The leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), François Legault, did not want to be caught again. He made 33 promises during the 2022 election campaign, compared to 251 four years earlier, including the flagship promise to “deploy[yer] a universal network of kindergartens accessible to all 4-year-olds”.
“To the future Prime Minister, for which of your electoral promises are you ready to make the commitment to resign from your post if you do not respect it? asked journalist Patrice Roy during the Great Leaders’ Debate 2018 — after putting on his glasses and scanning the “very good question” of voter Jacques Audette, who had managed to find his way into the Maison de Radio-Canada.
“I’m glad you asked the question because, for me, I would only do politics for 4-year-old kindergarten, because we need to act early for children who have learning difficulties, attention span, dysphasia, dyslexia, autism,” replied Mr. Legault when his turn to speak came. “So we are going to screen before the age of 4, then we are going to start providing services in kindergarten for 4 years. None of the other parties can guarantee that all 4-year-olds are going to have services. The CAQ will do it, ”he continued while pointing to his political opponents around him.
“Would you put your seat on the line?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed.
Prime Minister François Legault admitted this week that the Quebec state would not be able to create all the kindergarten classes it wanted by the end of the year, as he promised hand on heart in 2018, and this , mainly due to the shortage of premises and staff in the education network. “At the impossible, no one is required,” he said, citing the advice of his wife, Isabelle Brais.
The professor of political science at Laval University Thierry Giasson saw by screen interposed a “contriated” politician. “I haven’t often heard politicians use this expression, ‘At the impossible, no one is obliged,'” he remarked in an exchange with The duty. “Mr. Legault hit before he was hit. […] He was able to frame the reality, the context, provide explanations and determine the next steps. There, the framework that is presented is: the context does not allow us to deliver the promise, ”explains the political communication specialist. “From a communication point of view, it’s a fairly impeccable strategy,” he adds, going so far as to describe the members of Mr. Legault’s communications team as “masters of framing”.
Certain members of the CAQ consulted by The duty however, fear hearing about it for years from opposition parties.
“Obstacles to executive power can […] be the object of a form of instrumentalisation, making it possible to “avoid blame” while justifying the abandonment of the promise”, write the European researchers Isabelle Guinaudeau and Simon Persico in a scientific article, while emphasizing that the electoral promises “raise hopes that are equal to the disappointments that sanction [celles] not kept”.
François Legault has written a new page — “not to keep a promise, to offer explanations” — in the “big book” on the exercise of power by a “new type” prime minister, which he can insert after the one beginning by “making a mistake, apologizing,” says his former political adviser Pascal Mailhot with a smile.
But was the CAQ promising the impossible in full knowledge of the facts when it said it could offer kindergarten for 4-year-olds everywhere in Quebec within five years? No, he replies. “We believed in it”, assures the editor of the CAQ electoral platform (2018) then director of strategic planning at the Prime Minister’s Office (2018-2022). “With the limited means of a second opposition”, he specifies.
Unnecessarily Detailed Promise
It is “perilous” for an opposition political party to put forward “such complex commitments”, indicates Mr. Mailhot, who now holds the position of vice-president at the Tact agency.
François Legault’s team took full measure of the challenges posed by the lack of space and staff in schools only after taking over from the State. Civil servants sensitized the government to the space issue, then to the staffing issue… and COVID-19 hit. And the CAQ found itself trapped.
Curiously, the CAQ seems to have offered more than what voters asked for by committing to develop more than 2,500 kindergarten classes for 4-year-olds throughout Quebec.
The resistance was strong. The outcry from other political parties, starting with the Parti Québécois, which feared the dismantling of the network of early childhood centers (CPE) in favor of 4-year-old kindergartens, did not help.
For Québec solidaire co-spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the 4-year-old kindergarten project is neither more nor less than an “obsession of the Prime Minister”. “A badly put together, unrealistic project whose failure was foreseeable,” he tweeted, stinging the close guard of the head of government.
“To oppose 4-year-old kindergarten for children in Quebec, as the opposition does, is shameful. Especially for so-called progressives. Rejoicing in the difficulties encountered in their establishment is even worse, ”replied special adviser Stéphane Gobeil behind his white tiger avatar.
That said, parents disappointed with the slowness of the construction site for 4-year-old kindergartens will be able to console themselves by thinking of the “few intellectuals”, according to Mr. Legault, shocked by the outright abandonment of the CAQ’s promise to dust off the mode of ballot.
Can the population still believe the promises of politicians? “Yes, because politicians deliver on their promises. All the studies show it, ”replies tit for tat Professor Thierry Giasson. Moreover, the CAQ government had fulfilled 80% of its 251 promises in whole or in part, according to the Polimètre Legault, which had been developed by the Center for the Analysis of Public Policies at Laval University in order to follow the situation. evolution of the electoral promises made by the CAQ. “Political speech means something. If you don’t deliver on your promises, you can’t be re-elected. So there is an obsession with delivery,” adds Mr. Giasson.
Talk to Pascal Mailhot.