Ten days were enough to derail the CAQ’s parliamentary return, the one that was supposed to allow it to turn the page on the turmoil and finally pave the way for the end of the mandate with the accomplishment of major projects.
The goal was clear.
Santé Québec, it will work. General practitioners and the FIQ will give in. Hydroelectricity will get us out of the economic torpor in the era of the energy shift. The budget will balance without too much damage.
And there are always immigrants, especially asylum seekers and temporary foreign workers (on whom our SMEs unfortunately depend) as a relief valve to explain that everything is not going as planned.
The scenario was magnificent, well-crafted. Until the day Pierre Fitzgibbon was shown the door because he doesn’t care about politics and tells the truth. Until the day Michael Sabia lent credence to the Dollarama of energy theory. Until the day Youri Chassin reminded us that spending billions doesn’t solve all the problems of a sclerotic state.
It’s when the worst criticism comes from within that it hurts. There’s nothing like friendly fire to expose compromises and trade-offs.
Which CAQ?
Whatever he may say, if Youri Chassin had been appointed minister, he would have been less severe towards his prime minister, whom he now accuses of having lost the audacity to implement the changes he dreamed of when he first started out.
But this observation does not obscure the element of truth in his indictment against his former team.
The 2012 CAQ promised to trim the bureaucracy, it went so far as to promise “less bureaucracy, more services”. Ten years later, the situation is dismal. The size of the public service has jumped by 14% in 6 years. The services? They have deteriorated.
The CAQ of 2018 wanted to abolish school boards to give schools back autonomy, that of 2024 is struggling with school service centres that are even more opaque than their late predecessors.
The CAQ of 2012 dreamed of a professional order for teachers, that of 2024 is content to pay them more.
Boussole
What happened?
Some will say that the CAQ has lost its famous compass, henceforth guided by the polls and its political survival rather than by the ideals of its beginnings.
Others will say that this one has rather hit the wall of reality. The extent of the resistance that the government is facing in the health network perfectly illustrates the force of inertia that weighs down any ambition for reform.
This also applies to the education network and major public transport projects.
In such a context, the exercise of rationalizing expenditures that the government is forced to undertake to resolve the $11 billion deficit represents a golden opportunity for François Legault.
He who launched his party lamenting the heaviness of the Quebec model has the ideal pretext to attack it.
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