Former student leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Option Nationale party founder Jean-Martin Aussant will soon be criss-crossing Quebec, talking to people about where the province is heading.
The two met the media on Wednesday to announce the project, which has as its slogan 'faut qu'on se parle'('We have to talk'). Starting on Oct. 11 in Quebec City, the group will be meeting with Quebecers who they believe are concerned about the problems the province faces — corruption, for instance — but feel powerless to change them.
The tour is expected to go through 10 cities before ending in Montreal on Dec. 8.
Aussant and Nadeau-Dubois say they want to discuss any issue, including education, health, and independence. They say they won't hide their political backgrounds — but won't actively sell them, either.
"We are progressives, and we are in different ways sympathetic to the idea Quebec’s independence. But we want to hear from everyone, especially people who do not agree with us,” Nadeau-Dubois said.
Nadeau-Dubois was thrust into the public spotlight during the student protests in the spring of 2012, when he was the head of the radical student group ASSÉ. Aussant is an economist and former MNA who famously broke with the Parti Québécois in 2011 over then-leader Pauline Marois' go-slow approach to sovereignty. Months later, Aussant founded a new separatist party, Option Nationale, which he left in 2013.
The group is expected to unveil its first findings by this coming winter. There is a possibility the group might form the basis of a new left-wing political party. "We're leaving all doors open," Nadeau-Dubois says.