Nadeau was elected to lead the Quebec New Democratic Party in April 1989, defeating incumbent leader Roland Morin. The election contest was centred on the Quebec NDP's relationship with the federal party. At the time, the NDP had a single party organization in Quebec that was responsible for both federal and provincial matters. Several members of the Quebec NDP opposed its links to the federal party, particularly in light of ideological divisions on issues relating to Quebec nationalism. The Quebec party supported the province's Charter of the French Language, opposed the Meech Lake Accord, and were sceptical toward the Canadian constitution because it was approved without Quebec's support. Nadeau favoured the creation of a separate provincial party, while Morin initially opposed it before declaring his neutrality. Nadeau, who was thirty-five years old at the time, also highlighted the generational divide between himself and the fifty-seven-year-old Morin. He said, "The leadership choice is clearly between a democratic socialist who has a vision for the '90s and one who is clinging to the outdated notions of the '70s." For his part, Morin described Nadeau as a single-issue candidate focused only on the environment. Nadeau defeated Morin at a party convention held on April 30, 1989, as the party also voted to separate from the federal organization and become a completely distinct entity. The NDP ran fifty-five candidates in the 1989 election. Its campaign began in confusion, when the party executive approved an election platform that Nadeau derided as "naive Marxism." He initially threatened to resign as party leader, but refrained when the executive agreed to withdraw the offending document. Nadeau later described the platform as having resulted from the "fertile imagination" of a single party worker who misunderstood the instructions of its policy committee. Nadeau secured a more prominent place for environmental issues in the party's revised platform, but he could not prevent party activists from adding a focus on Quebec nationalism. Nadeau opposed this on strategic grounds, arguing that it would not help the party build support. Others argued that it prevented the party from winning support among anglophone Liberals who were disgruntled with the nationalist policies of premierRobert Bourassa. Close to election day, Nadeau acknowledged that his party would not win any seats in the legislature. The NDP received about one per cent of the popular vote, and Nadeau received only 437 votes for a distant fourth-place finish in the Montreal division of Dorion. He resigned as party leader on September 26, 1989, one day after the election, saying that the Quebec NDP would never be able to succeed because of a "hard core of Marxists" hindering its development.
Since 1989
Nadeau was a researcher for the municipal Democratic Coalition party in the early 1990s.
Electoral record
Source: . Sources: Report of the Chief Electoral Officer, Thirty-fourth General Election, 1988; Report of the Chief Electoral Officer Respecting Election Expenses, 1988.''
