If it is necessary, to maintain a healthy public debate, to know how to recognize the qualities of our political adversaries, it is also necessary to know how to recognize their errors.
We must therefore begin by recognizing that François Legault is a coherent man. Throughout his career and despite all his contradictory positions on the political future of Quebec, he has remained firmly on the right, everywhere and all the time.
Since his beginnings in politics, our Prime Minister has in fact had only one obsession: to make up for the delay in wealth between Quebec and Ontario. In itself, the quest for prosperity is not meaningless. For a sovereigntist, it is even desirable if it is put at the service of popular sovereignty. Freedom cannot be reduced to financial means, but it is very difficult to be free without being in control of one’s financial means, which Prime Minister Legault has forgotten — or failed to remember — over time, but let’s move on .
Its objective is therefore laudable, but, as the other would say, what is it for? Mr. Legault had a ready-made answer that he had repeated tirelessly for years: “Wealth allows us to pay for better public services. It makes it possible to carry out more public transport projects, to build beautiful schools, seniors’ homes, hospitals. The idea is to give ourselves the means to achieve our ambitions. This looks like a social project. A project certainly incomplete, but at least a project.
How proud he was to announce to us, during the election campaign, that Quebec was catching up with Ontario! So, all gullible, we expected to see proposals for public transport, new schools or a little selfishly, I admit, CPEs for all future parents in Quebec! We are instead rewarded with a tax cut that fully assumes the fact of being more advantageous for the wealthiest people in our society. A right-wing tax cut is all that this famous catch-up allows us.
This is what François Legault’s project is, the project that has guided him since his debut in politics. He never believed in that. It’s very poor, and it’s the very opposite of a social project.