François Legault, apparently, sees in the current political sequence the opportunity to bounce back.
He presents himself to Quebecers as the protective dad of a nation threatened by Trumpian commercial extravagances.
As in the time of covid, he wants to protect his people and he will do so “at all costs”.
I admit my perplexity. Does François Legault really believe he is reactivating the memory of covid to his advantage?
Genius idea?
Who still says today that large-scale confinement was an idea of genius, that the abolition of all social relations was legitimate, that the ban on saying goodbye to loved ones when they died was an unavoidable necessity, and that he was wise to turn into an informer denouncing his neighbor to the authorities if he deviated from the Covidian rules?
Does François Legault really want to remind us of this period?
This obviously does not mean that our government should not react to what is happening in the south.
But the necessary response may not be the one demanded by those who shape the dominant public discourse, who are currently improvising a crazy St. Vitus dance for us.
The United States has just moved to the right, certainly. This has nothing to do with fascism or Nazism. Those who want us to believe this live in a parallel world.
But let’s come back to it. What to do?
-First understand that Quebec has nothing to gain, in the circumstances, from sinking into a form of ecosocialism softsymbolized today by the desire to put an end to gasoline cars.
Certainly, the energy transition is necessary in the long term, but there is something absurd in locking ourselves into a model which will suffocate us under a mass of constraints and which will not save the planet.
This is not to deny the importance of the climate issue, even less of the environmental issue, which cannot be reduced to it.
This is to ensure that it does not serve as a pretext for regulatory fury.
Perhaps it is time, moreover, to question the systematic hostility to the exploitation of hydrocarbons. In a world where they still matter, we cannot lock ourselves in a bubble outside of reality.
Oil
I’m not saying we should start drilling tomorrow morning. Of course not. Especially since Quebec is fortunate to be a hydroelectric power.
But opposition to oil and gas here has more to do with ideology than healthy pragmatism.
I often have the impression that if Quebec discovered immense resources, the dominant discourse would be: we do not touch them, because it is the poison of the earth.
One thing is certain, the Trumpian revolution, south of the border, is forcing us to ask ourselves questions that we no longer ask ourselves.
