Marois pledges to listen — but declines questions

90-second statement delivered

QUEBEC CITY — Pauline Marois said Thursday her Parti Québécois government “will be a government of action, listening and dialogue, which will allow us to attain concrete results.”

Marois will become Quebec’s first female premier on Wednesday, when she and her cabinet are sworn as Quebec’s 40th government.

In her first meeting with reporters covering the National Assembly, Marois delivered a 90-second statement and did not answer questions.

The one question Marois did hear, as she turned away to enter a meeting with her party caucus and PQ candidates defeated in the Sept. 4 election, was about her consent to the nomination of Chantal Landry as assistant deputy health minister.

Landry, who was a senior aide to Premier Jean Charest, testified at the Bastarache Commission into the process of naming judges that she would attach Post-its with the political affiliations of candidates to files for Premier Jean Charest’s consideration.

Charest’s office revealed Wednesday night that Landry, along with three other senior aides to Charest, were named by cabinet decree to senior positions in Quebec’s civil service. Also appointed was Jean St-Gelais, who is Marois’s choice as Quebec’s senior civil servant, with the title of secretary general of the executive council.

Marois said she recognizes

“We will be listening to them so we can adapt our policies.” PAULINE MAROIS

with a minority government, she will have to work with opposition parties in the assembly and she wants “a climate of collaboration with the opposition so that we can respond even better to Quebec men and women.”

And she will be listening to the public as well.

“We will be listening to them so that we can adapt our policies and our orientations, if necessary, to ensure that we achieve concrete results for Quebec men and women,” Marois said in her address.

François Gendron, a PQ MNA since 1976, when the PQ first came to power, said the government’s priorities are abolishing Bill 78, which was criticized by Quebec’s human rights commission as violating charter rights, rolling back the tuition hike that sparked the student protests, and cancelling the $200-ahead health tax.

Gendron said the PQ will go ahead with plans for a tougher Bill 101. But while sovereignty remains the PQ’s priority, Gendron said, the realities of the minority position mean “there is no question of a referendum tomorrow.”

Pierre Duchesne, the former Radio-Canada journalist elected PQ MNA for Borduas, said the PQ will have to listen more and explain more. “We will have to maintain a dialogue with the anglophone population and it is clear that we have to do dialogue and to express and explain with more details our point of view.”