The second term was always going to be very difficult.
François Legault knew it. He even warned us at the start of the year, mentioning having to “draw on his reserve of courage”. His government should drop the polls and press reviews, focus on its main priorities, electrify Quebec, reform health, education, ensure the sustainability of French.
They haven’t really changed since he came to power. The challenge – and the session demonstrated this – is to get there, without allowing ourselves to be distracted by the political crises that animate everyday life.
If the first six months of the year have been so stormy, it is simplistic to conclude that a bad parliamentary session for a messy government, as the Opposition likes to repeat.
On the merits, François Legault made responsible decisions. The backlash comes from the fact that he had to repudiate the ill-crafted promises and shock phrases of his first term to get there.
Necessary setbacks
Indeed, the list of setbacks is impressive.
The third link, 4-year-old kindergartens on ice, the predicted increase in immigration, the new structural reform in education, the abandonment of a family doctor for all, and so on.
Now, as impressive as they are, these policy shifts reflect the wisdom of a government learning to manage the mammoths of the state.
The third link has always been a partisan fad to buy votes in the Quebec region. Were it not for the magnitude of the broken promise, the decision would have been widely applauded.
4-year-old kindergartens are a wonderful project for early childhood. But wall-to-wall was never going to be possible in the context of a labor shortage and a network of childcare centers that is the envy of Canada.
The transition between higher immigration thresholds and language protection proposed by Minister Christine Fréchette will be difficult to navigate, but it is necessary. Wrap yourself in the louisianization du Québec paid off with the French-speaking electorate, but dangerously ignored the issue of Quebec’s weight within Canada and the labor shortage. In its quest for prosperity, the government no longer has the luxury of ignoring these realities.
And what about education? Admittedly, the boiling minister Bernard Drainville has the art of putting his feet in the dishes. But we must recognize the courage to attack the immobility of a system that is bogged down. And that means correcting the excesses of the abolition of school boards by his predecessor.
Regret
If François Legault must have one regret, it is that of having sometimes given in to the easy way with simplistic promises.
He was never a man of details, and that plays tricks on him.
But basically, his government clearly has a precise, ambitious roadmap for Quebec.
We are not in the reengineering of the state proposed by Jean Charest, but the projects on efficiency, data and accountability reveal the project to modernize the bureaucracy.
We could call it the dubeization of the State, in honor of its Minister of Health, Christian Dubé.
The dream has always been there for the founder of the CAQ. That’s what the Courage Pool is for.