When you arrive at the negotiating table empty-handed, without a balance of power, you depend entirely on the magnanimity of your interlocutors, or lack thereof. In politics, where partisan interests take precedence, abnegation is not the dominant feature. At the end of the negotiations concerning the rights to speak in the Blue Room and the budgets allocated to each of the three opposition parties, the elected representatives of the Parti Québécois (PQ) were able to realize this.
This is an unprecedented situation. The three opposition parties present in the National Assembly received roughly the same percentage of votes in the last general elections. Of the three, the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) received the fewest votes, but it forms the official opposition with 19 elected members. Québec solidaire (QS) has slightly fewer votes than in 2018, but one more MP, or 11 MPs. The PQ is slightly ahead of the PLQ, but it had to settle for a trio of elected officials.
Claiming a budget of $800,000, the PQ had to settle for $570,000. Farewell to the bonus for the PQ parliamentary leader, Pascal Bérubé, a function wiped out with the stroke of a pen. The PLQ will pocket more than 5 million and QS, close to 2.7 million, one million more than in 2018. We can expect that part of this sum will be devoted to improving living conditions. of its political staff, who unionized in 2019.
From these negotiations, both the PLQ and QS emerged satisfied. Objectively, the two parties, like the Coalition avenir Québec, have no interest in helping the PQ to raise its head.
With 7 questions per 10-day cycle, the PQ has little advantage, whereas the PLQ will be able to ask 60. other era.
And there is the Conservative Party of Quebec whose leader, Éric Duhaime, begs to be allowed into parliament to hold press briefings. There’s got to be a chosen one somewhere.
Is it right ? Is it fair? Obviously not. But that’s what our voting system has produced. Unfortunately, we cannot remedy its shortcomings with arrangements negotiated piecemeal behind closed doors between elected officials motivated by their partisan interests. And this inequity makes the reform of the voting system once promised all the more necessary.