Compare disconnected politicians to Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, this royal couple who ended up under the guillotine during the French Revolution in the 18th century.e century, is a common reference in France when the people are fed up. Here in Quebec, apart from when the Governor General of Canada (who after all represents the King) offers herself generous renovations, it is rarer to make the analogy. It’s that in America, we still hold on to self-made man and meritocracy. Even if the gap continues to widen between the rich and the poor, we don’t complain too much, because we only had to work hard to become rich, rather than becoming a teacher or a nurse.
After the recent jovial declarations of François Legault and the Minister responsible for Housing France-Élaine Duranceau on the housing crisis, an index of wealth according to our Prime Minister, we have seen the appearance of caricatures comparing them to Louis XVI and Marie- Antoinette, and that’s never a good sign when you pride yourself on being close to the people.
“Let them invest in real estate! “, said the minister, about the tenants against a section of bill 31 which gives all the powers to the owners to refuse an assignment of lease. Which recalls a sentence that Queen Marie-Antoinette would have said when she was told about the starving people who lacked bread: “Let them eat brioche!” »
Marie-Antoinette never said that according to historians, but it had its effect in the pamphlets at the time, with an angry and hungry population. And the formula stuck.
In 2023, there are cameras. François Legault, who bought a 3.2 million penthouse in 2021, and France-Élaine Duranceau, who made a fortune in real estate, really said that, after an increase in the salaries of deputies, in the midst of a housing crisis. One of the worst – if not the worst – the country has seen.
It’s going to stick with them for a very long time, unless they act up to this crisis. That is to say, as servants of the state and not as owners.
I never dreamed of being an owner, my parents were not. My dream was to travel, which I fortunately did, but not enough for my taste, before seeing Quebec suffocate under historic forest fires. Until very recently, I was one of the 40% of households in Quebec who are tenants. In recent years, I was biting my fingers to see the price of rents climb. Poor bitch of a cicada, going to sing abroad, when I should have done like the ant. But I grew up in a country where June 24 has always been a day of celebration (and chicanery), while June 1er July is a moving day, as if, on Canada Day, we were symbolically taking advantage of it to go somewhere else. Life is movement.
It’s over, that time of rental or existential mobility. We cling to our leases, we pass them on when we have the audacity to change places, we buy in panic at exorbitant prices.
We stay where we are, we put off divorces, because by dividing up possessions, we no longer have the means to go our separate ways. We become prisoners of the situation.
Because even the most thrifty ant today struggles to find accommodation or buy a modest condo. I clung to my apartment like a buoy in this storm that won’t calm down any time soon. Then my boyfriend inherited the old family home after the tragic deaths of both parents in quick succession. After much hesitation, because we were terrified of the renovations, we took the ticket that could get us to safety.
Unlike others, I don’t feel proud to be an owner, since it happened to me. I would enjoy it more if Quebec was doing well, it’s my Judeo-Christian side.
For the first time in my life, no one can drive me out of my house. I’m not used to it, I still think about the rent at the beginning of each month, the conditioning of a tenant’s life. I have to check the date of the tax payments instead, which are pretty hefty, but it’s cheaper than what a studio in Montreal would cost me right now. I would never have been able to live where I live now if I had also had a mortgage and suffered the interest rate hikes.
But you know what ? Money attracts money. When you own real estate that has a certain value, the banks offer you a home equity line of credit that you never dared to dream of, when they almost asked you for a digital rectal examination to grant you a loan.
It may be used to change my gas stove system which could be banned in the near future. While I’m doing the math in my head, I get the release for a new renovation show starring actress Christine Beaulieu. “Concerned by the climate crisis we are going through, Christine wants her renovations to be as responsible and intelligent as possible. I don’t mind, but it suddenly hits me.
Lots of people simply don’t have the means to renovate, in an eco-responsible way or not, and have to content themselves with dreaming in front of the TV.
We will be entitled to the reports of the 1er July on these families who will find themselves on the streets, and it will be a sad record this year, but behind these images of those to whom the worst happens, there are thousands who fear the worst, or who endure the worst in unsanitary housing, too small, increasingly far from work. New homeowners stuck with interest rates, having to reduce the skyrocketing grocery bill. Entrepreneurs in need of employees, themselves unable to find housing in their area, community organizations overwhelmed when social problems are on the rise and we must also house the immigrants who are the subject of all the debates.
Fear and immobility took hold of us. The social elevator is broken for a whole generation and the following ones. This housing crisis is very serious, because it goes far beyond the framework of real estate and poverty; it is in the process of creating castes, an aristocracy. It is generational, economic, ecological, social, and I believe it is also cultural. In this winter country where it is impossible to leave a human being on the street without leading him to death because of the frost, it was in our culture that everyone could find accommodation. I even believe that winter was the basis of an obligatory solidarity in our society, which a merciless capitalist thaw is in the process of damaging.
This is why I think Quebec is burning, on many levels.