If there is a recurring word in the sixth Girard budget, it is “demanding”.
• Read also: Girard budget: faced with a record deficit of $11 billion, difficult choices ahead in Quebec
• Read also: Here are 8 things you need to know about the Girard budget
A sort of mantra which punctuated both the text of the ministerial speech and the interminable press conference during the closed budget session. Like her colleague, the President of the Treasury Board Sonia LeBel always came back to it, in her speech as in her responses to the media, adding the other word of the day, “responsible”.
But as a fellow reporter pointed out, can a budget leading to one of the largest deficits in Quebec history – if not the largest in absolute numbers – be described as “demanding” and “responsible”?
11 billion! We have never dug a hole this deep, even during the pandemic.
- Listen to the political meeting between Antoine Robitaille and Benoît Dutrizac via QUB :
Magnana
Certainly, we are far from the crazy budgets of the Trudeau government, which could be described as “lax” and “irresponsible”. Before funding new programs outside its jurisdiction, Ottawa should adequately fund existing ones, Girard rightly said.
Besides, here in Quebec, shouldn’t a “demanding and responsible” budget include a plan for filling the famous hole? At least propose measures giving an idea of the path leading us back to the “green valleys”?
Clarification: Eric Girard has indeed identified $2.9 billion in “optimization” over 5 years, in business subsidies and in the management of state corporations. $580 million per year is not negligible, but we are very far from balance.
In fact, the minister wants to describe the deficit as “manageable”. But for now, he preferred to put off truly “demanding” work until tomorrow. The “new plan to return to budget balance” will be tabled “mañana”, in the 2025-2026 budget.
At that point, Girard predicts, interest rates will have fallen and “the economic context will be more favorable.” This is obviously a gamble.
And it is risky, because nothing is more uncertain than economic predictions. Example a) let us recall this sentence from the famous budget speech of March 10, 2020, the same day the WHO declared COVID-19 a “pandemic”: “For the 2020-2021 financial year, the government expects that the budget will be balanced will be maintained.
Example b) last year, Mr. Girard forecast economic growth of 0.6% for 2023. It turned out to be 0.2%.
Photo Agence QMI / Joël Lemay
Return to Coiteux-Leitao?
By 2025-2026, we will find fat, guarantee Ministers Girard and LeBel.
This spring, “a complete review of government and tax expenditures” will be launched, insists Mr. Girard. Return, therefore, to certain past exercises which resulted in reports most of the time tablets: that of Joseph Facal from 2003, criticism of the “Quebec model”. Or this other, by Robert Gagné and Lucienne Robillard, in 2015. Will Martin Coiteux and Carlos Leitao, the “austerity doctors” of the Couillard era, be consulted by the CAQ?
In March 2023, Eric Girard was clear: “The path to a balanced budget is mapped out, without austerity of any kind.” This year, it is more allusive. Talk about “optimization”.
Caught in a difficult post-pandemic era, with an aging demographic and State, Eric Girard and the CAQ find themselves preparing, for the end of their second mandate, a compression effort which could well weigh down their already low rating, because it would bring us back to the logic of the early Couillard years. To describe the dilemmas to come, the word “demanding” is a weak one.