A NEW PQ CAQ LIBERAL STAR
Bourdon would replace Barrette
QUEBEC CITY On a busy Day 2 of the campaign, Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard said he will take away the health minister role from his unpopular lieutenant Gaétan Barrette and would give him the Treasury Board presidency instead, promised families up to $300 per child per year, and suggested François Legault’s proposal to raise the age for buying weed would send Quebec youth into the arms of the Hells Angels.
After months of speculation, Couillard announced Friday afternoon in Quebec City he would remove Barrette from his post but would give him the high-profile position of Treasury Board president if elected.
In Barrette’s place, Couillard said he would appoint Gertrude Bourdon, who until Thursday was director of the Quebec City health centre that employs 15,000 people and includes five health institutions. Bourdon is a former nurse who moved up through the ranks and became an Order of Canada recipient. It emerged that she had talks with the Parti Québécois and Coalition Avenir Québec about joining one of those parties, but she said Friday she settled on the Liberals because their health care plans best reflected her values.
In reaction to criticism painting her as a political opportunist, Bourdon replied she did not “shop around” but was instead “solicited by them,” had talks, and made her decision last week. “The CAQ did not reflect my values,” she said. “Plus, they had a bad program.”
Couillard said the negative press was spread by political opponents “so disappointed, so pissed off, if you can excuse my English, that she did not choose them.”
Bourdon may be in for a rough entry into politics. A poll commissioned by the CAQ found her in third place in the Jean-Lesage riding in Quebec City.
Barrette has engendered a high level of dissatisfaction among the populace and health-care workers for his policies and an interpersonal style that many consider to be arrogant, sapping support for the Liberals.
Asked if that would be a problem in the Treasury Board position, which requires significant negotiating skills, Couillard said Barrette’s personality issues were overblown and he was an excellent negotiator who had done much to improve the health-care sector.
Friday morning in TroisRivières, Couillard promised to give families annual cheques of $150 to $300 per child per year, in the first major pledge of his campaign.
The amount granted would be based on household income, and the first cheques would be issued to parents before the end of 2018, Couillard said. The cheques will cost the government $380 million a year, or just over $1.5 billion over its four-year term. The payments will be in addition to child benefits already bestowed by the province.
Couillard stressed the money would be going directly to families to do with as they please — “a fundamental basis of our philosophy” — as opposed to having the government choose what to do with the cash. “The amount will allow families to spend more quality time together.”
Couillard dismissed suggestions the payments qualified as vote buying, saying the Liberals’ sound financial management of the first term has allowed the party to spend on quality-of-life improvements now.
Couillard also promised 2,000 subsidized daycare spots in places of work and at CEGEPs and universities, giving the choice to parents to return to work 10 days sooner from maternity or paternity leave and use those days for paid vacation leave, and the choice to stretch parental leaves over two years.
At the same campaign stop, Couillard blasted Legault’s suggestion that the legal age for buying cannabis should be raised to 21, saying it would only profit the Hells Angels.
“Why is it that people can vote at 18, can make their own decisions but will not be allowed to use a legal drug?” he said. “I think we should trust our youth. I trust the judgment of young Quebecers.
“Does he really think an 18-yearold kid is going to have any problems buying cannabis? Who is he going to buy it from? Or she? Hells Angels? Oh, that’s great.
“What we’ve said is the federal government has decided to make cannabis legal. So we’ll remove organized crime from this, we’ll make it safer for our kids.”