In a little over a year, François Legault and the Coalition Avenir Québec government went from a triumphant re-election to last place among provincial premiers and second place in voting intentions in Quebec. What happened ?
To put it most simply, let’s say that the Coalition Avenir Québec had promised a lot, but it delivered little. There was a lot of communication, of “spin” as they say in political circles, but much less concrete results.
And in the end, inevitably, citizens forget the big speeches and notice the lack of results. Which explains why they are turning – or returning – to other political groups.
Nowhere is this clearer than with regard to the nationalism that the CAQ would have liked to embody, particularly on the linguistic question. The government puffed out its chest a lot with Law 96, which was presented as the most important advance for the French language since Law 101, adopted in 1977.
But if we compare the effect of Law 96 to that of Law 101, we realize that it was a regulation with superficial impacts. The government tightened all the bolts of Bill 101 by a quarter turn, but without seriously asking whether this would have a real effect.
The law is already being challenged in court, which was predictable, but above all we note that the government has made very parsimonious use of its new powers in matters of francization.
In short, the message was to adopt a law, regardless of whether it would improve the situation of French. No wonder this resulted in great dissatisfaction.
But the nationalist vote being essential for the CAQ, we continue to maintain appearances. Like this recent policy on university rights for Canadians from other provinces and foreigners which was presented as a way to hear less English in downtown Montreal.
Even today, the government pays for TV commercials to say that French is in decline in Quebec, as an admission that after five years in power, its language policies have not had the desired effect.
We see the result in the voting intentions. The CAQ and the Parti Québécois being communicating vessels, the dissatisfied PQ members of yesterday are those who are joining the party of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon today. His bet will be to transform this one-off support into support for the sovereignist option, but that is another debate.
But nationalism and the situation of French are only one example. Thus, the CAQ has promised a lot in terms of health. However, we learned this week that the government was pushing back its 2018 promise to 2026-2027, that is, patients could be treated in the emergency room in 90 minutes maximum.
We are now setting a target of 165 minutes of waiting for 2023-2024, although there is no indication that it can be achieved. Obviously, there are all sorts of extenuating circumstances ranging from the pandemic to labor shortages. But the fact remains that emergency room waiting times are not decreasing, contrary to what was promised.
The government therefore changed strategy and proposed a vast administrative reform of the entire health sector – a law which was adopted under a gag order even before all its articles had been studied in parliamentary committee.
But are there many people who believe that administrative reform, however well intentioned, will solve the problems? Especially when the result is to create a gigantic agency, Santé Québec, which will become, from day one, the largest employer in Canada.
It will be all the more difficult to convince voters who have played in this film too often to believe that administrative reforms will produce concrete results at the local level.
But what is most difficult for the CAQ government is that its Prime Minister, and the one who has always been its main asset, seems to have lost his magic touch.
From his procrastination and reversals on the third link to excessive rigidity in his positions regarding negotiations with government employees, especially in the context of inconsiderate salary increases for MPs, the least we can say is that François Legault had a very difficult fall.
We have rarely seen a government not have the support of even a quarter of Quebecers during a negotiation with the public sector. This is the clearest sign of the disconnect between government and citizens.
Which means that if the government remains so rigid in the negotiations and does not obtain an agreement before the end of the year, it could find that the last three years of its mandate will be much more difficult than the one that is ending.