Last week, the Quebec government decided to offer $5 million to the Los Angeles Kings team of the National Hockey League to come and play preseason games next year in Quebec City. A decision which created indignation. An opposition party will table a motion in the National Assembly on November 21 for the authorities to renounce this investment.
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With our correspondent in Quebec, Pascale Guéricolas
This decision creates indignation, because it was taken while the government refuses to grant the 600,000 state employees their salary requests, citing a lack of financial availability, since the two parties are currently in negotiations.
It is in this tight budgetary context that the opposition party Québec solidaire is questioning the investment of 5 million dollars to bring the Los Angeles Kings team to Quebec, an already very well endowed team.
“ The owner of this team has accumulated 11 billion dollars alone, explains MP Haroun Bouazzi. It’s really not normal that we spend so much money on people who don’t need it and that we are so closed and disconnected from the needs of the public service, services, and the needs of civil servants. »
Thousands of state agents on strike
Faced with the difficulty of negotiating with the government, hundreds of thousands of state agents are starting a strike from this Tuesday, which will mainly affect schools and hospitals.
According to Éric Gingras, president of the central union of Quebec, this matter of subsidy to the hockey club fuels the indignation of its members, in the same way as the recent tax cuts: “ The mobilization is very great. We were given mandates of 95% for a strike mandate which could go as far as an unlimited general strike, for a common front of 420,000 workers. This is unheard of in Quebec over the last forty years. »