This text is taken from the Courrier de l’économie of August 15, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
The electoral campaign is officially launched since Sunday in Quebec. From day one, the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), Dominique Anglade, challenged her opponent from the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), outgoing Premier François Legault, on the economy. “The economy will be the question of the ballot box,” she said in Quebec yesterday.
Already, the first two days of this campaign have been marked by economic announcements. So what are the main economic issues that could punctuate the campaign? Here is an overview.
Taxation
The CAQ and the PLQ have promised that they would lower taxes for Quebecers to help them cope with the increase in the cost of living if they are brought to power. On Monday, the head of the CAQ even promised “the biggest tax cut in the history of Quebec”. In particular, it intends to decree, for the year 2023, a drop of one percentage point in the first two tax brackets. The Liberal leader, meanwhile, would lower taxes by 1.5% for the first two tax brackets.
Inflation
The cost of living has increased at a breakneck pace in the past year. Last July, the consumer price index (CPI) increased by 7.6% over one year in Canada – while normal inflation is around 2%. On Sunday, François Legault promised to help not only the “poor” and retirees, but also the middle class, to cope with rising prices at the grocery store and at the pump. Dominique Anglade also addressed this subject by promising Quebecers to give them back “money in their pockets”.
The labor shortage
The job market is getting tighter and tighter in Quebec. For five years, the demand for unsatisfied labor has been constantly increasing, while the pool of unemployed is shrinking, writes our colleague Ève Ménard. Sunday, Dominique Anglade declared that “no one can call themselves the party of the economy if they are unable to recognize that the main obstacle to our economic development is the shortage of labour. François Legault, for his part, defended himself from minimizing this problem, as Ms. Anglade accuses him of. “We took action. We put in incentives,” he said. While the population is aging, and the vast majority of sectors are struggling to find labor (qualified or not), the various parties will be expected to turn on their policy to solve this problem.
This text is taken from our Courrier de l’économie.