MONTREAL – Ex-Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau has once again criticized the Parti Quebecois (PQ), saying his former party has lost its soul and is facing a “field of ruins.”
Parizeau told Radio-Canada in an interview broadcast Monday he has the impression PQ members don’t believe in themselves.
“So how do you expect people to believe in them?”
He repeated an expression he used in 2014 to describe what he saw as the PQ’s future:
“A field of ruins.”
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He added the PQ no longer has a soul because of constant “byzantine” debates regarding the best time to call an independence referendum.
The interview with the man who was PQ leader during the 1995 referendum campaign was conducted in February.
Parizeau said not all is lost, however, and that the party needs to rebuild and engage Quebecers who are in their 30s and 40s.
“(These people) are collectively very ambitious,” he said.
“They aren’t losers; they have a habit of succeeding.”
He didn’t keep his criticism just for the PQ, telling the CBC’s French network the current Liberal government’s budget cuts are too deep.
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“There is a fixation on the zero deficit,” he said.
“I think it’s religious. There is no need to provoke the psychodrama that we are seeing right now in Quebec.”
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