Luc Lavoie simply destroyed François Legault, calling him “the worst prime minister in the history of Quebec” for all the reasons we know.
@qubec.infos♬ son original – Québec infos
Lavoie goes even further by claiming that we must “sacrifice it outside”. What makes this verbal attack all the more significant is the context in which it takes place.
Indeed, while TVA Sports is delighted with the fallout from the visit of the Los Angeles Kings to Quebec for $7 million paid by taxpayers and touts this event as a great success for the return of the Nordiques, Lavoie persists in asserting that this conclusion is a national lie.
This discrepancy creates a certain unease, because Quebecor, Lavoie’s employer, would need the support of François Legault’s government to bring an NHL team to Quebec.
However, on TVA, Lavoie does not hold back from humiliating the Prime Minister, while also throwing the dream of seeing the Nordiques back in Quebec under the bus.
The contrast is striking: on the one hand, Pierre-Karl Péladeau, CEO of Quebecor and ardent defender of the return of the Nordiques, is increasing efforts to convince the NHL and the political authorities of the merits of his project.
On the other hand, Luc Lavoie, an influential information figure within the same group, openly shows himself to be a fierce opponent of the project, even hostile, to this idea, which he considers unrealizable.
He even goes so far as to assert that the region’s economy could not support a professional team in the long term, in particular because of the lack of sponsors and the difficulty in filling corporate boxes at exorbitant prices.
“Quebecor is a company that is doing extremely well, which is profitable, which delivers good returns to its shareholders, including the Caisse de dépôt and others, but Quebecor is not capable of getting up one morning and saying: I I’m going to put 1.1 billion on the table to have a license to pay for a hockey team. They’re going to close, they’re going to go bankrupt.” (credit:VAT)
“There is no one who will be able to demonstrate that the community of Quebec, in the metropolitan sense of the thing, has enough money circulating there to buy hockey boxes at $150,000 or $200,000 per year. “.
This difference of opinion between Péladeau and Lavoie is the symbol of a tension that cannot be ignored within Quebecor.
While Péladeau is banking on the return of the Nordiques to save TVA Sports, Lavoie is echoing an obvious truth, not only about the feasibility of the project, but also about the government’s economic priorities.
The fact that Lavoie openly criticizes François Legault on TVA, while indirectly destroying Péladeau’s ambitions, sends cold sweats down the spine of the CEO of Quebecor.
This creates a palpable unease, not only within the company, but also on the public stage, where the two men embody completely opposing visions.
On the one hand, the dream of bringing a legendary team to Quebec, on the other, an economic and political reality which makes this project impossible.
Luc Lavoie places Pierre-Karl Péladeau in a public nightmare: can he really count on the support of François Legault’s government when one of its most influential voices humiliates the Prime Minister in the public square, while sabotaging the ambitions of his project?
To ask the question is to answer it.
The unease has become too big to ignore, and it could well be that the Nordiques question is not only a matter of hockey, but also of politics and power within Quebecor itself.
The fact remains that in the end, the big jester of history is still and always…François Legault…
The greatest “clown minister” in the history of Quebec.
