Postponed to a date after the election campaign, the tabling of an update on the finances of a sovereign Quebec by the Parti Québécois could arrive by the end of the year. At least that’s what the PQ leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, hopes, who maintains that it was not a promise.
“I think people will understand. Above all, they will understand that an opposition party does not have the means of the government to carry out work that lasts […] several months. Without fail, I will table this budget with the revised figures,” assured Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon, who intends to remain in office after the election, whether elected or not.
“We will aim for the end of the year,” he added when questioned by a journalist.
After promising a tabling before National Day, then before the first campaign leaders’ debate, the PQ campaign team finally abandoned the idea on Saturday of tabling a “year one budget” before the October 3. If he had told the To have to that this document would arrive during the first half of the campaign, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon affirms today that “it is not[était] not a promise.
“It’s an answer I gave in an interview,” he said. “I was confident at that time that we could make the adjustments. »
Ready for three months, the year one budget concluded “that the Quebec economy, it is rich, then it is autonomously viable”, indicates “PSPP”, which denies not having details on its country project. On Saturday, in addition to postponing the filing of his financial update, he had refused to comment on monetary policy, the army, or even the management of the borders of an independent Quebec.
“We would do a single tax report, the laws would apply everywhere in Quebec in terms of language and the environment, I tell them that we would have full powers in culture, […] I can continue like this. To say that I am not drawing the contours of an independent Quebec is absolutely false,” he insisted.
PSPP in the Islands
In addition, only two days after the passage of hurricane Fiona, the leader of the PQ will make a trip to the Magdalen Islands. He made the announcement during a press scrum in Joliette.
The PQ leader will make this leap – which is far from being a systematic trip for politicians because of the distance from the rest of Quebec – on Monday. He will be welcomed by his candidate and outgoing MP Joël Arseneau and will have the opportunity to see the damage caused by storm Fiona, which caused strong winds to blow on the Islands overnight from Friday to Saturday.
“We are going to follow up very closely to ensure that the victims are compensated quickly. You know it: in the case of other disasters like these, for some victims, it has turned into a nightmare because the compensation [étaient] extremely slow”, he observed, while assuring that he did not wish to “campaign”, but to understand “where the follow-ups must be done” after this extreme event.
It is already planned that the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), François Legault, will go to the Islands on Monday. Québec solidaire and the Conservative Party of Québec will not go there. At the time these lines were written, the Liberal Party of Quebec had not yet ruled.
Politically, the CAQ and the PQ are engaged in a constant battle in the riding of Îles-de-la-Madeleine. Led by its candidate Jonathan Lapierre, mayor of the Islands, the CAQ team could win the seat in the PQ, but nothing is less certain: according to the poll aggregation site Qc125.comthe two teams are one percentage point apart.