The MNA from Mercier, who takes his seat in the legislature tomorrow, says that 'people have elected me to have opinions'

Since being elected Dec. 8 in Mercier, Québec solidaire's Amir Khadir has come under fire for hurling his shoes at an effigy of George W. Bush and for speaking out against the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Physician, poet, provocateur.

Add politician to that list as Amir Khadir gets ready to take his seat in the Quebec National Assembly tomorrow.

Or, judging by his last few weeks in Montreal, Québec solidaire's only MNA may spend more of his time in Quebec City standing up.

Elected Dec. 8 in Mercier riding - by the ever-rebellious voters of the Plateau Mont Royal - Khadir has since come under fire for hurling his shoes at an effigy of George W. Bush and speaking out against the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

A career politician would try to avoid or downplay the controversy.

Not Khadir. In an interview last week, he brought it up, then faced it down.

"I don't want to be 'balanced,' " said Khadir, 47. "To be 'balanced' in the face of aggression is to support aggression. ... People have elected me to have opinions. People who voted for me here in Mercier did it knowing I was different and they expect me to take a stand.

"But me intervening in defending Gaza doesn't mean I support Hamas," continued Khadir, who wants to become a member of the Quebec-Israel Committee, which has denounced him as "morally bankrupt."

"It just means that this aggression is not acceptable. ... I will act exactly the same way on any issue concerning Quebec."

Taking a stand is what Khadir does, and it's what has earned him comparisons on the one hand to Carolyn Parrish, the disgraced former Liberal MP who famously stomped on a Bush doll on television, and on the other hand to René Lévesque, as some see in Khadir the most charismatic Quebec politician - and sovereignist - since Lévesque.

"As an MNA I feel completely free to say and do what is in the interests of my constituents," Khadir said, including throwing shoes at a symbol of "lies, manipulation, war and destruction." Khadir insists he would never have thrown shoes at the real Bush.

Arriving in Canada from Iran at age 10, he founded the first committee to help new immigrants adjust to Quebec student life just four years later.

He went on to study first physics, at Université de Montréal and McGill University, then medicine at Université Laval. He has been a specialist in infectious diseases at Le Gardeur hospital in Repentigny since 1997.

Khadir went to work at the hospital the day after the provincial election, as a way of thanking colleagues who so often covered for him during his last four election campaigns.

He first ran for the Bloc Québécois in 2000. "I agreed to run," Khadir said, "but I joked that I would demand a recount if I was ever elected."

Then he got serious and co-founded the provincial Union des Forces Progressistes. He ran for the party in Mercier in 2003 but lost. By 2007, the UFP had morphed into Québec solidaire, for whom Khadir finally won a seat in December with the help of his three daughters and about 250 other volunteers.

Fourth time's a charm.

Khadir says his election was the result of a political buildup in the riding since 2001, at the height of the anti-globalization movement in Quebec, as well as a lot of hard work.

But he says Mercier is also traditionally non-traditional.

"Mercier historically is where a lot of artists live and a lot of young students - it is a riding which expresses itself," Khadir said, his office window overlooking Mount Royal Ave., near where he grew up. "(Former premier) Robert Bourassa lost the riding not to a politician or a prominent representative of the business community but to a poet" - Gérald Godin, who had been in prison during the October Crisis.

"So in the collective conscience it's a place to test new things."

While nurturing his career in Quebec politics, Khadir has also been active in politics and humanitarian causes abroad.

His parents fought the shah of Iran, and he and his brother have long been active against the Islamic fundamentalist regime that took over once the shah was in exile.

"But I have never been called anti-Iranian or anti-Muslim," Khadir says, objecting to his depiction as anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.

Since 2000, Khadir has also led missions to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories for Médecins du Monde and as a member of the Coalition of Doctors for Social Justice, which opposes the privatization of the Quebec health system.

He is particularly harsh when discussing that other Quebec doctor turned politician, Philippe Couillard.

"For so long I defended Couillard. I thought he was speaking the truth when he said he was there to protect the public health sector. ... I imagined his role as a bulwark against his cabinet and the promoters of private health care. Then what?

"Not only at the end of his mandate does he pass two little laws to facilitate the privatization of health care, then two months later he becomes an associate of (private health-care investment fund) Persistence Capital Partners. ... He's a liar and in complete disagreement with his oath to represent the public interest."

Khadir says his own medical profession will now have to take a backseat, though he is not willing to give it up entirely.

"Everyone has chronic patients who are addicted to them. I don't want to abandon them, and I love my profession," said Khadir, who plans to work at least half a day every two weeks as a doctor. The other 131/2 days will go to politics - what he calls "medicine on a larger scale."

Khadir's first priority will be to deal with the economic crisis, presenting a plan to the National Assembly tomorrow to "heal" the poorest elements of society through massive spending.

In the long term, however, he says it's time to imagine life after capitalism.

"I don't say I know the solution. Traditional socialism hasn't worked, either. ... But surely as humanity we are rich enough in ideas to try and imagine ways out of capitalism. Why sustain that system if every now and again it brings the same pattern, where there is concentration of power and wealth and in that process millions of people are ruined and exploited? This system is also ruining our environment and we can't just put our heads in the sand."

Asked if he felt he could be effective as the sole anti-capitalist voice in the National Assembly, he said he is not alone at all.

"On many issues - even Palestine - there are other voices. I know a lot of people who are very sympathetic to the rights and legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people to a state and to a living and to a future, so even on that very controversial issue I am not alone.

"But on issues of social justice, of a more just taxation system, on issues of environmental protection, a lot of people are in agreement with a lot of things we say. On specific issues I will try every time to find allies. And I hope they are open to that."

csolyom@thegazette.canwest.com

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