(Quebec) CAQ MP Youri Chassin is questioning his political commitment and will provide an update on his future at 9 a.m. Thursday. He has not informed Premier François Legault of his intentions.
This is a hard blow for Mr. Legault: when Pierre Fitzgibbon resigned last week, he said he did not expect any other departures among his MNAs. Mr. Chassin did not respond to messages from The Pressbut within the CAQ troops, it is believed that he could imitate the ex-whip Eric Lefebvre and sit as an independent MP, waiting to carry the colours of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party of Canada.
Youri Chassin will make his media appearance after taking up his pen to express harsh criticism of the government. He had a letter published in The Montreal Journal. François Legault was also unaware of this letter. The two men had a meeting, but according to a reliable source, this discussion was to continue.
After remarks that were noted on the floor of the Salon Bleu last spring, he is back with criticisms of his government regarding the “largest deficit in Quebec’s history, at $11 billion.” “We have applied the old recipe of throwing money at problems rather than trying to do things differently,” he denounces in the letter, deploring the fact that public services are “in disarray.”
“Rather than lightening the structures and bureaucracy, we have hired at full capacity and spent at unprecedented levels, creating several new public bodies along the way. Despite this, citizens are not seeing the results, neither for places in daycare services, nor for obtaining an official document, nor for the project to expand and modernize the Saint-Jérôme regional hospital, which is moving forward at a snail’s pace. That is not the CAQ.”
According to him, “we have reached the end of the Quebec bureaucratic model.”
He added: “Before making the leap as a CAQ candidate in Saint-Jérôme, my concern was not whether I was going to be a minister. I wanted to feel that reserve of courage that would allow me to follow through with the reforms we were proposing. That’s what really matters, what is profoundly transforming Quebec.” The day after the election, he said he was disappointed not to have been appointed minister.
“The CAQ government has never lost its compass. What it has put on hold is the audacity to implement our solutions to change Quebec. We must make the right decisions for the future of Quebec: so, let’s find our determination and our courage again,” he says.
The day after the Girard budget was tabled this spring, Youri Chassin voiced criticism on the floor of the Salon Bleu. “I think we need to guard ourselves against the possibility of minimizing $11 billion,” said the former economist at the Montreal Economic Institute, a right-wing think tank.
This deficit for 2024-2025 is “dizzying” for him.
“We don’t want to raise any scarecrows, but we all understand that an $11 billion deficit is very serious. Is it true that British Columbia tabled a budget with an even larger deficit as a proportion of GDP? Yes, absolutely, but for us in Quebec, this deficit represents a real challenge,” added Mr. Chassin during the budget debate in the Salon Bleu.