The Blue Room took on the air of a schoolyard on Wednesday, after the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, accused solidarity spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois of “cloaking oneself in great virtue” on the three-tier school despite his private education.
Questioned by solidarity MP Ruba Ghazal on the costs associated with specific programs, Mr. Drainville took advantage of his speech during question period to take “GND” to task, which had spent several minutes following up on Prime Minister François Legault on the “three-tier” school system.
“Little comment on private schools here: the head of QS, who went to private school, do you have any comments to make on that? » he asked from his side of the House. “I’m going to quote: “Private school, the head of Québec solidaire caught up in his past.” Well yes, it went to Regina Assumpta. »
Comments which aroused the ire of the main person concerned. Furious, Mr. Nadeau-Dubois even stood up behind his desk to scold the Minister of Education, which forced the President of the National Assembly, Nathalie Roy, to intervene to calm things down.
In the press scrum a few minutes later, the solidarity MP criticized Mr. Drainville for having engaged in “small personal attacks” on Wednesday at the Salon bleu. “I have nothing to reproach my parents, who made the choices they made 15 years ago based on the values they held,” he said.
“It made me react, because I find that it is a very small way of distracting from a social debate which is important for Quebec,” he added. I will not attack Bernard Drainville, nor any of the CAQ ministers, on the choices they made for the education of their children. I would expect the Minister of Education to be able to respond on the subject. »
Although he found that the minister’s comments were “not up to par” with his role, the parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire did not ask for an apology. Approached a few minutes later before a meeting of the Council of Ministers, Mr. Drainville did not want to answer questions from the parliamentary media.
Further details will follow.