Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
Mr. Eric Girard, we recently learned in this newspaper that “public finances are in the green” 1 for the current year, i.e. for 2021-2022. So much the better, because ours, Minister, are squarely in the red.
It’s not just inflation, Minister of Finance, that is going to cut our throats this year, but also the excessive rise in the cost of rents, directly linked to the housing crisis which has been going on for years (and which your leader, Mr. Legault, refuses to acknowledge), while we are already surviving below the poverty line. Imagine.
More than one million people, Mr. Girard, live in poverty in Quebec. More than a million people! It is enormous. And yet we live in a rich, democratic and developed country. Can someone explain this to me?
Even while working, Mr. Minister, many of us cannot make ends meet and eat our fill.
In November 2021, you announced the arrival of an “exceptional benefit” for low-income people. It was beautiful and well received. Last January, in fact, people eligible for the single, non-taxable benefit (phew!) received financial assistance, in the amount of $400 for couples, or $275 for people living alone. It is very good. Who, these days, has the means to spit on financial aid, even minimal or very modest?
Insufficient
However, you will understand, Mr. Girard, that even if they are welcome, these sums are clearly insufficient to cope with inflation, struggling to cover the cost of food for only one month. Moreover, many people in my neighborhood have to support themselves with a measly $3 per meal… Not an easy budget. Try to balance that.
What’s more, according to data from a seasoned economics journalist, nearly half of Quebecers (46%) do not make $30,000 a year and 70% of Quebecers earn less than $50,000 a year.
Yet, despite this reality firmly anchored in the numbers, our Premier of Quebec, François Legault, himself a chartered accountant and experienced businessman, persists in saying that he wants to create jobs at the top of the average annual salary (56 $000). Does this seem fair, equitable and realistic for all Quebecers, Mr. Girard? Shouldn’t we first eradicate poverty, before enriching what the Prime Minister calls the “very middle class”?
More important still than the arrival of another special benefit for low-income people, Mr. Girard, what does your government intend to do to lift Quebecers out of precariousness and poverty, and once and for all of this country up?
Because the elections are coming up, Mr. Minister – next October 3, it’s in less than eight months – and it would be really good to put an end to hunger. And it is clearly not through small exceptional benefits that we will eradicate the problem of poverty in Quebec.
Especially since Premier François Legault himself seems, like many Quebecers, to underestimate the scourge of poverty in Quebec. 2. Or he is simply like other prime ministers who have come before him, completely disconnected from the reality on the ground of the poor, and will, too, very soon be releasing his “pork roast” recipes.