Letter to François Legault – Cut MPs’ salaries by 50%

Quebec City, December 16, 2020

Mr. François Legault
First Minister of Quebec
Édifice Honoré-Mercier, 3rd floor
35, Boulevard René-Levesque Est
Québec (Quebec)
G1A 1B4

Prime Minister,

Today you are announcing even stricter containment measures. Thousands of employees lose their jobs as Christmas gifts.

After nearly a year of fighting at COVID-19, there is still no scientific evidence that excessive containment is holding back the spread of the virus. When you unlocked last spring, the cases continued to decline. Conversely, when you locked down again in the fall, the cases continued to mount. But on what scientific basis do you sacrifice the thousands of workers and entrepreneurs? Quebecers deserve an answer.

Nevertheless, you have chosen to sacrifice, once again, thousands of Quebecers, regardless of their mental health, already distressed by nine months of isolation. As you condemned the people of the restaurant industry to bankruptcy and unemployment last October 1st, and this, contrary to the recommendations of the Public Health.

Your sanitary extremism requires much greater sacrifices from the most vulnerable Quebecers, the poorest. For the privileged like you and all elected officials, there is no job loss, no bankruptcy, no salary that stops coming in. While for many others, it is disaster, the economies of a lifetime that go up in smoke, immediate impoverishment.

In the face of this glaring inequality of sacrifices that you demand from Quebecers, we would like to ask you today to reduce your salary by 50% as well as those of your ministers and all Members of Parliament, as long as you force a large number of workers to give up their pay checks.

This is an essential gesture of solidarity if you want to maintain the increasingly fragile bond of trust between you and the people.

We know that it is not those few million dollars saved that will make a big difference in the state coffers.

Nevertheless, it is a symbol that would show empathy towards the citizens and that would show that you understand that your wealthy friends of Morin Heights are currently suffering much less than the mother of a citizen, waitress of a restaurant, who lives in a poorly heated 3 1/2, no balcony, in Limoilou.

Let’s hope you take our proposal seriously.

We wish you merry Christmas to you and your loved ones, despite the circumstances!

Signed:

Éric Duhaime

And…

By signing this letter, you are allowing Éric Duhaime, the leadership candidate of the Conservative Party of Quebec and his team, to get in touch with you.