Protestors appear at CAQ convention calling for action on labour, tenants' concerns

Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ)’s national convention got underway Saturday with a strong security presence in Drummondville, Que. as police prepared to receive groups of demonstrators during the event. 

Security officers maintained airport-style security checkpoints and police patrolled the area on horseback.

Hundreds of members of the Syndicat de la fonction publique et parapublique du Québec (SFPQ) were among the first to demonstrate.

“Our members in the Quebec public service are angry with the CAQ government,” said Union Vice President Jean-Francois Sylvestre.

“It has been preventing any significant progress at the negotiating table for months.”

“Our demands are reasonable,” he continued: “fair salary conditions that take into account the job market and galloping inflation.”

Surete du Quebec mounted police officers patrol the grounds of the convention centre as Coalition Avenir Quebec hold its annual congress, in Drummondville, Que., Saturday, May 28, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

Tenants-rights advocates from several cities also made their voices heard Saturday afternoon, gathering in front of the Centrexpo Cogeco centre in Drummondville.

A group of tenants also attended the demonstration at the request of the Front d'action populaire en réménagement urbain (FRAPRU).

“There is nothing to be proud of when hundreds of households are on the verge of becoming homeless during the moving season, when rents have become unaffordable for a growing number of tenants, when households still more are being evicted and that the construction of social housing is being done in dribs and drabs,” said FRAPRU spokesperson Véronique Laflamme.

According to FRAPRU, Drummondville has a housing vacancy rate of 0.2 per cent -- fifteen times less than what’s considered to be a balanced rate.

Last year, 34 tenant households found themselves homeless there in the city, and 760 used the home-search assistance service offered by the local housing bureau.

-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 28, 2022.