(Québec) Québec solidaire (QS) justified on Thursday the absence of a third of its caucus from training on climate change, which it nevertheless wanted to make compulsory.
According to the party whip, Ruba Ghazal, these absences are not an issue.
Recall that four of the twelve elected members of QS did not attend training given to all deputies by experts in the National Assembly in April, while the party had wanted to make this training compulsory.
In a press scrum, Ruba Ghazal said that it was impossible to obtain the participation of all the deputies in a training which is given only one evening.
Asked about the consistency of the party’s positions and the message that these absences send, Mr. Ghazal said that the environment is not an image issue for his party and that he does not make it a communication issue. .
It was at the initiative of the Legault government that this cross-party training took place.
Environment Minister Benoit Charette passed a motion in December inviting various organizations “to organize cross-partisan training for MPs on climate change as soon as possible.”
QS then insisted that the motion include a passage on the mandatory nature of the training for all MPs, but this was not retained in the final wording. QS then assured the daily Le Devoir that all its elected officials would take part.
The party assured that the absent elected officials would follow the training offline with a virtual link.
Absent from the formation were the parliamentary leader of QS, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, as well as the deputies Sol Zanetti, Étienne Grandmont and Andrés Fontecilla.
Mr. Nadeau-Dubois was absent due to a “family issue”, it was said, while the other three deputies participated in a public meeting on social housing, according to information provided by the party.
