The author is a former conservative strategist. He was a political adviser in the Harper government as well as in the opposition.
The new parliamentary session will begin on Tuesday. And it’s not too early. There are problems to be resolved and questions to be debated in Quebec. Instead of tackling it, the government and opposition parties have put on a sad show since the election.
During the 1993 federal election, Prime Minister Kim Campbell said serious things weren’t discussed during elections. With a little hindsight, what do we remember from the electoral exercise in Quebec? Not much.
The Legault government was re-elected with an overwhelming majority, but there was no debate of ideas, or very little. François Legault was acclaimed for the confidence he was able to inspire in a certain segment of the electorate during the pandemic. He asked for a warrant to “continue”, but to continue what exactly, I’m not sure.
Apart from a check to fight against inflation, which is both electoral and inflationary, his party had no flagship economic measure. The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) has pulled off the feat, for the second time, of being elected without having an environmental plan, except for potential hydroelectric dams, if Sophie Brochu, the CEO of Hydro-Québec, the allow.
We have heard a lot (too much) about the third link in Quebec, without having a better idea of the project. It is quite a political prodigy on the part of the CAQ to have succeeded in selling this white elephant for a second election campaign in a row.
No one in Quebec can ignore the labor shortage. It is felt everywhere. Exporting manufacturers in Quebec put forward the figure of seven billion dollars in lost revenue due to the lack of workers, but this does not cause much reaction. With this sum, we could build a new CHUM per year, or even two.
We talked about immigration during the campaign, but not on the right footing. The Legault government has not paid the political cost of its unacceptable statements. Or so little, because the CAQ has failed to make inroads on the island of Montreal. With 90 deputies, it’s a blessing in disguise: the management of the caucus is already difficult, with almost all of the elected members who are parliamentary assistants.
Private healthcare was mentioned during the election, but without too much conviction or concrete measures. Emergencies are overflowing again and again, and Minister Christian Dubé’s crisis unit is struggling to show results. The government is responding to questions from the media, but we see very little of the opposition parties doing their job.
Quebeckers re-elected a government, but they also voted for an opposition, and that is exactly where the problem lies. Where are the three opposition parties since October 3? It’s not as if the subjects were lacking to hold the government to account and to act.
An election campaign is exhausting. But it is clear that Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois has been absent since the election. QS is the second opposition with 11 MPs, or the first opposition depending on the number of votes, but it remains under the radar. The party has a responsibility to form a strong and credible opposition, and it is high time that its deputies got to work. From a strategic point of view, QS should have taken advantage of the saga of Dominique Anglade’s departure to stand out, but it did not.
The Parti Québécois (PQ) and Québec solidaire (QS) shone the spotlight on the oath to the king, as if it were the solution to all our problems. I doubt that the granting of child care places depends on our allegiance to the British crown. During these hours wasted consulting constitutional experts, the PQ did not ask the ministers how many child care spaces were created or how many building permits were granted.
The Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) was torn internally and played petty partisanship over the negotiation of budgets and the number of questions. Interim chief Marc Tanguay failed to bring Marie-Claude Nichols back and learned that it is better to have all the facts before deciding on a possible fundraising scandal. We can expect the Liberals to be distracted by their leadership race. For the next few months, their gaze will be focused on their navels rather than on Quebecers, while the government “will continue”.
Very little discussed during the campaign, the environment could have been brought back to the fore with the COP27 meeting in Egypt, which the Quebec government attended. Have the opposition parties called him to account? So little, and ministers Pierre Fitzgibbon and Benoit Charette were therefore not too worried, including by the media.
There is no shortage of subjects on the federal-provincial front. The meeting of health ministers on increasing the federal share of funding ended without results. And without too many reactions from the opposition parties. I am not a sovereigntist, but I would have seen there the opportunity for the PQ to rekindle the flame in the face of the contempt shown by the Trudeau government, which showed up at a meeting on financing without a quantified proposal. The Bloc did the work for him.
A brief visit to the websites of opposition parties shows that the PQ has issued eight communications, including three letters to the leaders of other parties on the oath to the king. QS did a little better, with eleven communications since the election, including one on the situation in Iran, one on the shortage of medicines for children, one on emergencies, two on COP27, one on the oath to the king and one another on racial profiling. I exempt the PLQ from the exercise because of a change of leader.
Éric Duhaime also failed to use the voting system to demonstrate that democracy was losing out by not having a Conservative voice in Parliament. He wasted time complaining about venues for holding press briefings rather than addressing content silenced by other parties. Sympathy towards him has disappeared, like his access card to parliament.
It was high time for the National Assembly to sit again and for the opposition parties to focus their attention on Quebecers. My advice to MPs: don’t go on vacation for six weeks; your work starts again on January 4, as for all Quebecers, and not when parliamentary work resumes at the end of January.