However, except for real estate groups managing several doors, the time has come for budgetary austerity and small savings, savings made to the detriment of too many socio-economically precarious people in Mauricie. The government refuses to regulate the amount of rents by establishing a national rent register. The government refuses to increase last-resort aid and continues to set up pitfalls for people who are already destitute, despite a medical diagnosis of incapacity for work because the diagnosis does not correspond to the illnesses recognized by social assistance. There is also the desire to penalize single-parent women with a child under the age of five, in the midst of a shortage of daycare places.
The government also forgets people recognized as suffering from a disability who are entitled to a minimal income, just like retired people who have not been able to accumulate savings during their life. And there are all these unemployed people, those who have precarious jobs, on call or at minimum wage. Many are afraid of losing their housing, many lose little bits of their dignity each time they go to the food bank, many go without food, many wait to obtain health care and public social services, many have no one left. who to talk to. Not to mention the street which too often becomes the only option, due to lack of being able to spend $1000 per month on accommodation. All these people who do not benefit from tax cuts are real and are not simply a percentage taken from a dashboard.
However, this reality no longer seems to move the people who manage the community’s budget. We prefer to invest more than 30 billion in the development of a possible battery sector which, in turn, requires investments of more than 80 billion so that our state company, Hydro-Québec, can supply the demand of energy-consuming energy processes. production. We also prefer to promise to invest another 10 billion in the construction of a possible third motorway link, everything that science implores us not to do.
Meanwhile, we are cutting back on the renovation of schools and hospitals, we are neglecting the maintenance of our essential infrastructure, we are refusing to increase last resort aid, the basic amount of which is equivalent to a little less than $10,000 per person. year, a third of the salary increase for deputies. Compared to the sums invested in the ambitions surrounding the battery sector and the third link, it would cost a very small part of these ambitions to allow all these people to regain a bit of dignity.
As the budget update approaches, we hope that the government will stop looking the other way and will honor its duty to redistribute collective wealth to those who need it most. Social justice is not a matter of political color, it is first and foremost a matter of humanity. So let’s focus on the socio-economic benefits of investing in the population and stop condemning already precarious people to live in inhumane conditions.
Isabelle Reid
ROÉPAM
