No, I won’t talk about the latest escapades of a radio-trash host or the excesses of the trolls that are rampant on Twitter. Nor will I tell you about the indecent behavior of the planet’s super-rich, who put on a show and which essayist Dahlia Namian so aptly writes about in a recent book, The Provocative Society1.
All of this is vulgar, of course, but – alas – more or less expected. The vulgarity I want to talk about has something more subtle, it comes from people from whom we expect better and who disappoint us.
Take Prime Minister François Legault and the famous third link. I don’t remember a political promise so vigorously defended in the campaign that has been denied so brutally. Yes, we have already seen politicians go back on their word, but there is a way. Usually, they start by sowing doubt, blowing hot and cold, creating a commission, ordering a report, letting time pass, before recognizing the obvious. Here, the about-face was surprisingly quick.
Don’t get me wrong: the construction of a third highway link between Quebec and Lévis was not justified, insofar as it was not going to solve anything, neither in the medium nor in the long term.
Only, why promise something that we did not intend to achieve, on the basis of partial studies that we refused to show, if not to make short-term political gains?
The very fact that the Prime Minister refused to apologize and handed over his two star recruits – Bernard Drainville and Martine Biron – to voters and the media on the South Shore of Quebec speaks volumes about the cruelty of the political game. . It looked like Mr. Legault had just discovered Machiavelli2. (Besides, the mayoress of Montreal hastened in a press release to congratulate the government on its volte-face, forgetting that she herself has not said anything about her pink line project for quite a while now; it was however the flagship commitment of his party during the 2017 campaign, which was to be realized from 20253. But the only pink line you can see in Montreal is made of construction cones… pink rather than orange, on streets under construction.)
Speaking of Minister Drainville, I perceived in the tears shed following his government’s about-face at least as much regret for an abandoned project as the pain of having been betrayed. Because how can you imagine that when he was recruited by the Prime Minister’s Office for the riding of Lévis, he was not guaranteed that the third link would be made, explaining that a champion was needed to defend this ambitious project? The famous “Drop me with the GHGs” launched in the campaign by the candidate Drainville was proof of this assurance: he came to politics to do great things, starting with this highway tunnel. And then suddenly, one can imagine, the phone rang, the decision was made, and he had to swallow his anger.
Anger is no doubt what unions and provincial public service employees are feeling right now. Because while the deputies are about to see their salaries increase by 30%, and retroactively, excuse the little, government employees are entitled to crumbs: 9% over five years, that is to say a lot less than inflation.
For the MPs, it is not a question of “catching up”, as the Prime Minister mentioned to justify his government’s decision, but of going beyond, because at $131,000 a year, they will be the best paid in Canada.
This week, during a round table organized by The duty, columnist Michel David asked Minister Drainville why teachers could not be paid as well as their Ontario counterparts when Quebec was rich enough to reward its MPs. “I find the comparison lame and if my name was Michel David, I would say that it is a tad demagogic. Michel, if you allow me, I’m going to talk to you, continued Mr. Drainville, you really compare the job of deputy with the job of teacher?4 The Minister’s response achieved the feat of being both demagogic and vulgar: no, it was not a question of comparing the teachers of Quebec to the members of Parliament, but to the teachers of the other provinces, Ontario in particular, who earn significantly more. Mr. Drainville had the elegance to apologize afterwards5but did nothing to correct the impression of inequity.
Speaking of double standards, how do we interpret the fact that foreign students who want to attend a Quebec university face record refusal rates from the federal government, applications written in French being twice as likely to be refused? than requests made in English? And how to explain that among the French-speaking students refused, it is mainly those from Africa who are excluded (nearly 80%)6 ? Apparently, federal government officials are concerned that these students will not return to their country after their studies. As if studies were not one of the preferred ways of integrating into society! Meanwhile, the number of foreign students has doubled in Quebec over the past 10 years, essentially to the advantage of English-speaking universities. Find the mistake. In this beautiful, multicultural Canada open to the world, there is a word that is not at all pretty, even vulgar, to describe the discrimination made on the basis of language and origin. I leave it up to you to find it.
1. The Provocative Society. Essay on the obscenity of the richDahlia Namian, Lux Publisher, “Free Letters”, 2023
2. I’m not always so hard on the prime minister, whom I’ve even praised before.