A good week for misinformation and demagoguery.
The week started with the scandal of the year.
I think a trauma warning is necessary. Hold on tight!
In a podcast, PQ MP Pascal Bérubé recounted sharing a bottle of wine with PM François Legault in his office during the pandemic. Yes, that’s the “scandal”.
However, all week, Éric Duhaime has been stirring the glass of water, hoping for the storm to take hold.
In need of attention, he believes that “this is TOTALLY unacceptable” in a tweet grafted with a letter entitled “tete-a-tete watered during the pandemic”.
With class, he continued his crusade by responding to a tweet from PM Legault to victims of the pandemic: “We learned today that while we were confined, that our elders would die without seeing their children one last time, you and your friend Pascal Bérubé was in “Friday” mode in your office.”
Éric Duhaime seeks to exist politically. What’s better than using the usual hashtags to excite some, those mentally still in a pandemic.
I also suspect this: we are looking for money at the PCQ. Pandemic memories offer a good return on investment in easy outrage. Oh well, since the start of 2024, the PCQ has been last in party financing. Surely a coincidence.
Budget
The week simply continued with the tabling of the budget, well presented by the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard.
In reaction to the budget, the leader of the PQ questioned the relevance of having lowered taxes and asked this question – the simplest possible: “Now that we have a deficit of 11 billion […] What are we going to do to generate new revenue and balance this budget?”
PM Legault responded with this: “I hope it will be on the front page of the newspapers tomorrow: the leader of the PQ has just repeated it, a Parti Québécois government would increase taxes. It’s very clear”.
Unfortunately, it was not on the front page of any newspaper.
For what? Because it’s false. Simply. The PQ has never proposed increasing taxes. This is disinformation, coming from the top and then relayed on Twitter. No matter, we hope to instill doubt.
And the week was capped by a motion denouncing the use of the expression “person with a vagina” by the Supreme Court. The motion opposed the “invisibilization of women.” There is indeed something unbearable about this Newspeak.
But, that doesn’t apply here.
It is true that the Supreme Court used this expression. However, what is false is that we are trying to “invisibilize” women. This judgment mentions the word “woman” 67 times and referred to a specific context about how a person feels about a penis in a vagina.
No one checked in Quebec, perhaps too busy inventing tax stories…
Our politicians
I had immense respect for politicians who choose to contribute to public service. I have seen the obligatory sacrifices and incessant work of politics in my own family.
The mental, physical and family consequences are poorly suspected. Take the death threats against PSPP and his family.
Politicians deserve respect. And no cynicism, distrust and accusation of any kind.
But some weeks give us fewer arguments to defend their work.