Parties & Leaders

Action Démocratique du Québec Leader:
Mario Dumont

Rivière-du-Loup  [ ADQ | Platform ]

(Canadian Press)

But the similarities end there. In the 2007 election, Dumont has another chance to position himself as a real alternative to Quebec’s dominating political parties and their leaders if he can shake his chameleon image.

His right-of-centre party has enjoyed steady gains in recent polls as the Parti Québécois struggles under Boisclair’s leadership. In a January 2007 CROP poll on voters’ intentions, Dumont tied with Boisclair as the leader respondents considered is best fit to be the next premier.

In this campaign, the 36-year-old Dumont will have to prove he can deliver substance to disgruntled Quebec voters. In the 2003 election, the ADQ posed a legitimate threat to the Liberals, but when it came to voting time, Quebecers turned away from the nascent party, electing just four MNAs from its ranks.

Dumont has worked steadily to regroup his party and fine-tune its fiscally and socially conservative policies. He went on the attack in 2006 on the sensitive and thorny issue of reasonable accommodation, drawing fire with his statements that Quebec should stop bending over backwards for the province’s religious and cultural minorities.

He also offers a radically different vision of family policy. In February 2007, Dumont promised to provide weekly $100 grants to families with children not in Quebec’s day-care system. Dumont said his government would fund its child-care voucher program by dipping into the social assistance budget. The ADQ leader said too many Quebecers who can work don’t because they collect welfare and there “has to be fewer.”

(Jacques Boissinot/CP)

Then there’s the demerger issue, a hot topic in the 2003 election. Charest promised in that campaign to hold demerger referendums, but few are happy with the new municipal landscape and its agglomeration councils.

Demerger frustration runs especially high in Montreal’s west end, where four suburban mayors (in Senneville, Montreal West, Baie d’Urfé and Sainte-Anne–de-Bellevue) declared their support for the ADQ after Dumont pledged to overhaul the agglomeration structure earlier this year.

In the 2007 election, Dumont will try to cash in on his appeal to voters on the right side of the political spectrum and will once again be a vote-splitting threat to the Liberals.

But Dumont’s pragmatic approach to politics has earned him the label of chameleon. He’s been accused of changing his stance as often as his shirt. In this campaign, he’ll have to answer for his party’s sometimes shifting policies.

While he set the tone in the reasonable accommodation debate, the ADQ party has also in the past proposed public school reform, in which children of the same religious background would attend the same institutions and receive instruction specific to their beliefs. Today, Dumont says his earlier policy statements don’t contradict his current opinion on reasonable accommodation. He’ll likely have to reiterate his position throughout the campaign.

The 2007 election will also reveal whether residents in Montreal’s west end – a traditionally Liberal bastion – are willing to take their anger about demergers all the way to the ballot box.

In a campaign that promises to centre on leadership, Dumont will have to reinforce his image as a leader who can deliver his pragmatic policies. He’s set the tone with his party’s election slogan that translates to, “In Quebec, we mean action.” But he’ll have to prove the ADQ is more than a one-man show to build on his last electoral gains.

Dumont was born in Cacouna, near Rivière-du-Loup, on May 19, 1970. As a teen, he was a member of the youth commission in the Quebec Liberal Party, which he eventually chaired.

While studying economics at Concordia University in Montreal, Dumont was a vocal presence during national debates over the Charlottetown Accord, co-chairing an organization called the Network of Liberals Voting NO.

After graduating from Concordia, Dumont threw himself into politics and assisted in the creation of the ADQ in 1994. He became party president and then leader before winning the party’s first and only seat in the 1994 Quebec election.

Dumont was an outspoken sovereigntist early in his career and campaigned for Quebec’s independence in the 1995 referendum. Following his re-election in 1998, Dumont continued to hone the ADQ’s political philosophy and shaped its right-wing platform around core conservative fiscal values with policies such as tax cuts and debt reduction.

Dumont’s view on sovereignty has evolved throughout the years. In his 2007 election platform, he calls for an end to the federalist-separatist dichotomy, advocating for a politically and financially autonomous Quebec without separation.