Soon Jean Charest and his Liberal government will have a decision to make: Raise taxes or cut services. We're betting that they will choose to do neither.
And yet one or the other - or both - must be done, because Quebec's planned deficit - $11.4 billion over four years, optimistically - is unsustainable. Inflation will begin to bite when economic growth resumes, and so the province's borrowing costs will go up - and they'll rise faster and farther if bond buyers decide Quebec is too open-handed.
So the need for discipline is plain. But we are pessimistic, because Charest's Liberals did so little to improve Quebec's finances during the fat majority years of his first term. Elected on a platform of hard-headed fiscal prudence, Charest did set out to control the budget, honouring the spirit as well as the easily-evaded letter of Quebec's "anti-deficit" law.
But controlling spending in Quebec is no walk in the park: Some 60 per cent of program spending goes to public-sector salaries, and the rest to people and groups ready to defend their shares of the pie. Unions and others began to protest. Charest lost his nerve as an election approached, and the lucid black-ink agenda was tossed overboard.
In fairness, he did accomplish some modest reforms. But as revenue soared in the economic boom, spending soared higher, exceeding the economy's growth rate year after year. In Ottawa, meanwhile, successive governments were paying down the national debt, that accumulation of annual deficits.
The Quebec Liberal leadership, speaking through the party's policy commission, came out clearly last weekend for higher fees - electric-power rates, CEGEP tuition, highway tolls, a "Caisse santé" to raise more money for health care, a tax on junk food, higher taxes on alcohol ... Most of these would be user fees rather than actual taxes, but this is a distinction without a real difference. Call it what you will, but the government's hand would be deeper into your pocket or purse.
But then Charest noted, in his speech concluding the weekend meeting, that such charges would be no panacea, and that spending control is the first place government should look. We would agree with that if we felt he meant it. Electric-power rates should be higher, but few of those other fees make sense, considering how much we are taxed already.
But it's all moot: We just don't believe real change will happen on either spending or fees. Charest has already shown himself allergic to protest, and Quebecers are quick to protest any hint that government might spend less, or take more. Our columnist Don Macpherson notes that motorcyclists - already victims of a sharply-raised user fee - were protesting outside the Liberals' weekend meeting. CEGEP stakeholders mobilized instantly. More centrally, public-sector unions know Charest's talk about belt-tightening refers specifically to their belts. And some interest groups are already bulletproof: There was no talk of raising the highly-subsidized $7-a-day fee for daycare, though expansion of the daycare system will surely stop, leaving this costly program as an unfair lottery in which everyone must "buy a ticket" by paying taxes, but only the lucky ones actually get the service.
Quebecers have been living in a fools' paradise of generous spending for so long that it seems normal to us. The evidence suggests that Charest does not have the political courage to reverse the deficit. Next spring's budget will tell the tale. We wish we could believe there'll be a happy ending.