PQ uses archival footage of Legault to sell sovereignty

Francois Legault, then Parti Quebecois finance critic, explains a theoretical financial plan under a sovereign Quebec, Thursday May 5, 2005 in Quebec City. (CP PHOTO/Jacques Boissinot)

The Parti Québécois (PQ) is lathering up its financial portrait of a sovereign Quebec with none other than François Legault.

In a video posted to social networks, the PQ promoted its announcement next Monday on what is commonly referred to as the "Year 1 budget," using excerpts from a presentation by François Legault in 2005.

"Not only is the sovereignty project relevant today, it has become urgent," he declared in the video.

At the time, he was still a PQ MNA, and was presenting his financial portrait of a sovereign Quebec, an exercise he had carried out himself at the time.

In the explanations that follow, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon points out, not without irony, that he has adopted Legault's own calculation method in its entirety.

He added, however, that in a second phase, his updated document would go further: it will reveal "political choices" that a PQ government would make, without specifying them, that would have a "substantial influence on the finances of a free Quebec."
 

Also among the selected excerpts, which go back as far as 1973, were words from Jacques Parizeau, who was not yet an elected MNA at the time. He had also made a projection on the finances of an eventual sovereign Quebec.

“A real budget for an independent Quebec balances, it even balances very well," he said in a televised presentation. “We're capable of transforming quite a few things.”

Parizeau later became leader of the PQ, premier and came within a hair's breadth of achieving independence in the 1995 referendum.

Figures have already begun to circulate in the media concerning the presentation of next Monday's document.

The PQ's analysis estimates savings of $8 billion by ending duplication and overlap with the federal government.

- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Oct. 20, 2023.