Francois Legault speaks to the Gazette editorial board about his coalition for the future of Quebec
_ Photograph by: Pierre Obendrauf
***
Is this all there is?
That was the general reaction to the much ballyhooed and longawaited manifesto from former Parti Québécois cabinet heavyweight François Legault and his nascent Coalition for the Future of Quebec. The eight-page document hardly seems to justify the months Legault and his cohorts took to cobble it together since he first announced last fall that he was preparing to launch a program for what could perhaps emerge as a new Quebec political party.
What was finally released with much fanfare wasn't so much a political program as a collection of fairly standard policy proposals that leave much to be desired in terms of detail. As for the coalition, the 11 co-signatories that Legault managed to round up for his manifesto are, for the most, part bright, youngish people but hardly boldface names in the province, with perhaps the exception of business mogul Charles Sirois - best known for introducing the Fido cellphone.
The centrepiece of the manifesto is a call to make education the absolute priority of a future provincial government, which is all well and good. But the proposal to make teachers' employment conditional on performance evaluations would be administratively problematic and face furious resistance from teachers' unions. It promises to significantly raise teachers' salaries and pay down the provincial budgetary deficit but not raise taxes or Hydro rates. Savings to cover new spending and debt repayment are projected to come from departmental cuts, something governments typically say they'll implement but which rarely materialize quite as planned.
Decentralization of the education and health networks are hardly novel ideas and the manifesto is unclear on just what should be done with school boards. On language the coalition proposes to stick with the status quo and its economic action plan is to encourage entrepreneurship and investment in the province, something the major parties already claim to encourage. Perhaps the best thing about the document is that it says loudly and clearly that the old federalistsovereignist debate is counterproductive and should be put aside, but then polls show a majority of Quebecers have already reached that conclusion.
Recent polls have also shown that Quebecers in large majority are disenchanted with their established political parties and want the province to move in a new direction. A poll this week suggested that more Quebec voters would back Legault than any of the other contenders. The manifesto might be a start of sorts to something new, but setting Quebec on a new course will take much more than this.