www.politiquebec.com

[Delenda]

Guess who's paying for Quebec pipedreams?

Reform is a forgotten topic in election campaign



By D’Arcy Jenish - Business Edge
Published: 03/09/2007 - Vol. 7, No. 5




Quebec is in the midst of a general election and that means politicians from the three major parties - the Liberals, Parti Quebecois and Action Democratique du Quebec - are flying, driving and trudging around their snowbound province trolling for votes.

Political campaigns in one jurisdiction usually needn't concern members of the public in other parts of the country, but Quebec is different.

When Quebec politicians spend money, they are putting other people's dollars to work. Have-not Quebec is sustained by tax dollars collected outside its borders, namely Ontario and Alberta, sent to Ottawa and transferred to La Belle Province. Canada's second-largest province is an economic sinkhole dominated by a bloated state and radical unions. Yet it provides a coddled citizenry with lavish social programs generally not available elsewhere. (c'est à se demander pourquoi ils ne veulent pas qu'on parte)

In principle, no one should object to equalization payments. They ensure that every province can provide its citizens with roughly equivalent health care and education, which are vital to the long-term well-being of every individual.

But Quebec has become overly reliant on equalization payments and its dependence is growing. Currently, taxes raised outside the province account for 20 per cent of the government's revenue, up from 15 per cent a decade ago.

Quebec draws on the wealth of the nation to offer young parents heavily subsidized childcare for $7 a day, a bargain not available to families in any other province. Quebec university students pay annual tuition fees of $1,668, which have been frozen for 13 years while fees in every other province have been rising and students have been racking up big debts to obtain degrees.

"For now, someone else is paying and it's other Canadians," says University of Montreal economics professor Claude Montmarquette. "But we're going to hit a wall and the rest of Canada is going to say: 'You're asking us to pay for programs that we can't even afford for ourselves.' " Montmarquette was one of 12 prominent Quebecers from across the political spectrum who, in October 2005, signed a manifesto called A Clear-Eyed Vision of Quebec. The most prominent was former premier Lucien Bouchard. Their document, which stirred considerable public debate at the time, described the structural faults in the foundations of Quebec society and called for major reforms.

Quebec is among the 25 per cent of provinces and U.S. states that rank as least prosperous. It has the highest per capita public debt in North America. Currently, 16 per cent of the provincial budget, or $7 billion annually goes to servicing the debt, which is equivalent to the entire budgets of 12 of 21 government departments.

Since the Quiet Revolution of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Quebec has had one of the lowest birth rates in the western world and consequently the province's population is aging faster than any industrialized society except for Japan.

The results will be dire, warn the signatories of A Clear-Eyed Vision. By early in the next decade, Quebec will have fewer young people, fewer workers, more senior citizens and skyrocketing health-care costs. "We will be less dynamic, less creative and less productive," they say.

At an individual level, Quebecers have some bad habits. "They work less than other North Americans, they retire earlier, they benefit from more generous social programs, their credit cards are maxed out," the manifesto says.

Yet, this is a province where people resist reform with vigour. The manifesto goes on to say that: "The slightest change to the way government functions, the most timid call to responsibility, or the smallest change to our comfortable habits is met with an angry outcry."

In the current campaign, which ends when voters go to the polls on March 26, nobody has whispered a word about meaningful reform. This election is just another squandered opportunity for a serious discussion about the province's future.

Premier Jean Charest and PQ Leader Andre Boisclair spent the early days sparring over what a victory by the separatist party would mean. Charest insists the PQ would hold a third referendum, even though the province can barely afford provincehood let alone nationhood.

The separatists, masters of equivocation and mendacity, are promising only a "public consultation" on the future of the province. Yet, according to Chantal Hebert of the Toronto Star, Boisclair tried to light a fire under his supporters in one speech by using the word referendum seven times and promising 22 times to lead Quebec to freedom.

The political spectrum in Quebec is said to be made up of federalists, soft nationalists, hard nationalists and outright separatists, who prefer to call themselves sovereigntists.

But to judge from the campaign debate so far, Quebec's political leaders are all foggy-minded fantasists who are ignoring a looming catastrophe and selling pipedreams financed by taxpayers in other parts of Canada.

(D'Arcy Jenish can be reached at jenish@businessedge.ca)

[Delenda]

QUEBEC ELECTION
TheStar.com - News - Charest has stalled on eve of critical debate
Charest has stalled on eve of critical debate

Liberal majority hopes slipping as ADQ led by Dumont surges

Mar 12, 2007 04:30 AM
Chantal Hébert

On the eve of the Quebec leaders' debate, the Montreal region is all that stands between Jean Charest and a stinging defeat in the March 26 election. If tomorrow's debate does not reverse the tide of the campaign, his days as premier are almost certainly numbered.

With two weeks to go, Charest's party is running a distant third among francophone voters. According to a CROP poll published by La Presse over the weekend, only 24 per cent of francophones currently support the Liberals against 32 per cent for the Parti Québécois and 31 per cent for the Action démocratique du Québec party.

Only on the island of Montreal itself are the Liberals still in the lead, in large part because of the staunch but very concentrated support of the anglophone and allophone communities. They are tied with the other two main parties in the suburban belt around the city and have fallen behind in the rest of the province.

At 33 per cent overall, Charest is 13 points short of his 2003 score and still 10 points under the safety zone within which he can hope to form a majority government. In fact, with numbers like that, the odds of a majority government of any stripe have gotten long.

The PQ has yet to break the 30 per cent barrier; its plans for another referendum on sovereignty are holding it back; André Boisclair is widely seen as the least able of the three main leaders on offer.

The ADQ has been steadfastly rising since the election call but its base is too narrow to allow it to leap to a majority – or at least that is the conventional thinking at this volatile point in time.

For leader Mario Dumont is already exceeding expectations. In so doing, he has turned the assumptions of this election on their head. An election that was Charest's to lose only a few weeks ago has turned into a steep uphill climb for his Liberal party.

How did it come to that? Well it seems that the lessons from the last federal election were lost on Charest.

Borrowing a page from Paul Martin's campaign book, he has been replicating the strategy that paved the way to the Conservative 2006 breakthrough.

Charest has spent the past three weeks trying to turn the election into a referendum-style vote, presumably the better to rally federalists to his party; all he has achieved to date has been to push more voters into Dumont's embrace.

For before it is anything else, the ADQ is a halfway house for voters who want to break out of the sovereignty-vs.-federalism box.

Beyond saying that he would have no hand in the staging of another referendum, Dumont has steadfastly refused to come down on one side or the other of Quebec's defining debate, insisting instead that if he is elected, he will seek more autonomy for Quebec within Canada.

That caginess has paid off. Dumont had already been siphoning the votes of the many péquistes who were either unimpressed with Boisclair or unconvinced that there should be another referendum or both.

Now, Charest's hard-line rhetoric has been pushing the soft federalists – who don't support separation but want an assertive government on the Quebec-Canada front – over to Dumont's side.

At this late stage, can the campaign still be turned around ? Time itself, or the lack of it, is not the issue. Brian Mulroney in 1988, Martin in 2004, both turned the trend in their favour over the last stretch of a campaign.

Like Harper in 2004, Dumont may wilt under the more intense scrutiny that is now coming his way. His party remains very much a one-man show. Since last week, he has had to fire two candidates for inappropriate remarks on women and immigrants.

Most Quebecers do not see Dumont as a prospective premier. They massively still expect Charest to win.

The ADQ may lack the second wind to close its deal with voters.

But it could also be that Charest and Boisclair are fighting more than a circumstantial tide. It is the second time in a year that Quebecers are signalling their fatigue with the sovereignty/federalism debate in a rather dramatic fashion.

In 2006, that feeling produced an unexpected Conservative breakthrough as one in four voters sought an alternative to the black and white options of the federal Liberals and the Bloc Québécois.

The ADQ surge and the reconfigured National Assembly that could result from it are more consistent with the results of the last federal election in Quebec than a clear Liberal or PQ victory.

[Delenda]

EDITORIAL
TheStar.com - opinion - Debate clarifies choice in Quebec

(encore l'obsession du ROC pour le Québec. Pourquoi un éditorial d'un journal de Toronto sur les élections québécoises? )

Mar 15, 2007 04:30 AM

It wasn't riveting drama, for the most part. But the Quebec leaders' debate on Tuesday was a refreshingly normal exercise in sketching out the serious political options facing that province's voters when they go to the polls March 26. The sheer maturity of the process made it noteworthy.

Premier Jean Charest and his two rivals sparred over real issues that matter to real people: leadership, credibility, the economy, health care, child care, education, the environment.

While some sparks flew, by Quebec standards they wasted little time in a heated, go-nowhere debate over sovereignty and the province's ties with the rest of Canada. That is something most Canadians can applaud.

The polls give Charest's Liberals only a fragile lead with 11 days to go and many voters still undecided. This is a tight three-way race that is impossible to call. But Quebecers who were tempted to deny Charest a second mandate may reconsider after seeing his rivals strut their stuff. (wishful thinking)

As premier and the evening's chief target, Charest struggled to fend off criticism that he failed to deliver promised tax cuts and to dramatically reduce health-care wait times, and now deserves to pay the price. "Have we been perfect?" Charest mused. "No." But Quebecers are not as heavily taxed as before, he noted. Parliament has recognized Quebec as a nation, sterile Canada-Quebec squabbling is a thing of the past, more Quebecers than ever hold jobs, the province's books are finally balanced, and the government is reinvesting in education and health.

Charest also landed stinging hits of his own. He called Action démocratique du Québec Leader Mario Dumont a "confused" figure who heads "a party without a team" and who offers nothing but "improvisation" by way of a program. He also dismissed rookie Parti Québécois Leader André Boisclair with a shrug: "Do we want to replay the same old referendum film again?" Most Quebecers agree that the answer is "Merci, non."

On performance, Charest came across as the most premier-like, projecting a calm mastery of policy, and keeping his temper under wraps.

Dumont gave the flashier show, telling Charest "you don't deserve a second chance," and launching an aggressive attack on Charest for failing to deal with a structurally weak bridge in Laval that collapsed last year. But Dumont showed himself to be a policy lightweight. His proposal to declare Quebec an "autonomous state" is a weird halfway house between Charest's profitable federalism and Boisclair's independence. Dumont could not answer a basic question on Quebec's budgetary elbow room, dodged demands that he cost out his programs and was mauled for his enthusiasm for private health care, user fees and delisting drugs.

Boisclair did better than many pundits predicted, urging Charest to "stop blaming others" and posing sharp, focused questions. However, his overall performance was the weakest. He was ridiculed by both rivals for "living a dream" when he promised, without much apparent enthusiasm, to hold yet another referendum.

Although many Quebecers went into this election dissatisfied with Charest's stewardship, the alternatives on display in Tuesday's debate were not wildly attractive. Dumont looked shallow and unready to govern. And Boisclair continued to peddle unwanted goods.

In that sense, the debate was healthy and instructive. As Charest said at one point, "there are no magic solutions." All Quebecers can do now is choose the best of what is on offer.