The Liberal Party suffered a defeat in the last election, believes former Health Minister Gaétan Barrette.
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Invited on the set of Le monde à l’envers on Friday night to speak about the future of the Liberal Party, Mr Barrette remained evasive but nonetheless admitted the party had suffered a major setback on October 3 .
“What happened to the Liberal Party is nothing great,” he told Stéphan Bureau.
The PLQ had the worst record in its history when it last voted. Since then, many activists have been demanding the head of leader Dominique Anglade.
The former Liberal MP chose not to run again in the last election. “The prospect of another term in the official opposition without the opportunity to look into my files, which I have expertise in, did not interest me,” he told the Stéphan Bureau. He also confirmed that he does not aim for party leadership in the near future.
The Barrette reform has helped the network weather the pandemic
Mr Barrette would have liked to have been Health Secretary during the pandemic. Even setting his reform in motion when he was minister would, he believes, have done much to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Quebec’s healthcare network. “A lot of people have told me that if the reform hadn’t happened, if we hadn’t experienced the pandemic like this, it would have been worse,” he said.
“The reform that I carried out, whether people like it, it was not defeated, and the current minister, Christian Dubé, the plan that he is announcing is in direct continuity with the reform that I carried out, even that [la CAQ] will complete my reform,” he continued.
During his interview, Gaétan Barrette also referred to his dispute with former Liberal MP Marie Montpetit. “There was no argument between me and my colleague. We might have debates, we didn’t have a close professional relationship, our files weren’t the same. […] To put it right, as a financial critic and with my background in health, I once made a comment about the medical community that my colleague didn’t like and she said it on Twitter, which started a chain reaction within our organization.”
During the show, Mélodie Leclerc, a detective sergeant with the Montreal City Police Service (SPVM) specializing in cyber-pedophilia, demystified the scourge of child pornography that circulates in abundance on the internet.
She took the opportunity to warn youngsters and parents, in addition to explaining the different types of threats that await web users.
The investigator is taking part in Paul Arcan’s documentary Les collects d’enfants, which lands on Vrai next week.
Edith Cochrane was the guest of the week. Panellists Gregory Charles, Louise Deschâtelets, Sophie Durocher and Guy Nantel discussed the #MeToo movement, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and the implications of it.
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A film about the Harvey Weinstein case – who was sentenced to 23 years in prison in New York in 2020 for rape and sexual assault – has been in court in Los Angeles since Monday – and delves into the investigative work that sparked the #MeToo movement, on which he the closure of the New York Film Festival was presented on Thursday.
The debaters also touched on alcohol consumption.
The program “Le monde à l’envers” is shown on TVA on Fridays at 8 p.m.
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