As each federal election approaches, Prime Minister Legault has a habit of showing his teeth. However, his demands have shrunk from one time to the next. Each rebuff he receives from Ottawa seems to have the effect of making him revise his demands downward.
Canada being what it is, there are generally two parallel campaigns. The priorities of voters, and consequently of political parties, can differ significantly depending on whether you are in Quebec or in the rest of Canada.
As for Quebec, Mr. Legault decreed that the “ballot box question” will this time focus on immigration, more precisely on reducing the number of temporary immigrants by half.
No one denies that Quebec hosts an unfair proportion of them. This is particularly true in the case of asylum seekers, with provinces led by “conservative nonos” (according to the federal Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller) refusing to provide their share of efforts.
A better distribution would certainly constitute progress, but the modesty of Mr. Legault’s request compared to his previous claims remains no less remarkable. During the 2019 election, he demanded full powers over immigration, in accordance with the “New Project for Quebec Nationalists” that the CAQ presented in 2015.
The government of Quebec should not only be the only one to determine the number of new arrivals to Quebec, all categories combined, but also to determine the conditions for granting permanent residence.
Having discovered that moderation tasted much better in Ottawa, the letter he sent to the leaders of the federal parties during the 2021 campaign only mentioned the transfer to Quebec of “the management of the category of immigrants resulting from the family reunification”.
It was only as the 2022 general election in Quebec approached that the Prime Minister discovered that Quebec was sliding dangerously down the slope of “Louisianization” and began to show its teeth again.
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The multiplication of worrying news about the Northvolt project, the realization of which had never seemed to raise the slightest doubt in his mind, now makes Mr. Legault say that, “in the battery sector, what counts is the batting average.”
In baseball, hitting a single that gets to first base or sending the ball into the stands has the same value in calculating this average, but more important is producing runs. One could argue that Northvolt’s failure would amount to losing the game after being removed leaving three riders on the trails.
If batting average is what matters in economics, it should also be the case in politics. Mr. Legault once again claims to use the federal election to make gains, but his success rate in his previous attempts allows for some skepticism.
In 2019, the shopping list he sent to the leaders of the federal parties was relatively short. In addition to full immigration powers, he demanded that Quebec taxpayers be able to complete a single income tax return administered by Quebec. He also asked them to commit to subjecting federally regulated businesses to the provisions of Bill 101 and not to participate in the challenge of the Secularism Act in court.
If Mr. Legault had considerably reduced his immigration requests during the 2021 election, he had made many others. His main priority was then to increase the Canada Health Transfer (CHT) to ensure that the federal contribution to financing health services increased from 25% to 35% of their costs. For Quebec, this would have meant 6 billion more per year.
In addition to the demands relating to Bill 21 and the single income tax declaration, there were several requests aimed at ensuring respect for Quebec’s areas of jurisdiction, whether it be infrastructure, housing or the environment and control. against climate change. The sums that the federal government intended to invest there had to be transferred en bloc to Quebec.
In total, if we except the application of Bill 101 to federally regulated companies, which the Trudeau government finally authorized, Mr. Legault drew a blank on practically the entire line.
If he maintained such a low batting average for five years in the face of a minority government, when he himself had obtained the “strong mandate” he demanded, how can we believe that this average will increase in the face of a government majority within which Quebec risks having only a handful of representatives?