Finance Minister Eric Girard presents his budget today. It would be, according to what Prime Minister François Legault has already announced, “largely in deficit”.
However, the deficit will be far from being what will worry Quebecers the most. And this, even if the government, through its tax cuts and its millions of checks sent to citizens, will itself have deprived the public treasury of several billion dollars.
Taxpayers’ eyes will first look for the essential. To know whether or not the budget will respond to the crying need to improve public services in very poor condition. Will he also do anything to alleviate a housing crisis which is increasing human tragedies?
Like Saint-Thomas, they will no longer be satisfied with fine words. According to polls, the primary cause of the electorate’s disenchantment with the CAQ is the pitiful state of public health and education networks.
Hence, without coincidence, the title of Minister Girard’s budget: “Priority Health Education”.
In this budget, Quebecers will want to know whether or not they will finally have access to quality health care, social services worthy of the name and public schools whose ceilings do not fall.
The key to 2026
The key to the re-election or defeat of the CAQ in 2026 is there. Point. However, Radio-Canada reported worrying news on Monday. There would be “hundreds of millions of dollars to be cut from the Quebec health network”.
Hospitals and CHSLDs should also “redouble their efforts to achieve a balanced budget, in particular by cutting the staff of private agencies”.
If this were to prove true – for the moment, let’s keep the “if” – the public health network would take even more for its cold.
At the very moment when the “gray tsunami” predicted for ages in Quebec begins to knock on our doors, it would indeed be the final catastrophe.
The surge in care, surgeries and social services offered at high prices in private clinics and offices where “patient-clients” pay out of pocket is already a shocking indicator.
Two-speed network
This obvious emergence of a two-tier health and social services network is also significantly more widespread in Quebec than in English Canada.
Result: for a minority of Quebecers who have the means, private-private becomes the quick route to obtaining an increasingly wider range of care and services.
The majority are languishing on public waiting lists. I have been saying this for years: pretending that the private sector relieves public congestion is one of the worst illusions there is.
If it were necessary to also impose new budgetary cuts or “optimizations” on the public network…
It is true that a good public health system – like the one we already had in Quebec – is not only a question of money, but also of organization.
However, the accelerated aging of the Quebec population necessarily requires additional financial resources. Cutting into the bone would be the last thing to do. To be continued…