‘Reciprocal empathy’ key words for new minister

QUEBEC — Jean-François Lisée, who is Quebec’s international relations minister, and also has a mandate to establish better relations with the province’s English minority, described his approach Thursday as “reciprocal empathy.”

“I think we have to get out of this idea that if one community in Quebec takes a step forward, it means that others have to take a step backward,” Lisée said, emerging from his first cabinet meeting.

“The joke now is that I want every anglo to know Marie-Mai and I can live with that,” he added, referring to an article he wrote in L’actualité magazine lamenting that 74 per cent of Quebec anglophones do not know the pop singer Marie-Mai.

“I’d like every franco to know Leonard Cohen and many more,” Lisée said Thursday. “I think we should start building on reciprocal empathy.

“I think francophones should have empathy for the fact that the English community in Quebec has to stay strong and vibrant; and the English community has to have empathy for the fact that the French majority has to stay strong and vibrant,” he said in English.

“So my first task I think is to try and make all Quebecers on these linguistic issues think out of the box,” Lisée said.

“We’re not in a box. We’re in the Quebec garden and if everyone grows, that’s fine. “And that’s my pitch.” Lisée, a former journalist, was asked his view of CJAD running a brief excerpt of an interview with Richard Henry Bain, who is facing a first-degree murder charge in the death of lighting technician Denis Blanchette.

“I am always in favour of freedom of the press,” Lisée said. “It is up to them to decide.”