When a CEGEP, in this case the one in Old Montreal, is forced to prohibit the replacement of toilets that have become defective because of cuts in the maintenance budget, we are no longer in optimization, but in misery!
When politicians impose cuts, most of them suggest that there is fat in the “machine”. This fat would be eliminated without affecting services to the population. The Legault government has been serving us this speech since the tabling of its last budget, which was in deficit by eleven billion.
For over fifty years, the “machine” has been stripped down to the bone many times, and there is no real fat. The only nuance is that some programs may be poorly put together. But it would be wrong to say that their recovery would not affect anyone.
At the time, Gaétan Barrette, then Minister of Health, thought he had found the solution by eliminating 1,600 management positions on the pretext that they did not directly serve customers. As a result, during the pandemic, dozens of residential and care centres for the elderly were abandoned due to the lack of a captain on board. People died in conditions worthy of the Third World. Gaétan Barrette belatedly admitted that he had made a mistake.
For over a month now, budget cuts have been announced. Amounts that were considered acquired have been recalled. Thus, in education, despite the heavy deficit in maintaining our buildings, CEGEPs have seen their maintenance budget cut in half. That of universities has been reduced from 80 million to 15 million. At the primary and secondary levels, the maintenance budget has been cut by 400 million. Typical measures of shoveling money forward!
Another paradox: budgets that are completely insufficient for French language courses! The Legault government is rightly concerned about the integration of immigrants and requires them to submit their requests for services in French six months after their arrival. However, many immigrants already registered for French language courses have just been left in the lurch without any further explanation. The institutions concerned have been refused the necessary budgets. How inconsistent when we see the sometimes fussy measures that are being put forward by the government to safeguard the French fact in Quebec!
Mr. Legault, an avid reader, should have, at the beginning of his mandate, read or reread La Fontaine’s fables, in particular There cicada and the ant…Maybe he wouldn’t be in the current mess!
In 2018, Mr. Legault inherited a dream situation, namely a surplus of seven billion, courtesy of the Couillard government. He was elected by promising a certain administrative rigor. But since then, more than 10,000 civil servants have been added instead of a reduction of 5,000, as he had promised.
Expensive projects
The government has embarked on projects that were too costly, such as seniors’ homes costing $800,000 and more per room. Beyond the relevance of the project, did we have the means to introduce 4-year-old kindergartens, given the lack of teachers and premises? Then came the Espaces bleus, with a rather vague vocation, which Minister Mathieu Lacombe fortunately had the courage to scrap. Above all, what relevance is there to the third link, officially buried by Minister Geneviève Guilbault and then resurrected by François Legault the day after the electoral defeat in Jean-Talon?
The Prime Minister is also obsessed with the gap between the taxes paid by Quebecers and Ontarians. A legitimate concern. But you still have to have the means to support your obsessions! In recent years, Mr. Legault has reduced the tax burden on Quebecers by nearly $4 billion. At the same time, this amount, according to economists, corresponds to the order of magnitude of the province’s structural deficit, that is, the one that will not disappear without budgetary restrictions or tax increases. Good or bad decision?
The Legault government cannot be blamed for trying to return to a balanced budget. However, it is responsible for digging the hole into which we are collectively stuck.
Rigor, rigor, rigor!