(Quebec) Members of the Conference of Prefects of Abitibi-Témiscamingue (CPAT) are in Quebec City this Wednesday to meet Prime Minister François Legault to discuss the absence of a minister from their region in the Council of Ministers .
Posted at 8:17 a.m.
The meeting which had been requested since the formation of the Council of Ministers must take place at 10 a.m. Minister Mathieu Lacombe as well as the member for Abitibi-Est, Pierre Dufour, must participate.
After last month’s general election, Premier Legault formed a cabinet of 30 Coalition Avenir Québec MPs, but he ignored the three CAQ members from Abitibi-Témiscamingue. In addition, Mathieu Lacombe, who is responsible for the region in the Cabinet, is a member of the Outaouais.
The president of the CPAT and prefect of the MRC d’Abitibi, Sébastien D’Astous, hopes that the meeting will be productive and that it will allow the region to have a voice with the main decision-making bodies.
He deplores the fact that in recent years, the region has lost regional leadership and political power when it represents, he says, approximately 10% of Quebec’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in particular thanks to the wealth of its forest and mining resources.
The CPAT points out that the Council of Ministers also does not include representatives from Nord-du-Québec and Gaspésie/Îles-de-la-Madeleine, the so-called remote regions, and that there are only four for the regions of Côte-Nord, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Outaouais and Bas-Saint-Laurent. The CPAT therefore fears that the relative power of the regions within the Council of Ministers is in danger.
The Conference of Prefects of Abitibi-Témiscamingue brings together the City of Rouyn-Noranda and the four territories of Regional County Municipalities (RCMs) in the region, which has 147,700 inhabitants and 64 municipalities.