(Quebec) Prime Minister François Legault assures that he did not want to blame public sector union members for the widening deficit.
At a press conference last Sunday, Mr. Legault made a direct link between the renewal of collective agreements and the next budget which will be “largely deficit”.
“Investing massively in public services will have financial consequences,” he warned. We find ourselves with a budget that is largely in deficit […], much more deficit than it was before these negotiations. »
On Tuesday, opposition parties joined unions to deplore these comments.
“François Legault has the cockpit levers in front of him, he has his hands on all the cockpit levers, and then he still finds ways to say that it is the fault of others,” denounced the parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
During question period, Mr. Legault defended himself by asserting that his government had chosen to improve the working conditions of state employees, particularly in health and education.
We must be very clear, here, I never blamed the teachers, the nurses, the unions. What I said is that our government has chosen to invest massively in the working conditions of people who work for our public services.
Prime Minister François Legault
The Prime Minister reiterated that there will be no “austerity” and that there was “no question of cutting services”.
“Higher deficits are difficult, they will require real efforts, but they are manageable,” the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, declared in an impromptu press release.
The Liberals accuse the CAQ government of having squandered, since 2018, “billions of dollars in budget surpluses”.
The Liberal finance spokesperson, Frédéric Beauchemin, recalled the massive sending of checks to the population and the granting of a subsidy to the Los Angeles Kings so that they could come and play two preparatory matches in Quebec.
“They are very bad managers. At the end of the day, the Minister of Finance and the Coalition Avenir Québec are mortgaging our young people and filling the credit cards of the next generations,” he denounced.
At a press briefing, the leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, also recalled the Legault government’s decision to lower taxes.
“ [Le] government promised us that the tax cut would not rhyme with a deficit or reduction in services. They must be held accountable, and they are the ones responsible, not the workers,” he said.