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The new Premier of Quebec, Jean Lesage, gives his first impressions at the time of the victory of the Liberal Party in the elections of 1960.
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The Election of 1960: the Expression of a Will to Change [applause]
[Jean Lesage]: Ho, Chapter 10, page 26 two gigantic and particularly pernicious bodies
Question 39, and what to date has been the most pernicious of trusts in the Province of Quebec?
To date, the most pernicious of trusts in the Province of Quebec has been electricity.
The Union nationale, ladies, gentlemen
[applause]
[JS]: What are the main questions forty-three, what are the main companies that constitute the electricity trust?
The main companies that constitute the electricity trust in the province are: Shawinigan Water and Power, Montreal Light and Power, Montreal Tramway and Montreal Light and Power, Quebec Power, Southern Canada Power, etcetera, etcetera
The little catechism of the Union nationale.
[applause]
[JS]: And there is more, but time is running out,
Ladies, gentlemen, that is the Union nationale.
Not surprising that it is the opposition and has become an opposition party
What is sad about the case of the Union nationale, is that not only is it the parliamentary opposition, I repeat but that it symbolizes opposition to economic progress in Quebec.
That is what it symbolizes at the present time.
[applause]
[JS]: Look at the Union nationale it is the negation of the future, it wants to return to the past, its past.
I have here the Nouvelliste. It is a modest newspaper published not far from here
On October 1, 1962, on page 8, Mr. Camille Roy, Union nationale candidate in Nicolet, says,
He says, "We must return to politics before 1960!
[laughter]
[JS]: Ladies and gentlemen, are there many among you who would like to return to politics before 1960? The politics of blackmail!
[cries in the crowd]
[JS]: The politics of blackmail, the Shawinigan bridge, blackmail surrounding the bridge in Trois-Rivières, the politics of leeches, the politics of kickbacks!
Are there many among you, who wish to return to a regime of which French Canadians should be ashamed? There is no one!
[applause]
[JS]: Ladies and Gentlemen, are we to return to a system of entitlement?
You read it in all the newspapers, even newspapers abroad, that the winds of freedom had blown over Quebec since June 22, 1960
Do you want to return to entitlement, to a politics of slavery? No! I don't think so!
That the population of Quebec, satisfied with the freedom it now enjoys, is ready to return to these chains and manacles.
[applause]