Stuck in traffic between his riding of Lévis and his home of Cap-Rouge, Bernard Drainville must sometimes wonder if he was right to give up his microphone to return to politics. He hasn’t had it easy over the past few weeks and he is clearly not at the end of his troubles.
Barely six months after his return to the National Assembly, the abandonment of the third link project already places a mortgage on his re-election. For those who are disavowed by local elected officials, simply going to the grocery store, where many must look askance at them, has undoubtedly become an ordeal.
It took only three days after the presentation of his bill on school governance for Premier Legault to feel the need to come to his defense. He is likely to become the next Turkish head of the opposition.
The Minister of Education must have a sense of deja vu. In September 2013, a hundred intellectuals had denounced in an open letter the “authoritarian vision of secularism” reflected in his draft Charter of Quebec values.
This time, he is accused of wanting to put the education network under his belt. In a recent article published in The duty, about thirty people from the community described his project as a coup. “You have to go back to the first term of Duplessis to find such authoritarianism and contempt for democracy and knowledge,” they write.
They particularly attack the future National Institute for Excellence in Education (INEE), whose “neoliberal ideology”, a “narrow vision of pedagogy” and a “positivist epistemology” they denounce. We do not yet know who will compose it, but there is clearly no question of leaving the chance to the runner.
This institute would have been “concocted by researchers associated with the CAQ”. Its creation was however recommended, after wide consultation, by a committee mandated by Sébastien Proulx, former Minister of Education in the Couillard government. Or, Mr. Proulx was a former member of the ADQ, just as Mr. Drainville is a former member of the PQ.
Its detractors already foresee that the INEE “will in fact be a tool at the service of politics”, therefore of “the commercial ideology of education which is that of the CAQ”, whereas the committee had insisted that the INEE enjoys “independence from the various powers and interests, of any kind, that may seek to influence it”.
It is true that it will have to formulate its opinions and recommendations at the request of the Minister, whereas the Higher Council of Education, which will henceforth be confined to post-secondary education, had full freedom to intervene on any question that he deemed relevant.
Thus, in a report published in 2016, the Council denounced the proliferation of special programs and private establishments, which created “a multi-speed school system”, with the result that Quebec schools had become the most unequal in the world. country.
The CAQ, then in opposition, had proclaimed its indignation. “Is it embarrassing enough”? launched Jean-François Roberge, who saw in it the result of 13 years of Liberal government. The problem is that the portrait has hardly changed during the four years he himself was minister.
His successor may not want the Council to meddle in his business. Yet he is that kind of man who may need a safeguard. Like everyone else, Bernard Drainville has the faults of his qualities. Unlike others who get lost in procrastination, he doesn’t hesitate to take action, but his impulsiveness can play tricks on him.
This happened to him in the case of the Center de services scolaire du Pays-des-Bleuets, in Lac-Saint-Jean: he had indeed hastened to denounce the inexperience of the director general, when the latter was working in the school for more than 30 years.
In his commendable impatience to act, he may tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. All is not white or black. Admittedly, the education network needs a boost, but between its desire to “get out of the status quo” and throw everything away, it can see some beneficial compromises.
In 2013, it was already not easy to legislate on a subject as sensitive as the secularism of the State, all the more so for a minority government. Even if the PQ had had a majority in the National Assembly, embracing as broadly as Mr. Drainville aspired to do with his Charter of Values condemned him to failure.