The leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, makes “disturbing” remarks that harm “social cohesion,” says federal minister Pablo Rodriguez.
“For someone who says he wants to do politics differently, I find this deeply disappointing and even worrying,” he declared during a planned media outing in the corridors of Parliament in Ottawa on Wednesday.
Mr. Rodriguez said he was shocked to see Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon maintain that Justin Trudeau is continuing the work of his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the architects of the “deportation” and “executions” of Francophones with his policies. migration and its incursions into Quebec’s areas of jurisdiction. “Justin Trudeau is in continuity with his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” said the leading figure of the Quebec independence movement during a press briefing in the Quebec parliament on Tuesday. To claim the opposite “is really to forget recent history, such as the unilateral patriation of the Canadian Constitution without Quebec, to forget the work of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, to forget what Francophones experienced in the deportations, the executions, the ban on having education in French,” he continued.
““Executions”, “deportation”: we arrive at another level of language where we introduce terms of violence. And I don’t recognize myself in that. I do not recognize Quebec or the Canada of today,” said Mr. Rodriguez, who is the leader of Quebec within Mr. Trudeau’s team.
That said, the federal minister recognizes that the history of Canada is punctuated by “very dark moments” such as the Deportation of the Acadians, from 1755. Moreover, he is of the opinion that there is “a discussion to be had” on possible official apologies to the Acadians.
The problem, according to him, lies rather in the fact that Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon “associates dark moments from a distant past with today’s situation”. “I worry […] for social cohesion,” he insisted.
And, the Liberal elected official firmly rejects the idea that Ottawa is seeking to “voluntarily crush Quebec”. “You really think that I come here, that Mélanie Joly, that François-Philippe Champagne, that all of us come here to find a way [de] hit on Quebec? » he asked the journalists gathered in front of him. “We fight for Quebec every day. »
Pablo Rodriguez, however, consoles himself in the fact that this kind of “slippage” by the PQ leader “harms [se] to the sovereignist cause.”