François Legault must feel a bit like Al Pacino in The Godfather III.
“Just when I thought I was out of it, they brought me back. ”
But unlike the famous fictional character, the Prime Minister is fighting an enemy without a country or a face, which he cannot defeat on his own.
In November, Mr. Legault said, fingers crossed, that the worst of the pandemic seemed to be behind us. In fact, she was coming back from behind, picking up speed to hit him like a boomerang behind the head.
The last year of his mandate will consist, like the previous two, in managing the crisis.
The fifth wave – if it is still relevant to give it a number – will eclipse the parliamentary re-entry this winter.
Two dates should be circled in the calendar in January.
On January 13, Marguerite Blais is scheduled to appear at the inquest hearings of the Coroner’s Office. On sick leave for exhaustion, she had not been able to give her version there in the fall. This mandate risks being his last. She will want to defend her political heritage. And since she has nothing to lose, her passage could give her colleagues a cold sweat.
Later in January, the Commissioner for Health and Welfare, Joanne Castonguay, will table her awaited report on the “performance of the health system” with regard to seniors during the pandemic. Its preliminary report, tabled in September, deemed the network “disorganized” and denounced the lack of vision and reliable data. The rest should not be more positive …
The opposition will take the opportunity to call again for a public inquiry into the management of the pandemic. But the Caquista government will argue that this report, like the one already tabled by the Ombudsperson, is full of recommendations. Now is the time for action, argued Mr. Legault.
The fact remains that as long as the hearings of the coroner will hear contradictory testimony, as was the case in the fall, Mr. Legault will be under pressure to shed light on a public commission of inquiry.
Caquistes will not be the only ones to have a difficult winter.
The pandemic still threatens to eclipse the Liberals, the PQ and the Solidarity, who will fight for the crumbs of collective attention.
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Once again, Christian Dubé, Minister of Health, will be in the spotlight. In addition to fighting the pandemic, he will try to pass two bills tabled in the fall – the first on patient data, the second on data related to the practice of general practitioners and the centralization of the appointment platform. -you. Negotiations with general practitioners will also continue to modify their method of remuneration.
A third bill should follow in the winter to make the management of the network more flexible after the end of the state of emergency. Quebec has made a commitment to put an end to it when enough young people aged 5 to 11 have been vaccinated – the target rate has not been quantified.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, Minister of Justice, will also be under pressure. Working, he leads three strong projects on the protection of French, gender identity and family law in matters of filiation.
Also on the legislative menu: reforms of daycare centers and of the Youth Protection Department by Mathieu Lacombe and Lionel Carmant. After a difficult start to their mandate, these ministers have gained confidence and now inspire confidence.
But the Caquista government will be vulnerable on other fronts, such as elder care.
His plan to subject private CHSLDs to public standards – and therefore to “agree to” them – should be well received. But it still has to demonstrate that one of its flagship promises of 2018, the homes of the elderly, would not be ruinous given the scale of the demographic shock.
The caquistes will also be supervised in the environment. They will table their national policy on architecture and land use planning – the term “town planning” has been erased, which worries environmentalists. At the same time, proposing to build a Quebec-Lévis tunnel and curb urban sprawl, that will be difficult to sell …
Also to be expected: the battle for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets. Unlike his opponents, Mr. Legault refuses to set more demanding objectives. Certainly that would be preferable. But the main thing would be to start by showing how he will achieve his current goal. Until the opposition itself specifies how it will achieve this, its critics will lose their bite.
Very smart who can predict the content of the last budget of his mandate, usually tabled in March. It is not known what damage will be caused by Omicron. But in Quebec, they say they want to avoid pre-election sweets and austerity. To be continued, therefore.
And finally, there will be the Quebec “identity”.
Mr. Legault caused the surprise by promising to update the Status of the Artist Act. It will take courage – each side will fight to pull the blanket on its side, and it will be impossible to please everyone.
This case will however be overshadowed by the hearings of the Court of Appeal on Law 21 on secularism.
As with the pandemic, each time Mr. Legault believes he has found a solution, the subject comes back to haunt him. But here too, it is the opposition that is even more likely to pay the price. Because in matters of religious symbols, the liberals and those in solidarity know that their position is unpopular with the voters and that it divides their militants.
In fact, it is especially the liberals and those in solidarity who could quote Al Pacino with secularism. Once again, they thought they had gotten out of the debate, but the news plunges them back into it, for better or for worse.