The Liberal Party of Quebec made a mistake of $16.3 billion in its financial framework. He pleads the complexity of the exercise and the lack of internal resources to explain his blunder.
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“These things happen. I don’t have 35 officials to help me do that. We are two people (…) (Au) PLQ, like the other parties, the resources to carry out a campaign are limited ”, explained the liberal Carlos Leitao, however himself former Minister of Finance, Wednesday afternoon, in impromptu press in Quebec.
According to him, “what we did is the equivalent of a budget. We did it in three weeks with very limited resources (…) Calculating Quebec’s public debt is probably the most complex thing there is”.
The Liberals made their exit after the revelations of The Press regarding an error originally estimated at $12 billion appearing in the calculation of the debt recorded in their financial framework. The party admitted to having badly integrated the previous debts.
$16.3 billion instead of $12 billion
At the end of the day on Wednesday, the Liberals published the updated financial framework. We discover that the error was ultimately about $16.3 billion. Thus, Québec’s gross debt will be $256.9 billion instead of the $240.6 billion initially recorded.
In addition to the debt error, the Liberals had failed to account for $2.8 billion in pandemic-related spending. “We also took that into consideration (expenses related to the pandemic) after discussions with economists from the University of Sherbrooke,” added Carlos Leitao.
How could this error have happened? “We have put our efforts into calculating our commitments (…) Calculating the debt is still a complex calculation. Probably it was a little too fast,” conceded Mr. Leitao.
The latter added that the party could not base itself on the figures contained in the Quebec budget, tabled last March, and that it absolutely had to wait for the publication of the pre-election report on the state of public finances (August 15 ) to start working on its financial framework.
“The time is still quite fast to do this kind of work. For all the political parties, we do not have the army of civil servants”, reiterated the one who chairs the liberal campaign.
After initially excluding them, the Liberals have also decided to include $2.8 billion in expenditures related to COVID 19 in their updated financial framework, which is to be posted online this Wednesday. “We also took that into consideration after discussions with economists from the University of Sherbrooke,” added Carlos Leitao.
“It doesn’t change the dynamic that much”
Mr. Leitao insisted that the “correction” of $12 billion “changes very little” in the financial framework, since the commitments and political choices of the Liberals are not affected. “It doesn’t change the dynamic that much,” he said. It does not unbalance the framework, especially since the debt-GDP ratio is still decreasing (slower than expected).
Liberal Marc Tanguay added that “notwithstanding the correction, today we are tabling the same financial framework. The return to balanced budgets is not changed. We are not touching the Generations Fund. We have the same political priorities to respond to inflation (…) Making this correction has no impact.
After various corrective measures, Quebec’s gross debt in 2026-2027 should be $254 billion, according to the Liberals’ financial framework. In its original version, this anticipated debt was $240.6 billion.