Posted at 6:00 a.m.
I will henceforth be a collaborator at The Press. It’s quite a change.
I have spent the last 15 years, in my native Outaouais, doing what you might call collective action. This commitment began with my participation in the relaunch of the Laiterie de l’Outaouais. The dairy industry, like many others, was subject to excessive centralization and my region successfully launched a huge “Enough! “.
I then participated in the founding of Projet Gatineau, a think tank on municipal politics. Observers accused Gatineau of lacking vision and, rather than criticizing in turn, a group of citizens decided to mobilize to propose their own vision for the future. In the meantime, I became a municipal councilor and the mobilization of Projet Gatineau led to the creation of Gatineau’s first municipal political party, then to the drafting of a program that I tried to put in place during my eight years at the town hall of the fourth largest city in Quebec.
So I now write in a daily newspaper… and I’m the first to be surprised. There is a certain cacophony of opinions and a speed of execution in the media that hardly appeal to me. There are also a good number of former politicians, former politicians who already take up a lot of space. So why this choice?
First, because I deeply love Quebec and The Press is one of the most powerful vehicles for those who want to help build it by expressing ideas. Camille Laurin liked to repeat that it is not money that drives the world, but ideas. Véronique Côté, in the superb essay entitled Habitable life, expressed the same thing with a little more poetry: “Our speech is perhaps the most powerful instrument at our disposal, the most creative tool, the most threatening ammunition. Used well, it can do anything. To use it well, I will try to talk to the wenot the we of majesty, but this we Quebec collective still fragile, yet to be defined, which can generate so much strength.
I also want to help explain the municipal world, to make it known, even to brag about it a little. Paradoxically, while our future is being built locally, it is the political level that is the most neglected. I am convinced that it is in all of our interests to better understand and consolidate it.
Finally, the media often give me the impression of talking about a Quebec that is not mine. There is a Montrealization, sometimes even an Americanization, of public debates that I want to help dilute with a reflection that starts from all of our reality, our history, our challenges. Extensive program!
But above all, I will try to share with you proposals for solutions to our collective problems, useful nuances for our debates and, perhaps above all, my enthusiasm for collective action.
But I have a small fear.
One of the greatest political blessings that comes with being mayor is that the name of our city is the primary label that defines us. Although I was a sovereignist mayor in a federalist Gatineau, the federalists were open to what I had to say because I was mayor of their city. The disease of labels therefore frightens me, because it limits the ability to be listened to, it kills dialogue. To paraphrase Jean-Patrick Manchette, a French writer, I would say that the labels of right or left, identity or not, progressive or conservative, etc., are too often “the two jaws of the same trap for idiots”. We label the other, we no longer read it, we stay with our certainties and nothing changes. I hope that he will remain in the inevitable label with which I will one day be decked out with a little of this favorable prejudice, a little of this listening that mayors benefit from.
The Press gives me the chance to address a large part of my nation. I am deeply grateful to him and I will try to make good use of this platform. See you Monday !