All prime ministers want to make their mark, but very few do so for the right reasons. Take Jean Charest, for example. He wanted to transform Quebec from top to bottom by joining the neoliberal parade with his famous public-private partnerships. Result: Hydro-Québec missed the wind energy train, which greatly enriched private developers, and, in an absurd story of an advantageous contract for the company TC Énergie, Quebecers paid at least two billion dollars for that this natural gas plant in Bécancour does not produce a single kilowatt of energy.
What lesson can we learn from all this? When politics gets involved too closely, it quickly gives off the smell of scandals and conflicts of interest.
In the fall, François Legault said he was very insulted that his façade of nationalism was being compared to that of former Prime Minister Charest. There are, however, many similarities. Both wanted a very majority government to have both hands on the wheel. But to do what ? To sell the best places to produce electricity to private interests, privatize the profits and socialize the losses. It is easy to understand that with the deregulation of the production and sale of electricity by private companies proposed by Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon, with elastic ethics, Hydro-Québec will find itself taking all the economic risks since it It is she who will have to pay to distribute and store the energy which will enrich foreign shareholders and no longer Quebecers. Result: we will break its monopoly, which will weaken it and open the door to partial privatization, as Normand Mousseau, scientific director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montréal, points out.
What lesson could we learn from all this? Mr. Legault’s obsession with economic development at all costs has caused him to lose his bearings. After getting rid of Sophie Brochu, former CEO of the state company, because she did not want to transform Quebec into the Dollarama of electricity, he decided to sell off Hydro-Québec, our heritage, to attract foreign investors. This is sadly beginning to resemble what a leader of a banana republic would do, and not what our great builders and visionaries achieved: MM. Lesage and Lévesque.
François Legault is truly the worthy successor to Jean Charest.
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