And when, as leader of the official opposition, you also have to face Prime Minister François Legault every day in Parliament, things don’t get any better.
This feminist outing, a real cry from the heart, comes from the leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ), Dominique Anglade, convinced that being a woman is far from unrelated to the setbacks experienced by her party, in free fall. in the polls, and the Prime Minister’s attitude towards him.
He’s a paternalistic person, that’s for sure.
, she said regarding Mr. Legault during a long interview with The Canadian Press in a Quebec cafe following a difficult week for his party. Thus, during the by-election in Marie-Victorin, Monday, the PLQ had to settle for a fifth place and a humiliating score of 7% popular support.
Ms. Anglade did not at all appreciate Mr. Legault’s comment, the evening of his party’s victory in Marie-Victorin, when he said that Quebecers did not like to see her throw mud
in the file of the CHSLD Herron, where dozens of seniors died in atrocious conditions during the first wave of the pandemic. We’ve reached the sewers!
then said Mr. Legault, visibly annoyed by the questions of the leader of the official opposition, day following day.
Ms. Anglade believes that the Prime Minister overstepped the mark and did not give her a fair treatment of facts
. Is it therefore paternalistic, condescending, even sexist? Absolutely
she answers.
We count how many opposition leaders in the last 20 years have been treated as whiners?
whereas if she herself allows herself to criticize the government firmly, [on dira] either “she is aggressive”, or “she is complaining”
instead of qualifying it as firm or determined.
He is there, the bias
that is to say in the different, harder, negative look when it comes to a woman, she says, refusing however to pose as a victim.
This attitude upsets her a great deal, especially since she believes she is still capable of controlling herself in the National Assembly, convinced that she would not be forgiven for the slightest misstep, a clumsy word, a burst of anger.
However, he does sometimes feel angry when he hears certain thoughts of the Prime Minister, for example when he said in the House, in February, at a closed microphone, that the President of the National Assembly, François Paradis, was from Quebec since he was a caquiste. That day, she says she let out a few swear words but swallowed her anger. She decided to let nothing show
in front of the media, sure that she would have passed for a hysteric if she had revealed the bottom of her thought. At the slightest outburst, she will pass for an aggressive person, which annoys her.
She believes that Mr. Legault treats men and women around him differently. It’s clear that he passes the towel more easily for men
, she judges, alluding to the three women packed into the cabinet since the beginning of the CAQ mandate, namely MarieChantal Chassé, Sylvie D’Amours and Marie-Ève Proulx. No male minister has suffered the same fate, while some have struggled.
She cites the case of the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, repeatedly snubbed by the Ethics Commissioner but still in office. Me, I might never have done what Pierre Fitzgibbon
did and remain a minister, says this former Minister of the Economy in the Couillard cabinet, convinced that she would not be not passed through
because we do not accept that a woman politician can find herself in troubled waters.
I have much less room for error
a politician, believes the Liberal leader, sure that women, unlike men, have no free pass
.
To reverse this trend, she argues, we should do all the place
women’s political leadership and that this snowballs into all spheres of society.
The Perfect Woman Syndrome
Knowing that they have no room for manoeuvre, women politicians strive to be nothing less than perfect, notes the Liberal leader.
She says she is affected, like many other women who have tried to make their mark in politics, from syndrome of the one who must not make mistakes: that, I have
.
Hence his caution in his interventions.
Except that this reflex, it limits you in all that you can be, in all that you can say, in the way of expressing yourself
. In short, this keeps you from being what you naturally are
.
She also says that she observes a dichotomy between person [qu’elle est] and perception
people towards him. A gap between the public image and the real person.
<q data-attributes="{"lang":{"value":"fr","label":"Français"},"value":{"html":"C'est quand même pas totalement normal que chaque fois que je rencontre quelqu'un, le commentaire de la personne est le suivant: “That’s not how I perceived you at all”.”,”text”:”It’s still not completely normal that every time I meet someone, the person’s comment is the next: “That’s not how I perceived you at all”.”}}”>Still, it’s not entirely normal that every time I meet someone, the person’s comment is, “That’s not how I perceived you at all.”
As the election deadline approaches, the one who has been leading her party for almost two years intends to be much more present on the ground to make people discover the true
Dominique Anglade to voters.
The regions massively shunned the PLQ in 2018. It relies in particular on its charter of the regions to win back the vote of Francophones by pleading for increased decentralization of powers. A first announcement on this subject will be made Thursday in Trois-Rivières.
The Liberal leader says she wants to return to the fundamental values of the party, including economic development. Its vision will be to integrate economic development, wealth creation and the fight once morest climate change into a coherent whole.
She is well aware that she only has a few months ahead of her to recover. The challenge is huge but exciting
she says.
