In June 2019, eight months after becoming Prime Minister, François Legault saw life in pink. “Honestly, I find it easier than expected,” he confided to The Press.
It may be said that politics is unpredictable, he could not imagine that the sky would fall on his head in the form of a virus of a virulence not seen for generations. After the Barrette years, the appointment of Danielle McCann to Health had been welcomed as a breath of fresh air. A year later, he fired her in disaster.
Admittedly, there were already warning signs of the problems Pierre Fitzgibbon’s ethical elasticity was going to cause him, and François Bonnardel was already beginning to advance outlandish arguments in defense of the third bond, but all that was not likely to disturb Mr. Legault’s sleep.
We will certainly not catch him saying he is above his business. Last week, he justified his boycott of the traditional end-of-session press conference on its brevity, but he knew full well that barely three months after the October 3 victory, the media would have had only the embarrassed to choose the files in which his government is already bogged down.
Even the Minister of Finance’s economic update and distribution of checks aimed at mitigating the ills of inflation have been overshadowed by the discovery of the costumed pheasant hunting parties in which his incorrigible super minister of the economy participates. every year in the company of millionaires doing business with the state. As the other said, “there won’t be easy”.
The Prime Minister persists in saying that the labor shortage is good news for workers, who are in a position to negotiate better conditions, but this does not seem to apply to government employees, since the offers presented this week by the President of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, would result in their impoverishment.
The crisis in public services, whether in the health network, the education network, day care centers or even the legal system, cannot be overcome without attracting new employees, but we must first retain those who are already there.
We still have to give them the desire to stay. Christian Dubé must have had homicidal thoughts when he learned that a nurse had been suspended for eating a toast intended for beneficiaries. A stupidity like that is enough to ruin any seduction campaign.
Faith in the virtues of the public sector has limits. By dint of dangling reforms without anything changing, except for the worst, we have created a vicious circle. Those who have acquired the conviction that things will never improve end up throwing in the towel, and their departure further accelerates the deterioration of services.
Bernard Drainville is not responsible for a shortage that forces him to deal with a record number of unqualified teachers. He should not be surprised, however, that a quarter of those with the required skills leave the profession before reaching five years of practice, while he himself defends a “three-tier” system which imposes a disheartening burden to those who work in schools in the ordinary public sector. In the end, the government is itself making the shortage it deplores worse.
As if things weren’t bad enough on the inside, he must also prevent attacks from the outside. Preserving the Quebec difference in a country where it annoys more and more remains a constant fight.
After the great maneuvers of the first mandate, marked by the adoption of identity laws, on immigration, secularism and language, the second mandate risks being that of a hand-to-hand combat, both before the courts and in the political arena.
The cancellation of Friday’s meeting with Justin Trudeau due to weather conditions was symbolic. Mr. Legault is dealing with an adversary who is a master in the art of evasion.
Although the provinces have been calling for a summit meeting for two years to discuss health care funding, Mr. Trudeau refuses to do so as long as there is no agreement on a common “plan”, which would recognize de facto the legitimacy of federal intrusion into this area of provincial jurisdiction.
When it comes to immigration, Ottawa is also turning a deaf ear. Of course, Quebec is not forced to follow the rest of the country in its race for immigrants and to welcome 112,000 a year, as Justin Trudeau suggested. Mr. Legault may well praise the benefits of “ Small is beautiful he knows very well, however, that there is a huge difference between a small country and a small province, which will be more and more so.