Privatizing Healthcare, Sensationalizing Language

THIS WEEK on Metropolis… Dru Oja Jay returns to discuss Premier Legault's approaches to healthcare and the continuing language debate that has remained at the forefront.

With the common front winding down and most teachers agreeing to the deals secured by their union representatives, Legault has released a statement stating his confidence and satisfaction with these deals, albeit with a twist, that there will be a deficit due to these. While Legault makes sure not to paint the deficit negatively, the tone is clear. The association between teacher salary increases and the budget deficit is a concerted effort to diminish the workers' wins. The front commun strikes received an incredible amount of public support. Legault's efforts to attach a deficit to the support are calculated to water down that support.

Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre held a press conference in a Pointe-Claire parking lot about how municipalities have "stalled thousands of housing units across Montréal." Dru and Kalden discuss the ways that the conservatives are using the housing crisis to further the interests of private developers who want to build massive residential towers. Specifically, the ways that the spectre of bureaucracy is brought up to extoll the ways that construction is delayed. 

Legault's approaches to language have caused old voices of liberalism to emerge; we highlight the opinion piece by Clifford Lincoln, an old liberal MP. His opinion piece in the Gazette hits a tone reminiscent of older colonial mindsets about a cosmopolitan existence. Lincoln's piece rightfully criticizes Legault's participation in the culture war. However, it is often to the detriment of better policy towards other less cultural sectors.