CALEB NICKERSON
PONTIAC Nov. 25, 2020
On Nov. 12, the CAQ government delivered their economic update, with Finance Minister Eric Girard projecting Quebec’s deficit will grow to $15 billion for 2020-2021. This is the second update that Girard has given during the pandemic, and a key point is his government’s pledge to return to balanced budgets within five years.
Pontiac MNA André Fortin, who also serves as the Liberals’ finance critic, spoke with THE EQUITY on Nov. 17 about some of the main points of the government’s plan.
“I spent hours in the government lockup to analyze every document in my responsibility as finance critic. What stood out was that the government focused on returning to balanced budgets in five years,” he said. “While I understand, and nobody understands more than our party the importance of returning to balanced budgets, the current situation imposes other priorities.
“To say that we will return to balanced budgets in five years no matter what, certainly seems to handcuff of the government in its ability to provide every level of services that Quebecers need,” he continued. “At this point, I certainly think that we should be more focused on providing the services needed during the pandemic, whether it has to do with health care services, mental health services, education services, assistance to small businesses or investments needed in high speed internet deployment. Those should be the priorities right now, and not returning to balanced budgets … when we don’t know the depth or the length of the recession we’re currently in.”
He also pointed out that while government documents typically forecast for the next five years, this update was only for the next three. Fortin said that he suspected the reason for this was for the CAQ to obscure how they would achieve their goal of balancing the books.
“Putting numbers for three years certainly simplified the job for them,” he said.
He said that the objective of reducing deficits meant that many of the measures the government offered were inadequate in his eyes. He singled out the $100 million they have earmarked for mental health services.
“If you invest about $300 million in mental health care, you can offer any Quebecer who wants it about 10 sessions with a psychiatrist a year,” he said. “You invest $100 million, like the government is doing now, you can empty the backlog of people waiting for access to public psychiatrists. What we’d like to see is for the $300 million to be invested so that people who simply aren’t right now turning to mental health professionals because they know they won’t have the service, [will get access].”
He also pointed to the lack of investment in ventilation equipment for the province’s schools, the cost of which he said was estimated at $80 million.
“The government is not installing portable ventilation units in every classroom, where air quality or circulation might be an issue … This government refusal flies in the face of science. In Germany, every public building has put in portable ventilation units to limit the spread of COVID,” he said. “We know our schools are old across the province and in the Pontiac, and having these units would put an extra measure of protection for our students and teachers at this time … Even the health minister this week admitted that the government should have acted on this over the summer.”
He added that while the government has invested $57 million in adapting education spaces and promoting online learning, many of these solutions require high-speed internet, which is notoriously spotty in certain areas of the Pontiac.
“As everybody knows in this region, [internet access] is a problem in rural areas,” he said. “One of the outstanding requests that we had … in the lead up to the fiscal update, was that the Quebec government do much like the federal government announced a few weeks ago and increase the funding for high-speed internet projects in order to accelerate them.”
He also emphasized that the CAQ needed to roll out money that was already promised to ensure that children don’t fall behind academically.
“Whatever the situation, pandemic or not, education always has to be a priority,” he said. “It’s how you drive change in a community, it’s how you drive progress and I would hope that the government would make that funding available quickly in schools so that our kids do have the resources they need and the time that they missed during the initial COVID outbreak doesn’t affect them in the long run.”
Fortin questioned why the government’s proposals were based on an anticipated increase in transfers from the feds. He added that while he acknowledges the need for more federal funding, particularly on the health care file, basing projections on money that hadn’t been secured was wishful thinking.
“Here’s the thing, the CAQ is projecting to go back to a balanced budget within five years without reducing services, without raising taxes, and uniquely based on an additional six billion dollar transfer from the federal government,” he said. “You can’t build a budget based on money you don’t have or don’t know you’re going to have, and that’s what the CAQ did. Every political party in Quebec that you’ll talk to, including mine, sees the value of additional federal transfers on health care. The portion of health care costs that is covered by the federal transfer has decreased year after year as our needs have grown.
“There is a need for a new negotiation,” he continued. “There will be a back and forth [but] you cannot expect that the government of Canada will simply say, ‘Ok we’ll give you whatever you want.’ It’s a starting negotiation point and it seems to me that the government of Quebec are basing their estimates on something that likely will not happen or will not happen to the extent that they’re wishing at this point.”
Fortin was also in favour of a proposal put forward by the Parti Quebecois’ new leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, who asked that the government create a Parliamentary Budget Office, similar to the one which exists at the federal level.
“It ensures that political parties of all stripes, while they are in government … can’t pull a fast one on opposition parties and analysts of budgetary documents,” he explained. “It’s an added measure of verification and transparency, so we know that the numbers that the government is putting out there are [correct]. It’s certainly a proposal that we would support at this point.”
