It doesn’t matter

While it is a shame Premier Jean Charest dropped two veteran anglophone MNAs — including Jacques Cartier’s Geoff Kelley — as part of a streamlined minority government cabinet, English-speaking voters will not really feel the difference. Yet, symbolically at least, anglophones would have liked to see Kelley and Lawrence Bergman stay in cabinet, but it wouldn’t matter if the cabinet was made up of one anglophone or a dozen.

Charest is always going to cater to the ‘regions’ — the rural areas outside Montreal and Quebec City — and the French-speaking majority anyway, so why even get worked up about it?

The fact is, the West Island’s Anglo population has gotten the shaft from numerous Liberal governments in the past (Bill 178, the Bill 9 de-merger fiasco) and yet, with the exception of one riding in 1989 voting Equality, the West Island still votes en masse for the Liberals without fail.

Kelley is a decent politician and has worked tirelessly on behalf of his constituents, and can’t be faulted for being who he is. Charest, on the other hand, can and must be held accountable for his ham-handed leadership.

His election promises are bogus, his cabinet shuffles are window dressing and even though he claims to have heard the electorate’s message when it handed him a minority government last month, it seems the message he heard was ‘get rid of the Anglos.’

Granted, Nelligan MNA Yolande James was elevated to cabinet. Charest is proud of his 50-per-cent female cabinet and the fact James is the first black cabinet minister in the province’s history.

Unfortunately, with just two and a half years of experience in government, James’ voice probably won’t get heard very often around the cabinet table — and that’s probably fine by Charest, who has been dogged by his ‘you will get your cities back’ speech he gave to West Islanders at a rally in 2000.

The message from Quebec City to West Islanders is ‘quiet down about agglomeration; you’re just lucky the PQ didn’t win.’

A minority government is a chance for citizens to speak out about what they want and don’t want from a government. If electors want to send the government a message, they can vote another way whenever the next election pops up, be it this year, or next.