I am one of the immigrants who were seduced by what is called the “Quebec model”. Here, the state is an important player in economic life, but also in the development of social policies that are at the center of a certain sharing of wealth.
The welfare state is therefore much more generous in Quebec than in the rest of North America. The number of social programs serving families, workers, students and vulnerable people is clear proof of this. Examples include social assistance, subsidized daycare programs, parental leave that can be shared between both parents, low-cost college tuition, free dental services for children under 10, and recipients of a financial aid, etc. For anyone who wants to visualize this solidarity project differently, Quebec’s tax rates in these times of income tax returns are obvious indicators.
So, although the lack of relevance and delicacy of the Prime Minister’s tweet which unleashed passions this week is undeniable, François Legault is right to affirm that Quebec society is traditionally one of the most united on a continental scale.
We cannot boast of being champions of voluntary giving, but the state forces us to share and manages redistribution in what looks like a fiscalization of Christian charity. However, you don’t have to be born here to know that this particularity of Quebec owes much more than just its very Catholic past. In fact, to share wealth, it must first be created. Now, for the Catholic Church, money was the abode of the devil. To gain his heaven, it was therefore better to hand it over to those who knew how to tame Lucifer and had safe deposit boxes in Rome that could withstand him. In order not to stray from my subject, I will return to modern Quebec and leave it to women, sexual minorities and the many victims of the clergy who have known the great darkness the precedence to decide whether the Catholic religion was a high place of solidarity. for everyone.
Of all the sharing initiatives, it was the equal opportunity education that grew out of the Quiet Revolution that fascinated me the most when I arrived here. It is she who took Quebec out of the lowlands where it had been for too long. My late friend Serge Bouchard said to me one day: “Boucar, you say that your brothers and sisters went to university while your two parents are illiterate. But do you know that your story is no different from mine and that of many people of my generation? We are many scholars to come from parents who had not passed the primary or secondary cycle. It was his way of recalling how the project of access to education and university training for all has been a powerful lever that has enabled Quebec to catch up economically and culturally with the rest of the Western world.
Before the Quiet Revolution, Serge said, French-speaking Quebecers were among the least educated and poorest cultural groups in North America. But from this democratization of access to knowledge will be born a powerful creative energy that will quickly make Quebec a center of innovation, research and economic and cultural development.
It was the birth of Québec inc., but also of an important cooperative sector still firmly rooted in the Québec model.
Unfortunately, time has passed and the model is starting to crack. In question, the basket of services is more and more greedy, the population is aging and taxpayers are being taken by the throat. To these pitfalls must be added the many social rifts that shake Western societies. These tensions do not spare Quebec. However, building and maintaining a sharing system like ours requires a certain social cohesion. This feeling of unity is essential to the support of the majority for our project of social justice and sharing. In my humble opinion, we are not very far from the day when a charismatic right-wing politician will successfully propose to kick in this model which, without being perfect, has always been the charm of Quebec, guaranteed its social peace and contributed to the sweetness of life here.
If this era of “every man for himself” is making its way into people’s minds, it is also because taxpayers have the impression of giving abundantly without receiving.
How do you convince a taxpayer that everything is fine when our roads are so messy and bumpy? How do you want to convince him that everything is fine when our schools are struggling so much? How do you convince the other to always pay more tax when he has to spend more than 6 p.m. and even sleep sitting in the emergency room with his child before seeing a doctor? The model cracks and it will take a lot of energy to prevent it from becoming Americanized. This is why I hope that Christian Dubé and Bernard Drainville will have the courage of their political commitment. Otherwise, we will have to go back to François Legault’s tweet and call on the priests to teach us about solidarity again.