Our duty as teachers is to be the best to advance science, but also to disseminate it to our students and our fellow citizens. Because, as Albert Einstein repeated, science does not exist and cannot really help until it is clearly explained to as many people as possible. The scientific culture that must be propagated is that which proclaims loud and clear that there are statements which are true and others which are false, that the truth is not what makes us feel good about ourselves, but what really exists, outside of us and independently of us, whether it suits us or not.
The problem with misconceptions is that they are like cockroaches in the toilet: no matter how many times you “pull the chain”, they always come back. We will never be done fighting them.
I want to take advantage of the moment to give you an example of a summary of the scientific truth that we have learned over the past 60 years about the evolution of the Quebec economy.
This truth is that Quebec has made incredible progress since 1960. At the time, the French-Canadian majority formed a poor, illiterate, complexed and submissive society. His average salary was 52% of that of British Quebecers. The worst average in North America. What has happened since? First, our old parents sent us to school. It is now 80% of our young adults who hold a postsecondary diploma, either professional, college or university, compared to 75% elsewhere in Canada.
Secondly, our political, economic and trade union leaders have succeeded for 35 years in establishing lasting social peace after the serious conflicts which shook our society in the years 1970-1985.
Third, René Lévesque and Robert Bourassa opened the Quebec economy to free trade when they realized that in economics as in sport, the only way to win gold medals is to compete against the best in the world. . There have been transition costs, of course, but external competition has strengthened our economic resilience and made us richer.
Fourth, Pauline Marois launched an innovative family policy on educational childcare services that helps balance work and family, which the rest of Canada now wants to emulate and which many Americans envy. This policy has brought the activity rate of Quebec women to the top of the world.
Fifthly, rather than withdrawing into the prevailing neoconservatism, Quebec has developed a kind of Social State 2.0 which has brought our poverty rate to a lower level than elsewhere in America and has prevented income inequality between 20% richer and the 20% poorer from deteriorating for 40 years.
And sixth, for 25 years, from Bernard Landry to Eric Girard, the government has gradually succeeded in getting rid of its old debt shackles.
In total, our unemployment rate is now the lowest of all Canadian provinces and, well calculated, our standard of living has ended up reaching parity with that of the large neighboring province, Ontario.
Of course, there is still a lot to do. We have to take up heavy challenges in demography, in the environment, in health, in education, in energy, in inequalities, in intercultural harmony. But we must absolutely stop perceiving the Quebec economy as a “ti-duck with a broken leg”. Thanks to the vision launched by our boomer grandparents and carried out by their successors, we have become a rich, egalitarian and happy people. Laurent Ferreira’s predecessor as President of the National Bank, Michel Bélanger, did not know how to put it so well in 1995 when he exclaimed: ” In Canada, Quebec is now where the action is. »