Melançon: Quebec threat to cut welfare for asylum seekers is heartless

To say the past two weeks have been rough for the Legault government would be an understatement.

The Coalition Avenir Québec was overwhelmed by backlash from doctors after the adoption of its controversial Bill 2. The government was ill-prepared and armed with a weak communications strategy as it faced one of the province’s most powerful lobbies — unions with enough resources to hire Lucien Bouchard as their chief negotiator and spend a quarter of a million dollars to rent the Bell Centre to protest recent government decisions.

In the end, polls suggest the Legault government, now in its seventh year in power and short on political capital, is losing the battle for public opinion on this major reform.

So what do you do when you need to distract from your mounting problems?

First, Legau