The five largest parties running in the October 3 election all agree that we have to tackle labor shortages, tackle inflation and that there are far too many paperwork to manage when doing business with the government.
This great unanimity, however, stops at the observation of the problems and does not apply to their potential solutions, if we rely on the five candidates with an economic profile invited to discuss them by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). .
The debate, which was held virtually on Tuesday, gave all the parties the opportunity to present their ideas on the economy and, for four of them, to attack the outgoing CAQ government. , whose record was defended by the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon.
To speak of a debate would be a very big word, since there were no direct exchanges, each representative sharing his party’s program and his criticisms, by addressing in turn subjects suggested by the CFIB. .
“No magic recipe”
“There is no magic recipe for solving the labor shortage,” said Mr. Fitzgibbon, who cited government initiatives and CAQ proposals to improve productivity, keep or bring back older workers and to encourage the integration into the labor market of many groups of citizens.
Conservative candidate Olivier Dumais criticized the CAQ government for having aggravated the labor shortage.
“The current government has created a lot of jobs at the public level,” he said, saying that the private sector could hardly compete with the benefits of the public, which is the opposite argument to that heard in the sector. public when it comes to attracting employees. He also argued that because of the CERB (Canadian Emergency Response Benefit), many workers had lost the desire to work or now preferred to work undeclared.
Liberal Marc Tanguay, he first criticized Premier François Legault for not recognizing the problem, he who has already described the labor shortage as “”mosus” of good news” for workers in the Quebec. “In politics, you can’t find meaningful solutions if you don’t name the problem. The shortage of labor is a crisis, it is not a “mosus” of good business. »
He, too, cited productivity increases and tax solutions for older workers. Commitments of this sort seem to be very popular with all parties.
Inflation and tax cuts
When the candidates were called upon to comment on inflation, it was the Parti Québécois Michaël Potvin who stood out by reproaching everyone for their outbidding of tax cuts and duties.
“Proposing tax cuts will impoverish the public system and it will impoverish business services,” he argued to the audience of business people. The PQ still proposes a “tax exemption” for people aged 60 and over and, like the CAQ, intends to deliver checks to support the purchasing power of people earning less than $100,000 and to raise the minimum wage. at $18 an hour, a proposition that will not gain much support among the small and medium-sized businesses that CFIB represents.
Obviously, we know that both the Liberals and the Conservatives and the CAQ are proposing to lower taxes, assorted reductions according to the formations of tariff freezes, reduction or elimination of various taxes, Olivier Dumais going so far as to criticize the government of having “enriched themselves on the backs of corporations”.
Haroun Bouazzi, the solidarity candidate, went substantially in the same direction as his PQ counterpart. “It’s always surprising to see proposals for tax cuts, which are therefore permanent, for a problem that is cyclical. »
But Québec solidaire also suggests relief on this side with its “QST holiday on all essential purchases and repairs”, a measure that would be in place until inflation falls to 3%. The party also wants to tackle the inflation in the cost of housing, by creating a rent register which would be there to curb abusive rent increases.
Yes, there is too much paperwork
For the paperwork, one would have thought that the five candidates were in a contest as to who would cut the most, with Liberal Marc Tanguay seeking to position himself at the top.
“Our ambition at the Quebec Liberal Party is to win the 2023 Gold Papercut Award”, a distinction awarded annually by the CFIB and which was won, in 2022, by Alberta and Nova Scotia. . Marc Tanguay, however, had no choice but to recognize that the CAQ government had won a “distinction award” for Bill 103 on the reduction of the administrative burden.
Pierre Fitzgibbon immediately nodded, stating that “reducing paperwork is a priority for the CAQ”.
Haroun Bouazzi, for his part, promised that there would be no new paperwork under a solidarity government, except for those required for the introduction of a new tax for large companies with more than 500 employees. “At Québec solidaire, we are not in love with paperwork,” he said before denouncing to this effect the mountains of paper that stand up when the time comes to process temporary immigrants who have come to work in Québec.
Michaël Potvin, he was not impressed by the price of the Legault government. “In the field, from 2018 to 2020, I did not see a difference,” he dropped, taking as an example the barrage of paperwork that is imposed on community organizations.
Unsurprisingly, Olivier Dumais added a few layers. “There is a labor shortage and we have to hire staff to manage the endless paperwork. […] At all levels, we are told again: they are no longer able to manage this paperwork due to a labor shortage. It’s worse than before, ”he cursed.