(Val-D’Or ) Paul St-Pierre Plamondon appeals to his adversaries’ sense of responsibility and urges them to “raise the level of debate” on immigration. This muscular exit from the PQ leader comes after Dominique Anglade described as “shabby” the words of François Legault, who said on Sunday that non-French-speaking immigration threatens “national cohesion”.
Posted at 2:02 p.m.
“I want to react to the words used by Dominique Angalde, namely ‘mean’ and ‘shabby’ and also react to the words used by François Legault when he spoke of fearing the threat to social cohesion”, declared the leader of the Parti Québécois before a scrum scheduled for Val-D’Or on Monday. “I call on all party leaders; Mme Anglade, Mme Legault, Mr. Nadeau-Dubois to raise the level of the debates,” he said.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon wants to appeal for calm while his political adversaries multiply the partisan attacks on immigration: “Quebecers must not be confiscated from a debate which is fundamental, very important, on the future of French, on immigration with statements that are exaggerated and outrageous,” he said.
It’s easy to do the buzzit’s easy to make the headlines by treating your adversaries as pathetic, to retain all the media attention by talking about threat, fear or by associating violence with immigration, it’s too easy.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, leader of the Parti Québécois
On Sunday, the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec, François Legault, said that allophone immigration can become a threat to national cohesion if it is not limited in number. A few days earlier, he had made a connection between violence and immigration. He then apologized. Two statements that provoked strong reactions from his political opponents.
On Monday, Liberal leader Dominique Anglade accused François Legault of making “shabby”, “mean” remarks and of “doing petty politics”.
“We cannot, as a society, help but debate the future of French and the immigration model because Dominique Anglade and François Legault decided that they did not have the height to lead these debates. with the sense of responsibility that this implies, “said the leader of the PQ. He believes that this kind of partisanship hurts voter turnout.
“If we want to interest people, we address their intelligence. Immigration and the French language are far too important topics for our linguistic future to be confiscated by sweeping statements, which are purely emotive in the register of negative emotions,” continued Mr. St. -Pierre Plamondon in front of the journalists.
Since the start of the campaign, the leader of the Parti Québécois has not easily jumped into the arena to criticize the statements of his opponents. In particular, he refused to condemn François Legault’s remarks on immigration and violence, limiting himself to qualifying them as inappropriate. He said then that these were the words of the head of the CAQ and that he did not control what Mr. Legault said, inviting him to lead a positive campaign.
On Monday, he lamented “a contest of superlatives and attention grabbing with the most irresponsible and negative statements”.
The Parti Québécois proposes to raise the immigration thresholds from 50,000 to 35,000 and to impose 100% Francophone economic immigration. The political party also presented a new version of Bill 101 to reverse the decline of French in Quebec, which the Legault government’s Bill 96 will not allow, believes the Parti Québécois.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon expects the chiefs to criticize his proposals. “It’s okay to have a debate, we will each have an argument, but here we are no longer talking about public policies, it’s who is going to be insulted the most, it’s who is going to scare the most “, he added.