Premier Jean Charest would like us to call it anything but a summit, a term too closely associated with the Parti Québécois.
Always glad to oblige our premier. Anyway, Charest's gathering of the economic elite in Lévis this week was significantly different from the former PQ government's consensus-building exercises.
The PQ summits produced meaningful decisions such as putting an end to four decades of annual budget deficits, and new initiatives such as subsidized daycare.
Charest's non-summit produced a conclusion among government, business, and labour that education is important to Quebec's economic future. That's nice, but who said it isn't?
And it's nice that all these busy, important people were talking about the long term for once, about Quebec's economy 20 years from now.
But the trouble with the long term is that you have to go through the short term to get there. And how is Quebec supposed to invest in education for the future when it's going broke in the present?
The elephant in the room but not on the agenda in Lévis was the state of the province's finances, particularly the more than $1 billion in spending cutbacks and revenue increases in the next budget that the government has announced but not yet identified.
When Charest announced the Lévis meeting last month, some of us assumed that its purpose was to seek consensus on the measures to be taken and to prepare Quebecers for what lies ahead. We assumed incorrectly.
The opposition parties expressed disappointment with Charest for lacking the "courage" to discuss austerity measures at the meeting. Of course, it requires no courage to ask it of others, especially if one expects to benefit at their expense.
Now the opposition will have to wait for the budget itself before they can begin to exploit the discontent of interest groups and the public at cutbacks in programs and increases in taxes and fees.
And poll results published this week suggest that, like the opposition parties, the voters see the need for sacrifices, provided they're made by somebody else.
A large majority of respondents in a Léger Marketing survey for TVA and Le Journal de Montréal agreed that public finances are in a "precarious" state or worse.
But the results suggested that they thought the problem could be solved through measures that would be painless to them, such as eliminating administrative waste and inefficiency, reducing the number of government agencies and fighting corruption and tax evasion.
And they rejected the measures to increase revenues that the government is considering, such as increases in hydro and other rates and the provincial sales tax.
Charest's government gave the public a year's advance warning that the next budget would be an austerity one. But it then squandered most of that time by making only sporadic and half-hearted attempts to explain what that would mean, and why it was necessary. And now the budget is only two months off.
Charest has been criticized for refusing to listen when he has a majority government. But now it appears that he can't be bothered trying to explain himself, either.
And lately he's been sending confusing signals about his resolve by minimizing the importance of Quebec's financial problems relative to those of other jurisdictions.
The all-powerful bond-rating agencies will expect Charest to honour his commitments to them to balance the budget within four years.
But after this week's non-summit, the most visibly disappointed participant was banker Jacques Ménard, the only one who expressed concern about public finances.
And the most pleased was labour leader Claudette Carbonneau, who represents government employees currently negotiating new collective agreements.
dmacpher@thegazette.canwest.com