Paul St-Pierre Plamondon: Anglo-Quebecers deserve better government

Parti Quebecois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, second from left, speaks about the PQ’s new independence playbook, Livre Bleu, in Montreal on June 23. Photo by Tim Snow/MONTREAL GAZETTE

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The following is an open letter written by Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon to Quebec’s English-speaking population.

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To all English-speaking Quebecers,

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I am writing to you today with a sense of hope and an open mind at the dawn of a pivotal election campaign.

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While we may not always agree on Quebec’s constitutional future, we share something fundamental: a deep attachment to this nation, its democratic institutions and the quality of life we want to preserve and strengthen for future generations. That is why I believe the election ahead is of critical importance for our shared future.

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Because Quebec certainly deserves better than what we’ve seen in the last eight years.

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We must state it plainly and without hesitation: we’ve gone through one of the worst regressions in quality of life in Quebec’s recent history. Quebecers know it, and they see it in their daily lives. Their purchasing power has vanished, home ownership has become an increasingly distant dream for too many young people. Our health-care and education systems are struggling to provide the quality of services that our citizens have every right to expect. Security and tidiness have suddenly become major issues in our cities and the number of homeless people has exploded. Meanwhile, our infrastructure projects make headlines only because of soaring costs and endless delays. While the government neglected road maintenance, schools and hospitals, it has normalized the waste of public funds through scandals like SAAQclic and financial debacles such as Northvolt. A part of that decline is connected to the ideological beliefs at the federal level that brought uncontrolled and unlimited immigration during those eight years, yet the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) chose to stand by as a resigned spectator, leading to the consequences we see today.

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Quebecers were promised a wind of “change” by the CAQ. Instead, what we have witnessed is not even the status quo — it is decline. We cannot blame citizens for losing faith in the state when, year after year, they pay more and receive less.

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I am convinced that we all share this assessment. Over the past months, many Anglo-Quebecers have told me they would vote for the Parti Québécois (PQ) for the first time in their lives, simply because they agree with our stances on a vast majority issues. Underneath that pledge is also the fact the Anglos don’t fear the PQ anymore, since Anglos and Francos share the same realities and concerns. Public discourse has too often encouraged the mistaken belief that the concerns of French-speaking and English-speaking Quebecers are fundamentally at odds. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are all in the same boat. We live under the same institutions. We pay the same taxes. We deserve the same high-quality public services and individual financial well-being.

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Together, we have a shared responsibility to reject decline. We would be wrong to accept a Quebec that has grown accustomed to doubting itself, to distrusting its institutions or to settling for less. We would be wrong to allow our ambitions to shrink. Above all, we would be wrong to believe that our interests somehow diverge simply because of the language we speak at home.