The return to parliament is always a perilous day for a government. All the files that remained in the air during the break risk coming back to him. And sometimes so fast that the most skilful of ministers cannot safely catch them all.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
Sometimes it’s trial balloons that haven’t taken off. Sometimes these are hastily launched projects for political reasons. Other times it’s acknowledgment that a project might not pass the test of the courts.
This is how, instead of spending the first days of the session defending a “health contribution” for the unvaccinated, a populist but inapplicable proposal, the Legault government chose to back down before the start of the session.
In fact, this initiative was popular only at first glance and if one did not take into account all the practical pitfalls and the great principles that would be trampled on.
First, even if it was popular to charge the non-vaccinated, it is far from certain that it would have had an impact on the number of vaccinated when we see the socio-economic profile of the recalcitrant.
Then, because it would have been difficult to justify not respecting important principles in a democratic society. Allowing the Ministry of Revenue access to citizens’ health records was more than problematic, not only in terms of privacy.
Especially if the goal of our health system is to treat and not to punish, how to make the non-vaccinated pay without opening the door to also making smokers who develop lung cancer, for example, pay. There are doors that are best left closed.
The other boomerang has not yet returned in the face of the government, but the ground is being prepared. The Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, said Monday that work on the pharaonic tunnel between Quebec and Lévis could begin this year – before the election campaign – but that we would not know until 2025 how much the project could cost.
It’s a new version of “buy now, pay later”. But, for the supporters of the project, we can see there the beginning of a scam. We will probably leave a few backhoes on the site in the fall, but we will announce later, probably in 2025, that the cost estimates mean that the project will have to be abandoned.
Because the more time goes by, the more people there will be – even in government – to realize that 10 billion dollars for this tunnel is an absolutely unsustainable cost in view of the benefits and disadvantages that the community will draw.
Finally, a little later during this parliamentary session, the debate will resume on Bill 96 – better known as the new Bill 101, CAQ version.
The parliamentary committee hearings took place in the fall and many groups warned the government that its bill is unconstitutional and cannot be “saved by the notwithstanding clause” which only affects rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter. rights, not by the rest of the Constitution.
However, some of the measures in question affect the language used before the courts, where the use of French and English is guaranteed by section 133 of the Constitution. Rights that are guaranteed to both Francophones and Anglophones across the country.
Traditionally, Quebec has always scrupulously respected article 133 so as not to give any opening to reciprocal action against francophones from other provinces, for whom this article is a fundamental right.
In fact, everyone in the legal world understood this: it was a way for the godfather of the law and Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, to settle accounts with the Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec, Lucie Rondeau. She insists on appointing bilingual judges in the Montreal region, which is opposed by Mr. Jolin-Barrette – who is also minister responsible for the French language.
To risk seeing a law invalidated for such a dispute is very unwise. The boomerang might only come back after a long legal challenge, but it won’t hurt any less.
And since we are talking about boomerangs, the government is in the process of making one that could come back to it from the English-speaking community.
The abandonment of the Dawson College expansion project could have been explained with more subtlety by the Prime Minister: “If we have to choose a priority, it is better to expand the francophone colleges rather than to expand Dawson”, he said rather bluntly on Tuesday.
Similarly, the appointment without consultation of the Anglophone community of a person with no experience in education as Deputy Minister in charge of the Anglophone sector was shocking.
Notice to the Prime Minister: even if it will not make you lose votes, boomerang, it is also said in English.