What to do in the face of an inconvenient reality that does not serve your interests?
The trick is as old as the world: sow doubt.
Question the numbers. Insinuate that someone, somewhere is manipulating them for their own gain.
Above all, don’t worry about backing up your statements with evidence or data. The idea here is not to enlighten the debate, but to create a diversion.
This tactic, the Legault government masters it so well that it could teach it.
The last example in the running is that of dilapidated schools.
Faced with figures showing that the proportion of dilapidated schools is increasing instead of decreasing as his government had promised, François Legault chose to question the data.
The Prime Minister insinuated this week that school service centers are exaggerating the state of decrepitude of their buildings in order to obtain more money from Quebec.
What supports such accusations?
Absolutely nothing.
We understood that François Legault wants to do battle with school service centers, which are increasingly confused with piñatas by this government that created them.
But the recent outing is all the more incomprehensible since the school inspection process has just been thoroughly reviewed by the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the Treasury Board.
A new tool, called Maximo, has made it possible to standardize and systematize the assessments. According to the echoes that we have, it is appreciated on the ground.
“All the reports on the state of school infrastructure that I saw were impeccable in all respects and, moreover, were all designed according to ministerial standards and rules,” writes Jean Bernatchez, professor specializing in administration and politics. of the Université du Québec à Rimouski and president of the committee of inquiry into the ethics and deontology of a school service centre.
The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, saw fit to add his grain of salt by contrasting these rigorous inspections… at his own glance.
It’s that he himself has visited schools rated C, D or E – the worst. And since he did not receive a piece of ceiling on his head, he concludes that the ranking of schools “may give an impression which is not in conformity with reality”.
This way of questioning a formal process through anecdotes (need we remind you that Mr. Drainville has no expertise in building inspection?) is sorely lacking in seriousness.
Unfortunately, she is far from unique in this government.
When the opinions of experts are unanimously negative about the third link, the Legault government still chooses to defend the project tooth and nail on the basis of its intuition.
And why not invent a new index called “bridges per million inhabitants” to try to lend credibility to the case? Ridicule does not kill, but it can lead to bad public policy.
We saw the same reflex at work when all the studies on the woodland caribou concluded that it is the disturbance of the territory by the forestry industry that is causing the decline of this vulnerable species.
Such conclusions require difficult decisions. But the Legault government has rather sown doubt. He wondered if climate change might play a role in caribou decline. He wanted to extend the studies to the reindeer of Lapland. He launched an utterly useless ‘independent commission’1.
In short, he made a diversion by ignoring the facts.
The same modus operandi manifested itself during the pandemic, when figures revealed that around 20% of classes had CO2 higher than the standard of 1000 ppm recommended by experts. The government has subtly chosen a standard of 1500 ppm in order to embellish the picture and limit the necessary interventions2.
Just this week, we saw the government react very badly to another issue in which the numbers make it look bad.
On Tuesday, the Girard budget showed that barely 1,500 new social and affordable housing units would be funded for the coming year, well below the needs.
Municipalities expressed their disappointment and rightly criticized the government’s lackluster record in this regard.
However, rather than admit his wrongdoing, Mr. Legault and the Minister responsible for Social Solidarity and Community Action, Chantal Rouleau, turned their guns on the municipalities with astounding arrogance.3.
In many respects, the CAQ is a government of action that takes matters into its own hands. But this tendency to deny certain realities prevents him from drawing lucid conclusions in several cases and therefore from acting on the basis of the best knowledge.
The reflex becomes even more detestable when the government baselessly attacks the probity and credibility of public institutions, as it has just done with school service centres. Showing leadership commands the exact opposite.
For an accountant, François Legault has a very curious relationship with figures that do not suit him.