At the opening of the general council which must define the “bold” and “unifying” nationalism of their party, liberal activists mocked, on Saturday, the “sovereignist” positions of Prime Minister François Legault.
“It is time for the English-speaking community to go on the offensive,” said Antoine Dionne-Charest, member of the Committee on the Revival of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ), in a press scrum.
In his opinion, the PLQ is offering English-speakers in Quebec the opportunity to participate in a “common project” and in this, it distinguishes itself from the Coalition Avenir Québec. To illustrate his point, Mr. Dionne-Charest blasted the government’s decision to increase tuition fees for new foreign students or students from other Canadian provinces starting in winter 2024.
“Let us make no mistake, the announcement [de vendredi], it’s a frontal attack. Not just against English-speaking institutions in Quebec, but against the English-speaking community,” he said. “They behave like sovereignists,” he also declared about the CAQ members.
The interim leader of the PLQ, Marc Tanguay, for his part described Mr. Legault as a “PQ in the closet”. And “from time to time, we see it come out,” he continued.
With the announcement on tuition fees, “François Legault […] had all its PQ points by trying to divide Quebecers once again,” believes Mr. Tanguay.
A liberal Constitution
The interim leader then presented his vision of the draft Constitution of Quebec put forward by the Committee on Recovery. “What we would eventually put in this constitution would reaffirm the rights of all Quebecers, particularly English-speakers. […] It will be supra-legislative,” he said.
Mr. Tanguay then distinguished the PLQ project from the Quebec Constitution project in which the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, is interested.
” We, [ce n’est pas] a constitution that is not PQ-Caquist that we are going to propose, it is a liberal constitution,” launched Mr. Tanguay.
Pressed with questions about the partisan nature he gave to the project, Mr. Tanguay tried to qualify his remarks. “It is clear that it is a Constitution of Quebec, but which will be debated by liberal activists. And, in that sense, it would not be the same type of Constitution that Paul St-Pierre Plamondon or François Legault would propose,” he said.