Pontiac’s MNA André Fortin was scheduled for an interview with The Equity regarding the return of the National Assembly, on Sept. 16, however, that start date has been pushed back to Sept. 30 due to a cabinet shuffle by Premier François Legault anticipated this Wednesday (Sept. 10).
Fortin wasn’t pleased that the assembly’s business would be delayed, adding that the government appears to have worn out its welcome in the province after nearly eight years in power.
“François Legault can shuffle the deck all he wants but it’s going to be the same cards that led us to the biggest deficit in the history of the province and services that are clearly below people’s expectations,” he said.
With a provincial election on the horizon next year, the governing CAQ party founded by Legault has been sinking in the polls, with 338Canada putting them in last place out of five provincial parties, a far cry from their current 90 seat majority.
“In a lot of Quebecers’ minds, whether he does a cabinet shuffle or not, people are ready to move on from the CAQ and their government,” Fortin said.
Fortin called the shuffle and the subsequent delay a distraction from two scandals plaguing the government at the moment, namely the SAAQclic public inquiry and the loss of hundreds of millions of tax dollars in the scrapped Northvolt battery project. In regards to the latter, Fortin said that the government’s lost investment was part of a pattern of the CAQ betting big on large companies instead of investing in small businesses.
“It seems like the CAQ had this blind trust in [former Economic Development Minister] Pierre Fitzgibbon [ . . . ] most of the choices that he made over the last seven years are now coming back to haunt us,” he said. “There’s a lesson here, that instead of throwing hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign corporations, that we look to how we can actually help small businesses grow.”
When the house does start sitting again, Fortin said that he would be keeping an eye on discussions regarding the province’s forestry regime, as well as the ongoing debate around the pay structures of Quebec’s doctors (see story on front page of our July 23 edition).
As his party’s critic for higher education, Fortin also said he would be closely following budget cuts in the province’s education system.
“There’s significant cuts happening to CEGEPs and universities right now, they’re going to affect services they’re able to provide Quebecers,” he said. “There’s also a directive that was given by the government to not consider any satellite campuses anymore, which is unfortunate because the CEGEP de l’Outaouais had started to have conversations with rural areas, including ours, about the possibility of setting up rural campuses.”
New duties
This will be the first session where Fortin will be exercising his new duties as the Quebec Liberal Party’s whip, responsible for organization and strategic planning for his caucus colleagues.
“The whip basically has a responsibility to make sure that all of our MNAs are used as efficiently as possible, meaning that they’re in the right place to talk about the right issue at the right time, whether that be the house, whether that be on the road, whether that be across Quebec meeting people,” he said. “So yeah, part of my time is going to be used on that, but part of my time will also be used on Pontiac projects and Pontiac issues.”
