Jean Charest is a lucky man. This session of the National Assembly ended Dec. 4 instead of at its normal closing time of a couple of days before Christmas.
The early shutdown spared his government another three weeks of hammering by opposition parties about Charest's refusal to set up a public inquiry on allegations of collusion and corruption in the construction industry.
The Liberal government obviously hopes that Quebecers will forget the whole thing over some turkey and eggnog.
Well, perhaps not. For one thing, other than the government itself and the FTQ unions, polls show that a staggering 85 per cent of Quebecers want an inquiry. That cuts across language, gender, and regional lines, as well as education and income levels.
Quebecers are now well aware of two crucial facts.
One is that the government is about to invest more than $40 billion of taxpayers' money into various infrastructure projects.
The other is that it has been established that Quebec pays 25 to 35 per cent more for its roads than the rest of the country. That's an awful lot of public funds that risk going into the wrong hands in the next few years. Thus the call for an inquiry - the only way to find out if a system is feeding this aberration. And the only way to try to remedy it.
Another reason why Quebecers aren't likely to forget is that even though the premier has gone globe-trotting to Moscow and Copenhagen, opposition parties have stayed put.
This week, Action démocratique MNA Sylvie Roy contended that Transport Quebec dished out nearly 600 contracts without any tenders, with the lion's share going to firms whose shareholders and/or owners happened to be donors to the Liberal Party.
Which raises the question: Did these donations help them get the untendered contracts. Were they given in gratitude,? Or was it a mix of both? To Roy, this was no coincidence.
Then the junior minister of transport said that his annual fundraising target for the Liberal Party was $100,000 and that his office took care of that. This adds to the impression that firms that do business with the ministry get the message that he who gives to the Liberals gets the contracts.
Yesterday, the story caught up with Jean Charest in Moscow, one of the most corrupt cities in the world. He confirmed that each minister does have a partisan fundraising target of a minimum of $100,000 a year. Which, in turn, creates another negative impression, based on fact or not, that this could put undue pressure on the ministers or their staff to go looking for those gratitude cheques.
Another reason why Quebecers won't get political amnesia soon is that there is real anger out there over Charest's refusal to set up this inquiry. The kind of anger that arise when people suspect that the government might be hiding something.
A Léger Marketing-Le Devoir poll on Nov. 30 showed the depth of that anger. The government garnered a 60 per cent dissatisfaction rate and among francophone voters the Liberal Party was left at 29 per cent, with the Parti Québécois leading at 47 per cent.
For months now, the anger has spawned a number of online petitions by ordinary citizens asking for an inquiry. A few days ago, an official petition was posted on the National Assembly's website. With a deadline of Feb. 4, it has already received more than 9,000 signatures.
While it's true that predicting the future is risky - especially in politics - there are times when the handwriting is on the wall. This could be one of them.
I remain convinced, as I've written for months, that Jean Charest will never set up a public inquiry - if only out of fear it could inflict damage on his party. If I'm right, then it's even more unlikely that the anger and dissatisfaction out there will subside any time soon.
Suspicions of past, present and future mismanagement of billions of tax dollars in infrastructure tend to do that kind of thing to voters.