When the Legault government had used the gag order to force the adoption of Bill 40 which abolished school boards, the opposition had already criticized it for wanting to transpose to the education network the centralization that Gaétan Barrette had imposed on that of health. The PLQ had itself cried out for the “trashing of the Education Act”.
Under the pretext that participation in school elections was anemic, the entire school network had been upset by this 312-article bill dealing with a host of subjects other than governance, to which the Minister of Education, Jean -François Roberge, had made another 80 amendments at the last minute.
Mr. Roberge pleaded that the creation of the new school service centers would give more decision-making powers to school principals and parents, but he was accused of seeking instead to increase his own control over the network.
He defended himself against it. “It’s not about centralization. The general manager will be the spokesperson for the service centre. This person will not be subjugated or directed by the government. It will be independent, ”assured Mr. Roberge.
Apparently, this independence was a mistake that the Prime Minister now intends to correct by drawing on his “reserve of courage”. In an interview with The Press last Friday, he explained that certain decisions taken by the CEOs with the support of the boards of directors displease him.
He now intends to give himself “full power to choose” the CEOs or to kick them out without taking into account the opinion of the boards of directors, whose role will also be reduced. Exactly what Gaétan Barrette had been accused of.
With Law 40, “students will soon be able to count on real local school governance, less bureaucratic”, declared Jean-François Roberge. In the service centres, the boards of directors, made up of parents, staff members or people from the community, would ensure this proximity.
The call for candidates launched by the government claimed “the ability to help determine the main orientations of the school service centre”. On the condition that they correspond to those fixed in Quebec, it was necessary to understand.
We can very well understand that the government wishes to obtain the maximum of data concerning the performance of the network and the success of the students. Should we understand from the Prime Minister’s remarks that the service centers refuse to transmit them to the Minister? This has all the appearance of a pretext to complete the centralization enterprise initiated by Law 40.
In his interview at The PressMr. Legault mentioned the decision of the Pays-des-Bleuets school service center, in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, to close half of its four-year-old kindergartens without notifying the government.
After blaming the inexperience of the center’s general manager, Patrice Boivin, the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, had to apologize to him after realizing that he had more than 30 years of experience in the school environment, as a teacher and as a manager.
Between a new minister, no doubt full of good will, but who is making his debut in education, and a man with 30 years of experience in his part of the country, who is best placed to assess the resources at his disposal?
At the impossible, no one is required, said Mr. Legault recently. Was it to be understood that this maxim only applied to him? Due to the labor shortage, Mr. Drainville himself admitted that he would be unable to respect the commitment on four-year-old kindergarten made by the CAQ in 2018. In the land of blueberries, teachers do not don’t grow on trees either.
Since he became Prime Minister, it must be recognized that Mr. Legault has been able to draw on his “reserve of courage” to make the changes he believes are necessary, but sometimes it seems that the words have a different meaning. in his mouth, even that they have a meaning contrary to that which is generally given to them.
Thus, we understood for a long time that the autonomy that the CAQ claims within the Canadian federation is simply a figure of speech that does not rhyme with much. We now see that the decentralization of which it had made itself the apostle meant exactly the opposite.