(Quebec) François Legault has already painted a very favorable portrait of the finances of an independent Quebec: he estimated the gains that a sovereign state would then reap at 17 billion over five years.
PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon must present on Monday an overview of the finances of a future state of Quebec.
Mr. Legault had already carried out the same exercise, with different conclusions than those he draws today. In May 2005, then a PQ MP, accountant and former businessman, he had updated all the studies on debt sharing, overlaps and duplication, income and expenses, etc.
However, it was a undermined exercise for the Parti Québécois (PQ), since the first “year 1 budget” presented by Jacques Parizeau in 1973 and discredited by his federalist adversaries, had undoubtedly contributed to the failure of the party in the elections. general elections of that year.
But François Legault, resolutely sovereignist at the time, believed in it. This was well before he abandoned the PQ in 2009 and founded the CAQ in 2011. Today he brandishes the threat of job losses in the event of independence and repeats that Quebecers “don’t want a referendum”.
The “old fears”
The document that Mr. Legault signed in 2005 “dispels old fears about the economic precariousness of a sovereign Quebec and calls into question the arguments about the so-called profitability of federalism,” he wrote in the preface.
“It is not only relevant today, the sovereignty project, but it has become urgent,” he even declared, in a television segment that the Parti Québécois (PQ) took over to promote its announcement next Monday.
He then estimated that the financial effect of the revenues recovered from the federal government and the new expenses assumed would amount in total to a surplus of 17 billion for a sovereign Quebec over 5 years, between 2005 and 2010, supporting figures, “a times the full effect of the savings generated by the elimination of overlapping costs.
In return, he estimated that a Quebec which would remain a province was heading towards an accumulated deficit of 3.3 billion over five years, due to the more rapid increase in expenses compared to its income and the “fiscal imbalance” with the federal.
By cross-referencing these data, Mr. Legault therefore concluded that sovereign Quebec would ultimately have “room for maneuver” of 13.8 billion after five years, by assuming the same programs and services as the federal government, it is specified. .