Coalition Avenir Québec MNAs are meeting for the first time in person since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The three-day pre-session caucus is being held in Quebec City until Friday.
READ MORE: COVID-19: Quebec will suspend unvaccinated health workers without pay as of Oct. 15
There are 72 of the 74 party MNAs gathering for the in-person caucus, but all sanitary measures remain in place.
Premier François Legault boasted in his opening remarks that all his MNAs are fully vaccinated. The politicians, as well as members of the media, also had to present their VaxiCode to enter the Quebec City congress centre.
It is one year to the next provincial election. The CAQ government is facing some big challenges, including a province-wide daycare crisis. In Quebec, 50,000 families are on a wait list for a space and low salaries have lead to a major shortage of daycare workers.
READ MORE: CAQ caucus highlights government’s priorities, female cabinet ministers
As he has said before, Family Minister Mathieu Lacombe repeated his commitment to create enough spaces for all Quebec children.
At its own pre-session caucus on Tuesday, the Quebec Liberal Party announced plans to table a bill that would guarantee children a spot in daycare.
On Wednesday, Lacombe called the Liberals’ plan logistically difficult. He said his own bill, which will be tabled this fall, would instead ensure future governments cannot cut daycare funding to balance the books.
READ MORE: Fate of $6B Quebec child-care deal questioned during first election debate
Last week, Legault re-instated Pierre Fitzgibbon as economy minister after the latter sold off private shares in in order to comply with requirements laid out by the ethics commissioner. With this cleared up, the government says it is free to follow the ethics commissioner’s advice and modernize the code of ethics for MNAs.
“I could understand that it was maybe a little more difficult to do it when we had something lurking…Everybody made the assumption that it was done towards one goal, which it is not,” said Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel.
LeBel is asking opposition parties to agree to re-write the code before the next election.
—with files from The Canadian Press
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