Photo: Martin C. Barry
‘I don’t mind someone who has views that are different from
us if they’re correct, but I expect them to be substantiated’

Quebec Liberal MNA for Laval-des-Rapides Alain Paquet says Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois could do with a “reality check” and that she should stick to the facts when talking about the Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest. In an interview with the Laval News, Paquet reacted strongly to an article published in TLN last month. It reported an address Marois made in November in Laval-des-Rapides to local supporters of the Parti Québécois.

She’s simplistic – Paquet
During her talk and in an interview, Marois referred to Charest as a “bad” Quebec premier, at the head of a government that is equally awful. “This is a government that has put the province into debt like no other government before,” she said. “It’s a government that doesn’t know how to defend us in Ottawa, that doesn’t go to claim what Ottawa owes to us. It’s a government that on the question of language is a soft government that doesn’t act.”
Paquet, who serves as chairman of the National Assembly’s Public Finances Committee, said Marois’s analysis was simplistic. “She made a lot of claims that she never tried to substantiate. There were no numbers in the arguments she proposed.” He said he found her comments especially objectionable considering that during the last session in the National Assembly, “she never really addressed the economic issues that we have to face in Quebec … The claims that she made in Laval-des-Rapides were not substantiated and there were no numbers.”

Questions her judgement
Questioning Marois’s judgement on economic issues such as the recent deal by Hydro Quebec to purchase New Brunswick’s electric utility, NB Power, Paquet said, “Do we really think Mrs. Marois would have been able to sign an agreement in principle with New Brunswick? I’m not sure of that … Do we really think that Mrs. Marois and the Parti Québécois would have come up with an agreement with the rest of the country for the mobility of the workforce? I’m very doubtful of that.”
While Marois’s assault on the Liberals upset Paquet, he conceded that her shrill rhetoric and failure to base any of her arguments on facts were typical of a politician who is forced to resort to bad mouthing a rival simply because she herself is bottoming out. “Her credibility is falling,” he said, while adding, “I think it is the credibility of the Parti Québécois which is falling, as well as that of Mrs. Marois.” Countering Marois’s accusations that the Liberals are mismanaging the government, Paquet insisted the party continues to focus on the province’s economy.

‘Dead wrong,’ says Paquet
Taking a case in point, Paquet said Marois is “dead wrong” when she maintains, as she has at least once in the National Assembly, that the Liberals only started to pay attention to Quebec’s crumbling public infrastructure after the deadly collapse of the de la Concorde overpass in Laval four years ago. While the average investment in public infrastructure from 1998 to 2003 was $3.1 billion per year, he noted the average from 2003 to 2007 was $4.6 billion. “It increased by more than 50 per cent,” he said. “That shows that we had already started taking care of it.
“I don’t mind someone who has views that are different from us if they’re correct, but I expect them to be substantiated,” Paquet added. “I am sure of the facts I have put forward. I am convinced of that. Those numbers are verifiable and I have the numbers to prove it. Mrs. Marois has no numbers. She only criticizes.” Paquet reinforced his position that Marois’s grasp of economics is not strong by referring to an article in Le Devoir penned by Michel David in 2001.

‘My poor Pauline…’
In his piece, David recalled that on the day after Marois tabled her first budget in 2001 as finance minister in the then ruling PQ government, she ran into a childhood friend who casually remarked, “My poor Pauline, how are you going to manage? You never were any good with numbers!” David added that a good number of people at that time had doubts about Marois’s ability to take over the province’s finance portfolio, which had previously been the responsibility of economic whiz Bernard Landry, who was Quebec’s Premier at that point.