François Legault can encourage Quebecers to move to the regions, they will not follow if there are no quality services, denounced Québec solidaire (QS).
The left party thus responded on Friday to the Prime Minister’s statements the day before at the congress of the Fédération québécoise des municipalities (FQM), in the capital.
We will have to “convince people to move to the region” to fill paying jobs while avoiding “fly in fly out”, that is to say commuting, he argued.
“The truth is that if we don’t offer good public services in the regions, no matter how much we make all the sales pitches we want, people will not want to move to the regions,” replied the co-spokesperson of QS, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, on the FQM platform Friday morning.
“To attract people, we must guarantee good public services throughout Quebec,” he continued, deploring that citizens in the regions do not have access to the same quality services as in large centers. .
Mr. Nadeau-Dubois therefore promoted “territorial equity” contained in the Saguenay Declaration adopted by his party.
According to this principle, people must have the right to the same level of services everywhere on the territory.
The PLQ supports taxes and road safety
Liberal leader Marc Tanguay, who succeeded him at the podium, is the only one of the three leaders of the opposition parties to have obtained sustained applause from the room during his speech.
To achieve this, he targeted specific irritants, bones of contention with the government that municipal elected officials want to resolve. Among other things, that the government pay all municipal taxes on its buildings, rather than granting a payment in lieu of taxes.
Also, he denounced the obligation that municipalities have to cede land for the construction of schools.
Mr. Tanguay also emphasized the fact that the government puts in place new road safety measures, such as speed bumps, but without assuming the cost, because it is the municipalities that must pay for them.
Small deviation from custom: he took off his hat as leader of the official opposition to instead take on his role as interim leader of the Liberal Party, in order to invite elected officials to follow the leadership race underway in his party.
“I will not be in front of you next year,” he recalled, since the election of the new leader will take place in June. “We will come before you with a whole political program” with a view to the 2026 election, he promised.