Our Values

The Ambition Quebec project (PAQ) wishes to rally a majority of Quebecers behind an ambitious social project built around the creation of a country. To achieve this, the organization has been founded on core values such as commitment and determination, as well as on a participatory and inclusive democracy.

 

The PAQ believes in democratic processes and their evolution through time and space. These processes are the result of permanent negotiations over the successive forms in which they appear and the rules that govern them. They are not unequivocal and must permanently resolve the tensions that inhabit them, between individual freedoms vs. the common good, centralization vs. diffusion of power, or efficiency of governance vs. legitimacy of citizen participation. The PAQ thus favours actions that have real and direct tangible effects for people, rather than actions of a symbolic nature.

 

In Quebec, as is the case in many other societies around the world, certain democratic values ​​are inalienable. Democratic institutions in Quebec must support for all citizens without exception the exercise of fundamental rights specific to democratic life: civil rights, social, economic and cultural rights, as well as political rights. If, on the one hand, the democratic state promotes and supports the exercise of these rights, responsible citizens must, on the other, contribute to the building of the nation. The exercise of these rights therefore implies a responsible state and a population actively involved in the public sphere. It is through the process of inclusion, integration, and political socialization that all citizens eventually become active and can fully exercise their rights, regardless of their place of birth, ethnocultural affiliation, gender, or sexual orientation.

 

For the PAQ, participatory democracy is a core concept that is the result of the historical resolution of conflicts and paradoxes: it is the embodiment of values, it seeks individual and collective liberation and it resides in the political universe where the social contract is perpetually negotiated. This negotiation must be rooted in the exercise of active, anchored and localized citizenship. Concertation is the foundation of our democracy and this is what allows it to be deliberative.

 

Furthermore, concertation must arise from a long-lasting conversation through exchanges around tangible contexts of action. It also needs to be based on multiple interactions developed in a variety of spaces, which inevitably lead to arbitrations. True democratic deliberation allows the emergence of a consensus among all Quebecers. Therein lies the key to carrying out the transition towards emancipatory changes allowing for a constant rethinking of individual and collective lifestyles in phase with health, economic and environmental crises, in addition to the transformations that are now imposed by the current social dynamics and the intersectionality of these struggles.

 

The PAQ is particularly aware of the challenges weighing on our societies on the climate change front and will always be fighting alongside international initiatives on the matter. In the same vein, citizen participation within the organization is intrinsically linked to issues relating to sustainable development. The PAQ thus recognizes that progress in environmental protection depends, above all, on civic engagement and on self-determination of the peoples of our territory, namely the Quebecers, First Nations and Inuit peoples.