I attended the Fred Pellerin show on Saturday, The descent into business, and I came back with laughter still hanging on my lips, amazed and moved. He is a larger than life storyteller. It made me think of human madness, of the “wood fire” of life, of love. He is my favorite Quebec philosopher, minus the heaviness of the concepts, who never knocks me out with the knitting of his words.
He galvanized the room with the first line, suggesting that we were still sleeping a little on the gas, because, it must be admitted, we have to be alert to capture all the overflow of beauty that arises from his words: “Let’s see Quebec!” he says. Are you already on strike? » He has a knack for these winks that touch the concrete lives of his audience.
The social crisis
Brodeur, the owner of the general store, knows how to count; Fred knows how to tell it. I wake up this morning, at the dawn of a historic labor dispute in the public services, and I want to know what matters.
Certainly not the Kings at Videotron stadium, nor the return of a hockey team to Quebec. Prime Minister François Legault accuses the critics, particularly from the unions, of playing “petty politics”. It’s only 5-7 million to attract big players, after all, a drop in the ocean of state spending.
You have to know how to count, he seems to defend himself, just as he knew how to count public funds for Northvolt to come. But knowing what matters is something else, with all due respect to the government of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), and to the others who preceded it.
Health and education
By looking too hard for where to invest so that the economy can grow, the health and education networks have deteriorated, which are considered expensive accounting expenses for our taxes. There were aggravating factors: the aging of the population, the pandemic, staff shortages, and what not. Defeats, figuratively and literally. We are still at the limit of forced labor among nurses, like forcing a lemon into the press.
The most bitter failure is expressed in the collapse of the body of education at its beginning, from daycare to primary and secondary education. We can no longer hire qualified people. The next generation is not there, and part of it is leaving prematurely.
Too hard in this world turned upside down, and this, despite the famous months of vacation which still seem to make people envious: this is the now established strong argument which is part of the heritage of Quebec, although I have heard since some time a more nuanced speech regarding this well-deserved rest. Indeed, let’s face it, who can claim today to easily assume responsibility for the future of their child? I imagine what it’s like to have twenty or more in your class and give them a tomorrow; you must have a tough skin and a heart of gold.
What really matters? There are salaries that do not keep up with inflation, in fact. But the problem is deeper, like a Pellerin tale. It is all the conditions in which the profession is carried out that matters. This is why there is a strike. This is not a civil servant strike, but a social crisis. It will therefore take more greatness of soul among our politicians to be able to get us out of the impasse.