Manon Massé won’t be Québec solidaire’s candidate for premier in 2022

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Manon Massé has announced that she won’t be Québec solidaire’s candidate for premier in 2022 and will support her fellow co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois as the party’s new leader in the National Assembly.

In an announcement made at the close of the party’s convention, which was held online, Massé said the pandemic had given her time to think about her future.

While she will stay on as the party’s co-spokesperson and run for re-election as an MNA, Massé said she does not want to be the party’s candidate for the premiership.

In a speech hailing Massé’s leadership, Nadeau-Dubois said he would seek the nomination of the party’s membership to be Québec solidaire’s candidate for premier in the next general election.

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Massé was Québec solidaire’s first candidate upon its founding in 2006. (Amir Khadir became the party’s first MNA in 2008.)

She was first elected to the National Assembly in 2014 in the Plateau riding of Sainte-Marie–Saint-Jacques.

“I’m not in politics to be in Parliament,” she told the Montreal Gazette ahead of the 2018 election. “I am there to change the world.”

On election night that year, after Québec solidaire tripled its caucus, she told supporters: “The political landscape in Quebec has changed for good; a new generation is taking its proper place”

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In addition to being the party’s leader in the National Assembly, Massé is currently Québec solidaire’s critic for Indigenous affairs and climate change.