We can’t help but smile when we think that the Legault government had to bring together a star team of “dealmakers”, given its penchant for business.
For the crucial negotiation of the conditions of thousands of public sector employees, the president of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, started with an offer of a 9% salary increase, to finally conclude an agreement at… 17.4% !
We practically went from singles to doubles.
For some mid-level teachers, it is even more, since the increase will reach 24%.
That doesn’t sound like the formerly rigid liberal “bag keeper” Monique Jérôme-Forget, who refused to deviate from her financial framework.
Of course, the situation is no longer the same.
Sonia LeBel could not brandish a special law like her predecessors.
In Quebec, the last resort to such a law forcing the return to work of state lawyers and notaries was invalidated by the Superior Court in 2019.
- Listen to Rémi Nadeau’s interview with Richard Martineau via QUB :
The Court of Appeal subsequently upheld this judgment.
At the end of 2022, it was the Superior Court of Ontario which declared Doug Ford’s special law null and void.
In short, the rules of the game have changed.
But what strategy?
However, we can question the strategy of the Legault government.
The President of the Treasury Board then increased the basic increase offer to 10.3%, and again to 12.7% in the hope of preventing the strike at the beginning of December.
But as soon as it moved, François Legault was quick to say that there was still room for maneuver.
It was practically an invitation to the unions to hold their ground, given the government’s weakness.
The Prime Minister’s attempts to bring popular support behind him have also turned on teachers, who are insulted to see him pleading for the “good of our children.”
In a weak position
And despite the factual importance of not penalizing young people, a government which changes its mind out of opportunism on the third link or which subsidizes two Los Angeles Kings games in Quebec with millions cannot be right.
After such slip-ups, citizens were not going to line up behind Legault in the vox pops.
In addition to recent court decisions, it is the great unpopularity of the CAQ that will cost Quebecers dearly.
Forced to bend to the will of union members, Quebec will have to find $11 billion more in the long term, in the coffers and/or in our pockets.
Not to mention the impact of more than four weeks of strikes for 400,000 young Quebecers deprived of apprenticeships.
A whole government of negotiators…