The new female co-spokesperson for Québec solidaire, Émilise Lessard-Therrien, will ultimately receive an annual salary of $82,000, much less than her colleague Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
The compensation of Manon Massé’s successor was revealed in a tweet that went unnoticed at the end of the day on Friday, December 22, just before the holiday break.
“The Executive Committee of Québec solidaire adopted a resolution which establishes the annual remuneration of our spokesperson Émilise Lessard-Therrien at $82,000 per year,” wrote the general director of Québec solidaire (QS), Myriam Fortin.
The former member for Rouyn-Noranda–Témiscamingue, for her part, said she was “very happy to [se] concentrate from now on what matters: touring Quebec to root solidarity ideas throughout the territory.
Mme Lessard-Therrien declined our interview request Monday.
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Debate over his salary
The question of the salary of the new co-spokesperson was debated last fall, after Émilise Lessard-Therrien revealed that she did not intend to ask for remuneration equivalent to that of the base salary of an MP, or approximately $130,000 annually.
“It’s not the same work,” she explained on the X platform, formerly Twitter.
In fact, her compensation will be much lower than that of Manon Massé, who receives $158,119 in her role as deputy and vice-president of a parliamentary committee in the National Assembly.
Ditto for Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, who remains male co-spokesperson alongside him. With the recent increase in the salary of elected officials, he receives an income of $177,884 as parliamentary leader of the second opposition group, but has committed to donating $30,000 per year to charitable organizations.
Precedents
However, several unelected party leaders have received, over the years, salaries equivalent to that of an MP. This was the case, in particular, of Philippe Couillard and Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, before their entry into the Salon bleu, and this is currently the case for Éric Duhaime.
The question could have been all the more delicate within a feminist party like Québec solidaire.
A few days after the election of Mme Lessard-Therrien, his opponent in the race, Ruba Ghazal, nevertheless affirmed that the salary was an “administrative question” and had “absolutely nothing to do with the question of parity [ou du] feminism”.