Paul St-Pierre Plamondon gave further proof that he is a skilled politician this week.
• Read also: Justin Trudeau refuses to give full powers over immigration to Quebec
With his simple question to François Legault, Thursday at the Salon Bleu, on the old CAQ commitment to repatriate immigration powers, the PQ leader forced the game.
The PM had no choice but to reaffirm his promise. He also opened his game, affirming that in the event of refusal, he would “consider his options”.
At the end of their meeting on Friday, Justin Trudeau, with the ease of a musician replaying his favorite hits, replied: “No, we are not going to give more powers to immigration.”
PSPP only had to be indignant about X: “We are better than this perpetual humiliation.” Checkmate. And “Quebec Option”! (title of a book by René Lévesque)
For form!
In PM Legault’s entourage, we were angry yesterday.
PSPP, it is argued, has nothing to do with this renewal of the promise. Well before the PQ question, François Legault’s office had sent the federal PM a list of demands with this one in mind.
- Listen to the political meeting between Antoine Robitaille and Benoît Dutrizac via QUB :
In our fiscal federalism, every PM of Quebec must one day or another play the beggar. On Friday, Legault would have reiterated his request to Trudeau, making him understand that it was “for form”; a bit like when a Canadian PM mentions, “on mission to Africa, the importance of LGBTQ rights”.
Six years
Repatriating powers, it was subsequently explained on the Quebec side, is long term. However, the problems linked to the explosion in the number of new arrivals require immediate action. There would be an emergency.
If this is indeed the case, is it not also urgent that Quebec deploys its “options” in order to give itself a balance of power against Ottawa?
Photo POOL PC, Christine Muschi
Because of immigration, François Legault has been talking with Justin Trudeau for… almost six years. October 12, 2018: first meeting between the two PMs, on the sidelines of the Francophonie Summit in Armenia. The newspaper headline “Legault gets Trudeau to listen to him on immigration”.
Vague invoice
Yesterday, the federal government reportedly criticized Quebec for presenting an insufficiently detailed $1 billion bill for asylum seekers (AD) from 2021 to 2023.
On this level, the meeting of the PM would have given a concrete result: clear mandates were given to senior officials of the two administrations so that they “break down” the bill.
This criticism from Ottawa about the imprecision of Quebec’s invoices is not new. It may even be a federal strategy: in April 2018, they also claimed that the Couillard government was asking for money (for Roxham asylum seekers) on the basis of imprecise invoices. François Legault was indignant: “It’s not serious. When the Prime Minister [Couillard] will he have real management, then stop being messy?
Even if he has sometimes succeeded in getting the federal government to move in recent years (closure of Roxham, visas for Mexicans), we have no other choice but to take over, for the management of immigration by François Legault, the qualifier he used in the past: rough.