Éric Duhaime intends to send a letter to the next President of the National Assembly, Nathalie Roy, to be heard in Quebec.
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Sunday followingnoon, during a rally in Beauce, he made his letter public.
A few weeks ago, the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) contacted the four leaders of the other parties to make three demands: to be able to continue to hold press briefings inside the National Assembly, benefit from an office within this institution, in addition to being able to participate in closed sessions.
“These are all privileges that I had before October 3, because I had convinced only one woman to join the Conservative Party of Quebec in Claire Samson, summarized Éric Duhaime in an interview with the QMI agency. Since then, we have convinced 530,000 Quebecers to vote for us and we are being refused any form of access to what is supposed to be the people’s house. Look, there was the worst electoral distortion in the history of Quebec. After discussing with the other parties, we agreed that the best way was to go through the new President of the National Assembly, Ms. Nathalie Roy.
“I’m not asking for anything that costs taxpayers money,” he added. There is no request that is budgetary. We are aware that there was an injustice that was committed on October 3. […] With an exceptional result, I believe that an exceptional measure must be taken. It is the duty of the President of the National Assembly to ensure that every vote counts and that democracy is as representative as possible. Otherwise, the signal we send is that there is one vote out of eight that is worth nothing in Quebec.
“Be of our time”
Éric Duhaime hopes that this parliamentary reform will bear fruit before betting on a change in the voting system. He also mentioned that his request is not historic, since he and PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon participated in the closed session and both held press briefings at the National Assembly, without being elected, before 3 october.
“We have archaic rules that date back to the days of bipartisanship,” he said. Today we have five parties and we have to keep up with our times.”
“We think we have to act this way, because it would be much too long if we wait for a reform, agreed Éric Duhaime. François Legault had made a commitment and he decided not to keep his word. The Liberal opposition has no interest in seeing a reform, since the concentration of its votes is in Montreal in the English-speaking ridings and it is taking advantage of the current situation. It would be risky to wait for a reform (of the voting system) for justice to be done.