In order to reach out to Indigenous peoples, the Liberal leader, Dominique Anglade, is committed to making September 30, National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, a public holiday in Quebec as it already is at the federal level.
“It would send a very strong message of real desire to move towards this reconciliation that we so badly need politically,” said Ms.me Anglade, passing through Montreal on Friday.
Having a statutory holiday in Quebec would “recognize the significance” of what happened at residential schools for Indigenous people and pay tribute to survivors. In September 2021, Prime Minister François Legault closed the door to this request.
If the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) is brought to power, it also undertakes to implement the Joyce Principle within the first 100 days of a possible mandate. The latter aims “to guarantee to all Aboriginal people the right of equitable access, without any discrimination, to all social and health services”.
It was developed by the Council of the Atikamekw Nation, after the death of Joyce Echaquan in September 2020 at the Joliette hospital, under the racist insults of a nurse.
Mme Anglade said she will travel to Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, on Sunday. With her candidate in Ungava, Tunu Napartuk, former mayor of the city, she will meet the Inuit communities.
Recognizing systemic racism, like paying tribute to the survivors of residential schools for Aboriginals with a public holiday, is part of a reflection that it is necessary to have in Quebec, according to the leader of the PLQ.
” [On va] get people to think collectively about things we need to change in our system, especially with Indigenous communities,” she said.
A “relevant” downtime
For his part, the co-spokesperson of Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, finds it “relevant to take a break [afin] to remember the injustices of the past in order to prepare for the future”.
Mr. Nadeau-Dubois will have a “sober attitude” on Friday, in order to “leave all the room for indigenous issues”, he indicated.
The leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, Éric Duhaime, pleads in favor of a “day of commemoration” without people necessarily stopping work.
“We already have a lot of public holidays, he argued, in a press scrum on Thursday. I think we have to work. You can’t be off too often. We already have a lot of days off. »
The leader of the Parti Québécois had meanwhile forgotten his proposal on the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation on Friday. When a journalist asked him if he wanted to make it a statutory holiday, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon replied that he “just wanted to check if [le PQ] had specified one day or another”. “From memory, we are favorable,” he said.
The party wants to make September 30 a public holiday.
With Marco Bélair-Cirino, Isabelle Porter and François Carabin