The political week in review | The hills notebook

From Quebec to Ottawa, find out what caught the attention of our parliamentary correspondents this week.

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No to public money for professional sport, especially in Quebec

The Legault government’s decision to grant a subsidy of up to $7 million for the presentation of two Los Angeles Kings exhibition games in Quebec continues to fuel debate. The controversy on this subject was recently rekindled following the revelations The Press according to which Quebec and Ottawa granted 9 million in financial assistance to the prestigious Presidents Cup golf tournament, played at the Royal Montreal club last week. Should we subsidize the organization of professional sports events? A majority of Quebecers think no. According to a SOM survey carried out on behalf of The Press61% of Quebecers reject this idea. Only 29% of those surveyed are in favor while 10% say they have no opinion. The opposition is also stronger in Quebec (68%) than elsewhere in the province!

Quote of the week

The figure of the week: 80,000

Prime Minister François Legault wants half of the 160,000 asylum seekers to be forced to be relocated elsewhere in the country. However, Mr. Legault did not analyze the impact of such a request on the rights and freedoms of asylum seekers, a responsibility which falls to the federal government, according to him.

Of the chemtrails in the skies of Edmonton?

“The woman who is responsible for airspace control told me that no one has permission to go into the air to spray something. […] Another person told me that if anyone was doing it, it was the United States Department of Defense. » Alberta Premier Danielle Smith provided this explanation to a questioner about “ chemtrails over Edmonton” during a public meeting last Saturday. A video of the sequence was published on X by the disorderedyyc account, confirming what a local journalist had reported. “The premier was simply sharing what she heard from some people about this over the summer,” PressProgress told media outlet a spokesperson for Danielle Smith. She argued that the Alberta leader “did not say that she believed the United States government was using chemtrails in Alberta. The American authorities have also assured PressProgress that their devices were not spraying chemicals into the skies of Canada. According to the conspiracy theory of chemtrailsthe white streaks created in the sky by passing planes are composed of chemical or biological agents deliberately released by governments.

See Prime Minister Danielle Smith’s explanation

No right to show a redacted document at the Salon bleu

Public bodies have the unfortunate tendency to cover documents with black ink before making them public, a practice affectionately known as redaction. Liberal Monsef Derraji, in the House, showed a blackened page, the only trace of a SAAQ study on the advisability of lowering the alcohol limit allowed while driving to 0.05 while the government refuses to do so. . He asked this question when a bereaved family was present at the Salon bleu. CAQ parliamentary leader Simon Jolin-Barrette, however, intervened to denounce him. “I don’t see a picture, I see a black square. » President Nathalie Roy agreed with him, to the great displeasure of Mr. Derraji: “It’s darkness, it’s not a painting, Madam President, and it’s a very serious subject. »

The CAQ haunted by the Kings

The opposition did not shy away from its pleasure this week by highlighting in broad strokes the arrival in Quebec of the Los Angeles Kings, who received a government subsidy of 5 to 7 million for the presentation of two off-season games. Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois pressed the Minister of Finance in the House to find out if he would give the same financial boost to the team, a year later, and after presenting a deficit budget. Eric Girard dodged the question by listing the causes of this historic deficit of 11 billion and recalling that the objective was to “valorize” the Videotron Center, also financed with public funds. “If the rules of the National League applied, we would give a two-minute penalty to the Minister of Finance for delaying the match, because, there, he just spoke for a minute, then he did not approach the start of 1% of an answer to my question,” replied the solidarity leader. Mr. Girard finally promised to provide an assessment after the event.

The federal Liberals already losing?

Have the liberals already conceded victory to the conservatives? “Not at all,” defended Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada, co-president of the Liberals’ next electoral campaign. The Minister of Labor and Seniors, Steven MacKinnon, had declared the day before that the Bloc Québécois, “independenceists, separatists”, wanted rushed elections. ” For what ? To bring us a conservative government which, according to them, will provide the winning conditions for their sovereignty project,” he said in the House during the debate concerning Bill C-319 to improve the Old Age Security pension. from 65 years old. Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet mocked this allusion to a “plot between the conservatives and the separatists” which recalls “the time of Mr. Chrétien near the referendum”. The opposite argument was put forward by Pierre Poilievre who believes that the Bloc Québécois does not want to see the Conservatives in power. “Quebecers said to themselves: “Canada is doing well; They leave us alone! We don’t need the Bloc!” “, he exclaimed, referring to the Harper years.

Watch out for the broccoli!

Young dad, Pierre Poilievre seems well aware that vegetables are not always appreciated by toddlers. “Not even a piece of broccoli was forced on a reluctant child,” the Conservative leader denounced Wednesday, with a smile, during question period. He attacked the national school feeding program which, he said, “aims to feed the bureaucracy, not to feed the children”. The sum of $1 billion was announced in the last federal budget for this program which is the pride of the Liberals. It will help “400,000 children to have full bellies in schools from one end of the country to the other,” recalled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before accusing his rival of manipulating the electorate.

Poilievre makes peace with CTV News

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre buries the hatchet with CTV News. “We are allowing our caucus members to start talking to CTV again,” he said on CFRA, an Ottawa radio station owned by Bell Media. A little less than two weeks ago, its spokesperson announced a boycott of journalists from the Bell Media network due to a misleadingly edited report – CTV News first apologized for a “misunderstanding”, then fired two employees. “I am happy that CTV fired the journalists involved,” he said during the same interview. The leader of the official opposition saw this event as proof of the “anti-conservative bias” of the media covering politics on Ottawa Hill. “And that’s why we are bypassing the Parliamentary Press Gallery, to communicate directly to Canadians our common-sense plan to remove the carbon tax, build housing, repair the budget and stop crime,” he said. he said.