In a 5 minute 22 second video, broadcast on X, Prime Minister François Legault explained to us why Quebec is less rich than the rest of Canada.
“This is a subject that is very close to my heart. First of all,” he said, “I don’t accept that Quebec is less rich than the rest of Canada. It’s a question of giving ourselves the means to achieve our ambitions.”
After a historic preamble where he recalled that Anglophones were more business-minded than Francophones, that the metropolis of Canada moved from Montreal to Toronto and that the head offices of the major Canadian banks were established in Toronto, François Legault went with a charge against the years of power of the liberals.
THE CHARGE AGAINST THE LIBERALS
“We had a liberal government from 2003. When he arrived, the wealth gap was exactly 20%. And there, we lost 15 years. In 2018, when the Liberals left power, there was still a wealth gap of 20%.
“When the CAQ came to power in 2018,” he adds, “we gave ourselves a plan to create wealth, to do better than the rest of Canada… And the wealth gap with the rest of Canada went from 20% (in 2018) to 16.5% in just five years.”
And salaries, according to Mr. Legault, increased by 23.8% in Quebec compared to 19.3% in the rest of Canada.
OTHER COMPARISONS
I analyzed the Prime Minister’s figures by referring to those reported by the Institute of Statistics of Quebec. Differences were noted.
In 2018, the wealth gap (GDP per capita) between the rest of Canada and Quebec was 19.4% and in 2023, it had fallen to 17.7%. And between Ontario and Quebec, the wealth gap fell from 14.5% in 2018 to 9.8% in 2023.
From 2018 to 2023, GDP per capita therefore grew a little more quickly in Quebec than in the rest of Canada, an increase of 21.6% compared to 19.9% in the rest of the country.
Concerning remuneration, hourly wages have increased in five years (from 2018 to 2023) by 24.2% in Quebec, compared to 23.4% in Canada as a whole. But compared to Ontario, we show a slight decline, the hourly wage having increased by 25.95% among our Ontario cousins.
BUT SINCE 2021
Quebec recorded growth of 9.37% in its real GDP over the last three years, from 2021 to 2023 inclusive. This is lower than the real GDP growth of Ontario (+10.82%) and that of Canada as a whole (+10.5%).
In terms of employment growth, the increase over the last three years has reached 10%. This is significantly lower than Canada as a whole (+ 11.82%) and Ontario (+ 12.7%).
