It is an almost idyllic portrait of the Quebec economy that the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, painted on Thursday. Growth and state revenues are higher than expected, which minimizes the risk of another austerity cure, the wealth gap with Ontario is narrowing and the return to balanced budgets is on the rise. ‘horizon.
Of course, some sectors are slow to recover from the pandemic, the labor shortage and the rise in the cost of living remain worrying despite the measures announced, but the future looks bright and the “real” budget that Mr. Girard will present next spring will undoubtedly demonstrate this more concretely to taxpayers.
He said, without laughing, that he never thought about the October 2022 election in the past twelve months, but it would be surprising if he didn’t think about it in the next four. Otherwise, others will do it for him.
In Quebec, the rate of business closures due to the health crisis was lower than anywhere else in Canada. The new assistance programs created by the Ministère de l’Économie et Investissement Québec have undoubtedly contributed to this success.
Everyone recognizes the competence and dynamism of Pierre Fitzgibbon. It’s his cowboy side that remains annoying. Since entering politics, he continues to believe that the rules are made for others and to regard those who criticize him for his behavior as people who get stuck in the flowers of the carpet or who do not understand anything about it. economy.
His refusal to comply with the code of ethics of elected officials to the National Assembly, despite the repeated blame of the Ethics Commissioner, has already earned him a temporary exclusion from the Council of Ministers, but it is clear that he intends to continue to play politics as if he were still in business.
This time it was the Auditor General who slapped him on the fingers. In the report that she presented this week, Guylaine Leclerc criticizes her for having ignored the eligibility criteria provided for in the business assistance programs during the pandemic and for having used her discretion to favor some of them that do not. did not answer.
In one of these programs, 10 of the 22 projects it looked at received a loan or loan guarantee even if the criteria were not met. Mme Leclerc is not saying these projects weren’t good, but it did cause other companies to give up asking for help precisely because they weren’t responding.
In another program, the analysis of the files was based on different criteria from one RCM to another and the amounts granted, also subject to different conditions, were not always justified. So that a project refused in one MRC could very well have been accepted in another.
No more than for his breaches of the code of ethics, Mr. Fitzgibbon is not suspected of having derived any personal advantage from the choices he made, but there is certainly a problem of transparency and fairness.
In the National Assembly, the minister looked down on the deputy for Mercier, Ruba Ghazal, who wanted to know which companies he had favored. “Obviously, she does not understand how the system works,” he said, calling the outraged reactions on the opposition benches a “recreation” before inviting Mr.me Ghazal to “do his homework”.
However, she only echoed the observations made by the Auditor General, who certainly cannot be criticized for not understanding how public administration works.
This arrogance is fully assumed. In an interview with Journal of Montreal Last September, Mr. Fitzgibbon said: “Having people ask me 45-second questions who don’t know what they’re talking about, that bothers me. “
In October 2018, Prime Minister Legault asked those he had invited to be part of his cabinet to show humility. Obviously, Mr. Fitzgibbon didn’t get the message.
From the start, Mr. Legault has shown the greatest patience with him. While he appreciates his services the most, he must also remember that when he started out in politics he himself saw Question Period as a waste of time.
He understood, however, that he would never reach the top if he refused to comply with the demands of parliamentary democracy. Mr. Fitzgibbon does not have the same ambitions and he is obviously to his liking in his cowboy outfit.