Last Thursday, question period at the National Assembly turned into a veritable festival of bad faith. I take the opportunity to distribute, as at the Olympic Games, three medals.
The bronze goes to François Legault. In the lively exchange he had with the Liberal leader, Dominique Anglade, he pronounced in English the word “ liberal” (liberal) speaking of the party. Even if it is true that, these days, only one in eight Francophones thinks they will vote PLQ, reducing the party of Adélard Godbout and Jean Lesage to only Anglo-Quebecers is laughable.
Mr. Legault, however, does not even get a mention for a joke made off the microphone. Mme Anglade having mistakenly called the President of the Assembly, François Paradis, “Monsieur le Québécois”, the Prime Minister said: “Of course he is a Québécois, he is from the CAQ. »
Responding to a Pavlov reflex now integrated into the federalist culture at the chromosomal level, Mme Anglade and his friends pounced on the prey. The parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party, André Fortin, launched seriously: “What he says is that everyone who is not a caquist is not a Quebecer. ” Is that so ? Even the PQs? Mme Anglade then rushed to a press briefing to drive home the point: “François Legault practices the politics of division, she said. Today, he has taken a step that a head of government should never take. He said: “If we are not caquiste, we are not Quebecers.” She also heard this: “Today, what he said was that he did not represent all Quebecers. She demands an apology.
The fact that he did not say that does not matter to the Liberal leader. The Federalist indignation turbine operates on a political principle once explained by John F. Kennedy: “There is no smoke without a smoke-making machine. »
Justin Trudeau, during the last campaign, had also allowed himself to thunder at the place of the Bloc Québécois leader, in the middle of the leaders’ debate: “No, you will not accuse me of not being a Quebecer, Mr. Blanchet. This accusation had never been made, but why quibble? These tirades sometimes seem to have been rehearsed in small groups, so that they can be sung at the appropriate time.
Jean-Martin Aussant has vivid memories of it. MP and critic of the PQ opposition at the time of Michael Sabia’s appointment as head of the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec, he had questioned him at length in the Commission on Public Finances about his reluctance to make a clear commitment to retain in Quebec the head offices of companies from here. Mr. Sabia answered that he had, in his previous functions, favored Quebec. Bizarre, because Mr. Sabia, when he ran Bell Canada, whose head office is in Montreal, had instead tried to sell the company to an Ontario investor. Referring to this episode, Mr. Aussant had opportunely retorted: “This is perhaps not everyone’s interpretation of Quebec’s interests. A remark that prompted the Minister of Finance at the time, Raymond Bachand, to give Mr. Sabia the signal that the time had come to be indignant. The tape was ready. Mr. Sabia had complained that his Quebecness had been called into question and had displayed his century-old Quebecois family tree.
Anglade, double medalist
I therefore attribute the silver medal of demagogy to Mr.me Anglade for using that old rhetorical trap for nationalists. But she is a double medalist and also won gold, because she did even better.
The Legault government’s volte-face on the expansion of Dawson College is obviously suspect. The arguments invoked now (more pressing needs among the Francos) were available four years ago, when the CAQ deemed this investment a priority. It is always good to come to your senses, even late. But with the election approaching and when the government is accused of going too “easy” on language matters, the turn is a bit steep.
So there was plenty of meat on that bone for the liberal leader. But she chose her angle of attack carefully. Referring to government anti-racism advertising, she asked, “What do you call a francophone who studies in Dawson? She returned to the second question: “A student who studies at Dawson, like a student who studies at Cégep Marie-Victorin, is a Quebecer. He’s a Quebecer, period. She is obviously right, but who contradicts her? Mme Anglade has chosen to introduce into the debate on Dawson the question of the comparative québecitude of each other. She criticizes the Prime Minister for believing that some are more Quebecers than others. Air known.
If her argument held water, it would immediately backfire on her and her party. Capping Dawson’s funding had been in effect under previous governments. Were Liberal education ministers then discriminating against Dawson students? Did they consider them sub-Quebecers? In fact, if we adopted without inhibition the free choice of college studies, it would be necessary to triple the financing of Dawson, because the college rejects, for lack of authorized places, two thirds of the applications for admission. The current debate is not about the principle of capping, but about the degree of capping.
A more intransigent columnist could demand an apology from Mme Anglade, but we would have to decide why. For having introduced the question of identity into a debate on the financing of CEGEPs? For hypocrisy in the capping issue? So as not to frankly propose the removal of the ceiling and the real free choice? To consider that it is normal for a French-speaking nation to dramatically overfund the post-secondary institutions of its minority? For overuse of the smoke-making machine? I can’t choose. You ?
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