The third party of Quebec politics is demanding the PQ quit playing naive when it comes to tax and rate increases in Quebec.

At a CAQ caucus meeting in Trois Rivieres, Francois Legault said Premier Pauline Marois was being hypocritical when, on Wednesday, she denounced school boards for raising taxes.

School taxes at many boards in the Montreal area rose by about 3 percent this year, while boards in rural Quebec hiked their rates by 40 percent.

"What else did she expect?" Legault asked, rhetorically, saying the school board tax hike was deliberately engineered by the PQ when the government chopped school board budgets in an attempt to balance the books for the provincial government.

He pointed out that earlier this year Education Minister Marie Malavoy told school boards to go ahead and hike taxes to make up the $65 million shortfall.

Legault said a much better strategy for Quebec's economy would be to invest in creating jobs, such as his party's plan to develop the St. Lawrence valley.

"With the St. Lawrence project it gives us a means to help lower taxes because if can increase the average revenue we can decrease the percentage of taxes," Legault said.

Meanwhile Legault confirmed that the Liberal party had approached several CAQ members to convince them to switch parties, including Christian Dubé and Gerard Deltell.

Deltell was the leader of the ADQ before the party merged with the CAQ.

Neither man was willing to jump ship.

“They really want to have good candidates and they cannot find them so they are coming to us and we told them no interest,” said CAQ MNA Christian Dubé.

"We are a party determined to make important changes in Quebec and we see clearly that the two old parties are defending the status quo so the answer he got was a clear no," said Legault.

Another MNA confirmed that the negotiations for Bill 14, measures that would impose more rules on languages other than French, look to be dead and buried and she blamed the PQ for its demise.

“We did want to protect the French but to protect also the anglophone minority and it seems to be a problem for them so too bad that's over,” said CAQ MNA Nathalie Roy