As my grandmother said, when two elephants fight, it’s the grass that takes a nasty slap. Faced with the standoff between the CAQ government and the common front unionsdifficult to describe it better without thinking that the grass, ultimately, is the population.
The stakes are indeed elephantine. The Legault government is playing up its ability to improve or not improve public services in tatters. The patience of Quebecers being exhausted, he even stakes his political survival in the long term.
At the union centers, their members are exhausted. Particularly in public schools, health and social services. If more and more of them are switching to the private sector with its golden conditions and flexible schedules, this is not surprising.
These employees know well that if nothing major is done, public services in Quebec will enter a phase of agony.
This phase is already underway with the meteoric rise of private services and care paid directly at high prices by Quebecers sick of waiting on public waiting lists.
If this trend continues, for current and future generations, it does not bode well. Few people say it openly, but everyone knows it.
At least, all those who suffer the collateral damage for themselves or their family.
Radical recovery
Well beyond the salary question, we therefore know that a radical improvement in working conditions is necessary. And above all, the terribly disorganized organization of our health and education meganetworks.
To find public services that are more functional than private paying services, whose tentacles feed precisely on the dysfunctions of the public, these are two sine qua non conditions. Point.
Skepticism, however, is inevitable. Until proven otherwise, the health reform proposed by the government risks accentuating its hypercentralization instead of getting closer to users and caregivers.
Since it will perpetuate social and economic inequalities in a three-speed network, education reform also misses the essential point.
The real heart of the problem is there. Strikes, not strikes, what Quebecers want is simple. They want to have quality and accessible public services again. Point. That’s why they pay taxes.
No need to call McKinsey to confirm it. It’s the biggest open secret in the province. The CAQ has three years left to do so.
In politics, three years is a long time, but it is short at the same time. Especially when the pandemic can no longer serve as an alibi and public services are failing everywhere. In this, one thing becomes more and more obvious to me.
Three years to do it
Even if torrents of water will flow under the bridges between now and the 2026 elections, it is unlikely that they will come down to the nationalism of the CAQ. Which, in addition to François Legault himself, was his trump card.
For what? The degradation of public services is made such that it eclipses everything else. The polls say this clearly. Also because the PQ, on the rise, will be able to play its own nationalist card in any case.
It is true that in 2011, just like Mario Dumont’s ADQ in the past, the CAQ was born under the generous star of the national question. Like the ADQ before it, the CAQ has counted on the mythical “third way” which is neither sovereignist nor federalist.
However, in 2026, because it will have formed the government for two mandates and the pandemic will be far behind it, for the first time, the CAQ will stake its future on its management of the State and its public services.
Unlike the ADQ which never governed and merged into the CAQ in desperation, the Legault government, like any party in power, will one day end up being judged on the quality of its governance.
If the CAQ succeeds in concretely strengthening public services, voters will be grateful. But if it fails, they will look elsewhere.