Have a good week: Andrée Laforest
The Minister of Municipal Affairs managed to land her tax reform smoothly. His bill was well received. It was the equivalent of his negotiations. A reasonable balance has been found. Smaller municipalities will be happy to receive more money, while larger municipalities have obtained more powers. Mme Laforest will allow cities to tax vacant or underused housing, such as those allocated for short-term rentals. It is rare that a CAQ dares to adopt a new tax, but it serves the common interest. Another well-received measure: the sharing of QST revenues with municipalities is enshrined in law, which will make its abolition more difficult.
Paul Journet, The Press
Hard week: Bruno Marchand
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESS
The mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, held a press conference this week to provide an update on the budget surrounding the tram project.
The mayor of Quebec struggles with the energy of despair. We suspected the news would be bad with the tram cost update, but it’s worse than expected. Costs have not only jumped. They are so high that Quebec is no longer able to find a bidder. Mr. Marchand does not give up. He believes the project is not dead. The City could become the new conductor of the work by managing contracts with various contractors. But the CAQ government has lost its enthusiasm, which was already moderate.
Paul Journet, The Press
Number of the week
64,600
Officially, Quebec announced this week that it was setting its annual immigration threshold at 50,000 permanent new arrivals for the next two years. However, by adding foreign students and business people to whom the Legault government intends to open the doors, this number could rise to 64,600 in 2024, according to estimates made by the Ministry of Immigration.
The quote of the week
It pains me to see that support from Quebecers is declining. And then I will try to be better.
Prime Minister François Legault reacting to the Léger poll published in the Quebecor media. He was dethroned by PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon as “best prime minister” and his party is slipping in voting intentions and is being heated by the Parti Québécois.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESS
Prime Minister François Legault, at a press conference
Legault “better than Chartrand”?
A few days before the first day of the common front strike, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois poked François Legault on Wednesday by comparing him to the famous trade unionist Michel Chartrand. “To give people the taste for going on strike, the Prime Minister is better than Michel Chartrand,” quipped the solidarity leader in a tough exchange with Mr. Legault on the latest offer to state employees. Mr. Nadeau-Dubois then accused his counterpart of being stingy when it is time “to give better salaries to the ordinary world” and not when “you have to sign a check for a Swedish start-up”. He was referring to the Northvolt company which will receive generous subsidies. François Legault responded with the attack: “The leader of Québec solidaire has just demonstrated why he will never be Prime Minister of Quebec […] he mixes business incentives with salary increases! »
The NDP is tired of being associated with the Liberals
The label “NDP-liberal government” sticks to the skin of the New Democrats. This is a “misleading” sentence, MP Daniel Blaikie was indignant in the House this week, since a confidence agreement like the one they signed in 2022 to support Justin Trudeau’s minority government “n ‘does not imply that this party is part of a government’ or that they form a coalition. “I completely understand how extremely embarrassing it is for this MP to be involved in the scandals and corruption of the Liberal government, but that is not our problem,” retorted the leader of the Conservatives in the Commons, Andrew Scheer. The question, raised again on Thursday, was taken under advisement by the Speaker of the House.
” Sit down ! »
The Conservatives continue to play with the nerves of the new Speaker of the House of Commons, Greg Fergus, whose interventions are too frequent for the taste of some MPs. Pierre Poilievre alluded several times on Wednesday to the absence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from question period, which is against the rules. It was enough for the government House leader, Karina Gould, to denounce “her lack of respect for democracy”. The Conservative leader jumped up and remained standing even though he was not allowed to speak. “Sit down,” a liberal elected official shouted at him. Other elected Liberals and New Democrats stood up in protest. “Tempers are getting heated,” noted Mr. Fergus, asking the deputies to sit down again. Mr. Poilievre added another layer by saying that the Prime Minister was “panicked, in the fetal position, shaking” because of the “last days of chaos of the carbon tax”, turning a deaf ear to yet another call for respect for decorum .
A walk in the snow!
There are Liberals who can’t wait for the federal capital to be covered with a beautiful white carpet. It’s not because they like playing in the snow or cross-country skiing. They want Justin Trudeau to imitate his father, Pierre Trudeau, and take a little walk in the snow to think about his future. This is particularly the case of Senator Percy Downe, who revealed his thoughts on the future of the Prime Minister, in the light of numerous polls that were devastating for the Liberal Party, in an opinion letter which made big noise this week in Ottawa. Percy Downe was notably chief of staff to former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien before being appointed to the Senate by the latter. “Liberal Party members are excited about February 29. The year 2024 is a leap year, many hope that it will snow that day,” Mr. Downe also told the weekly The Hill Times. 40 years ago, on February 29, 1984, Pierre Trudeau took a walk in the snow and subsequently announced that he was leaving federal politics.
The return of the night of the long knives
With the rise of the Parti Québécois, we started talking about the year 1 budget of a sovereign Quebec, a referendum in a first mandate, the currency and the Quebec army, it’s like if we went back in time! Now Simon Jolin-Barrette has in turn thrown himself into the fray. The parliamentary leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) tabled a motion on Thursday for the National Assembly to “remember the night of the long knives from November 4 to 5, 1981,” while in the absence of the former Prime Minister René Lévesque, the federal government and seven provincial premiers reached an agreement to unilaterally patriate the Canadian Constitution, without the agreement of Quebec. In its unanimously adopted motion, tabled jointly with Sol Zanetti of Québec solidaire and leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon of the Parti Québécois, the parliamentarians affirmed that “the Quebec nation has the right to decide alone on its political future” and that it “intends to use the constitutional and legislative mechanisms allowing it to assert the sovereignty of the Quebec Parliament”.