Despite the ideological simplicity that some still attribute to him, François Legault has proved to be much more complex since coming to power, sometimes even confusing.
Before the 2018 election, the case was heard. A Legault government would bring Quebec back to the dark hours of Jean Charest’s “reengineering” and Philippe Couillard’s austerity. It would be the end of the “Quebec model” inherited from the Quiet Revolution.
The president of the CSQ, Louise Chabot, denounced “the thinly veiled intentions of the Caquist dismantling of the state”. His colleague from the CSN, Jacques Létourneau, predicted the privatization of public services. “We’re all going to get caught one by one: CPEs, psychologists, CEGEP teachers…” It is true that unions sometimes tend to confuse the defense of the “Quebec model” with that of their interests.
The first Girard budget had surprised by its democratic appearance, but we thought that the generous surpluses left by the Liberals would have made any squeeze indecent. Tuesday’s opening speech shows that dismantling is still not on the agenda. Rather, he announced even more state. Perhaps more effective, like the left to which Mr. Legault claims to be, but certainly not diminished.
The pandemic has certainly demonstrated the shortcomings of the health network, but above all that the State was irreplaceable, even if the private sector can serve as a back-up. By wanting to free itself from agencies, the government is rather offering less private.
Reality quickly emerges when running a government. Mr. Legault no longer speaks of these thousands of civil servants whom he promised to eliminate by attrition by evoking various comparative studies which concluded to their uselessness. Today, he rather wants to send them to the regions.
By dint of hearing him lament the heavy tax burden, we forgot that when he was Minister of Health in the Landry government, he wanted to increase taxes to better fund the network. It had been explained to him that it was a very bad idea on the eve of an election.
Today he prefers that Ottawa increase its contribution, but it is still public funds. The pilot privatization projects that many wanted the CAQ to do were quickly dismissed. Rather, we want to contract private CHSLDs, and we should not imagine that the “big shift towards home care” will not add to the bill.
Likewise, the prejudice in favor of non-subsidized private daycare that the CAQ openly displayed when it was in opposition has completely disappeared. We are very far from the “childcare vouchers” offered in the past by the ADQ that Mr. Legault had thought of resuscitating for a while.
What Mr. Legault is trying to change is not so much the “Quebec model” itself as its instructions for use. This can obviously disturb those who had arranged it to their liking.
It goes without saying that the full participation of physicians is essential to the proper functioning of the health network. General practitioners had convinced Philippe Couillard that the strong method recommended by Gaétan Barrette was not the best to get them to take on more patients, but we come to think that the compulsory overtime should not have been reserved for only nurses.
It is true that the development of the “Quebec model” went hand in hand with greater unionization than elsewhere, but that did not mean that the salary increases had to be necessarily the same for everyone, even less than the jobs mainly occupied. by women were to be undervalued.
It seems that the CAQ finds its account in the new approach. While she had always struggled to win over the female electorate, the latest Léger poll credited her with higher voting intentions among women than men.
While Mr. Legault’s application to cultivating Quebec “pride” is not free from electoral ulterior motives, the “national cohesion” he referred to in the inaugural speech was an essential condition for the creation of the “Quebec model” and is still necessary to maintain it.
There is indeed a price to pay. Contrary to what Albertans have been told, it was not their oil that financed the services they blame for luxury in Quebec, but the higher share of their income that Quebec taxpayers have agreed to invest in it. The state is obviously not the only component of the model, but it is the essential element.