Return to classes, Charest urges
Premier delivers campaign-style speech
VICTORIAVILLE – While the battle raged outside between demonstrators and police, Premier Jean Charest delivered a campaign-style speech Friday night to about 500 faithful Liberals at the start of a weekend policy meeting.
“Dear friends, let’s talk about the Marois-legault team,” Charest said, zeroing in on Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois and François Legault, who heads the new Coalition Avenir Québec, but who used to belong to the PQ.
Speaking in English, Charest said they would never hear Legault say he is “proud to be Canadian,” while saying Marois has given in to pressure from the most radical members of her party by allowing a new sovereignty referendum to be called by citizens’ initiative.
If enough signatures are gathered, citizens may trigger a referendum.
Charest said both want “to plunge us back into a referendum which Quebecers don’t want,” adding Quebecers “want to be united and be part of Canada.”
“We are very pound to be Quebecers and we are very proud to be Canadians,” the Liberal leader said, ending his speech with what he believes Quebec needs: “Leadership! Leadership! Leadership!”
Charest also touched on the strike by Quebec students over a $1,778 tuition hike his government has proposed, the main issue that brought the protesters to Victoriaville.
“The decisions we have made were sometimes difficult, sometimes unpopular,” he conceded, saying politics “is not a long quiet river.”
“That is the case with the future of our colleges and universities,” he said, explaining that the planned tuition hikes are part of a plan to ensure Quebec universities have enough money to remain among the best.”
Discussions began in Quebec City Friday between government negotiator Pierre Pilote, all four student associations leading the strike, and university and CÉGEP administrators.
In Twitter messages during Charest’s speech, the student leaders said the talks were going well, appealing for calm among the demonstrators.
Arriving in Victoriaville, Charest said he hoped the students were “chilling out.”
He called the government’s position “just and equitable,” and said with improvements in student aid on the table, tuition fees should not be a barrier to university studies.
He quoted Luc Godbout, the Université de Sherbrooke expert in public finance who has explained that changes Charest proposed last week are “very favourable” for Quebec families with incomes below $65,000, “which is the majority of Quebec families.”
“It is high time that the students on boycott return to their classes,” Charest said, winning a standing ovation from his Liberal supporters.
Delegates at a closed session before Charest’s speech discussed plans for the next election, suggesting Liberals try to lower expectations of a spring vote. Charest has described as “grotesque” the idea of an early election over the tuition dispute.
With an election in the fall or next year, he said Liberals should stress that their government is “efficient and competent,” while focusing on “defining” Legault and Marois.
The Liberals have won the most votes in the last four elections, delegates were reminded. Although in 1998, because Liberal votes are concentrated in Montreal, Lucien Bouchard won more seats in that election, forming a PQ government.
In the new election, there will be a new electoral map, with an additional three seats in Montreal’s 450 suburbs, and there will be new parties – Legault’s CAQ and Québec solidaire – which could eat into the PQ vote.
Liberals would be “audacious, positive, rapid, on the attack and structured,” preparing for the next election and they would rely of their strength: sticking together, “the cohesion of all of us,” the delegates were told.
Before the next general election, there will be a by-election in Argenteuil, which Charest must call by June 16 at the latest, and possibly in Montreal’s east-end Lafontaine riding, vacated Thursday when former Liberal family minister Tony Tomassi, facing criminal charges, stepped down.