? How does it make anyone’s life better?”

Politics or not, Blanchet and the CAQ’s brand of nationalism resonates with a segment of the population that the QS badly needs if they want to win a general election.

“They’re kind of playing the short game,” said Ghazal. “I think maybe that works now but Quebec is changing, immigrants are moving off the island of Montreal and we’ll start to see that reflected in future elections. I know that our ability to live together and care for each other, no matter where we’re from, that’s what makes Quebec special.

“My dad got sick with heart disease a few years back and he needed to be hospitalized. Where we came from, that would have meant spending thousands on healthcare or else simply not being treated at all. But we’re in Quebec now and, in Quebec, we take care of each other.

“I remember him saying, ‘So that’s what all those tax dollars went to!’ I’m interested in that much more than I am in playing politics.”