Quebec Minister responsible for Canadian Relations Sonia LeBel has deleted text messages from her engagement with her federal counterpart Dominic LeBlanc, from leading the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) in October 2018 to April 30, 2022, a learned from Radio-Canada. And it was no accident.
Text messages are the preferred means of communication between the two ministers at the heart of Québec-Ottawa relations. They communicate via textconfirmed by the press secretary of the federal minister.
Some official letter
Last year, there was only one official letter from the Minister on the subject of federal health transfers, and no letter on the subject of the restoration of cultural powers, the single income declaration or the transfer of a point of taxes.
Studying the credits of her ministry, on April 27, Sonia LeBel also could not say whether she wrote an official letter to her counterpart about immigration, a big issue for the government. Legault.
We can also work through textexplanation of the minister, asked tomorrow the spokesman of the Parti québécois for Québec-Ottawa relations, Véronique Hivon.
” We are in constant communication with important files. “
Following this statement to the National Assembly, we sent access to the government information request to retrieve these text messages from the past four years, rare written traces of relationships between the federal government and of the province, which we sometimes call stormy.
After verification, the Quebec Secretariat for Canadian Relations responded to this does not contain the corresponding documents at our request.
” Although targeted message exchanges occurred, they were not maintained or archived. “
The Minister did not systematically save all his text messagesexplanation by press officer Sonia LeBel.
Absolutely patheticresponded to the Parti Québécois
Not only is there no longer the formalism of real public requests, real letters, but moreover, there is no longer even the presence of text messages that are important and meaningful for them to maintain.reaction by PQ MP Véronique Hivon.
According to him, it says a lot about the powerlessness of the Legault government and the mirage that it lets Quebecers see changes in the federation, […] while he does not get the benefits.
” Either of the text messages were deleted because they lacked very important content, which would reveal the Legault government’s lack of depth in its claims; or they are embarrassing, because it is still an end of rejection for the Government of Quebec. “
Some texts should be kept secret, the former minister said
Professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa Benoît Pelletier judges amazingbut not dramatic text messages are deleted.
This former Quebec Minister of Intergovernmental Relations from 2003 to 2008, in Jean Charest’s Liberal government, does not believe that Sonia LeBel absolutely had to keep all this correspondence. But this brings a downside.
” Most technical text messages, if any, should be hidden, of course. “
Benoît Pelletier regrets that official letters are not prioritized by the minister: In a letter, you can do your project, you can do your request … It is through meetings and through correspondence that the files move forward.
Like Véronique Hivon of the PQ, the former Liberal minister thinks it all shows thatthere is a lack of correlation or shallow relationship between the two levels of government.
He records a cooling relations between Quebec and Ottawa, with a number of files in Quebec that are not progressing, that are not being unblocked.
At the National Assembly, at the end of April, Minister LeBel defended himself from not getting results. In particular, he cited the labor market agreements that were signed and the $ 6 billion raised as compensation for the daycare network.
Source: Radio-Canada
