Lorne Gunter - Curious, isn’t it, that the province of Quebec has $200 million to contribute to a new hockey rink in Quebec City, yet overworks and underpays its Crown prosecutors so badly they went on strike this week until being ordered back to work? Now many of the 450 prosecutors are threatening to quit, declaring they are too ill-equipped for a province-wide war against organized crime. It’s yet another sign of just how badly governed the province is.
Typically, we don’t sympathize with civil servants’ claims of being worked too hard and paid too little, but Quebec’s Crown prosecutors seem to have a case. At a maximum of just under $103,000 a year – and that is for a prosecutor with at least 12 years experience – Quebec salaries are 40% below the national average and just half what the top Ontario prosecutors are paid ($198,000). Federal prosecutors and those in Alberta and B.C. make as much as 70% more than their Quebec counterparts. Additionally, Quebec, with a population of 7.9 million, has just 450 government prosecutors, roughly the same number as Alberta, which, at 3.5 million residents, has less than half its population.
No wonder it is so hard for police and prosecutors to control Quebec’s rampant drug gangs and crack down on what is believed to be widespread corruption and organized criminal activity in the construction industry. Claude Chartrand, the prosecutor in charge of organized crime cases in Quebec, resigned in disgust over the weekend, claiming the provincial government’s refusal to give prosecutors more pay, more clerical support and 200 additional prosecutors is putting at risk several high-profile drug and syndicate prosecutions.
It would cost about $30 million to bring Crown pay and staffing levels in Quebec up to national standards, a sum the provincial government of Premier Jean Charest insists it does not have. Late Tuesday night, in back-to-work legislation it passed forcing prosecutors back to work, the government promised 80 new prosecutors and a pay raise of just 6% over the next five years.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, amid great fanfare and back patting, the same government that pleads poverty when dealing with prosecutors, somehow managed to come up with $200 million to put towards the $400-million cost of a new hockey rink in Quebec City. Such poor judgement is endemic in Quebec politics. And part of the reason is the huge subsidies Ottawa sends to Quebec’s treasury each year.
Quebec only gets by thanks to the $8 billion to $10 billion it receives in equalization payments annually. This sum the province puts towards lavish social programs, such as cheap university and college tuition and inexpensive day care. Left to its own resources, Quebec could not afford these benefits. Nonetheless, it also likes to preach to the rest of the country about how Ottawa and other provinces should follow its lead on public services.
With plentiful natural resources and lots of cheap electricity, Quebec should have one of the strongest economies on the continent. Yet because of its high personal and corporate taxes, intrusive regulations and strict, complex labour codes – which favour unions and local workers – the province is a needlessly difficult place to do business. Quebec’s restrictive language laws require business be done in French and make it difficult for English-speakers moving to the province to educate their children in any language other than French. Language police, of course, monitor the prominence of French on signs and packaging.
The Charest government would likely fall tomorrow if a vote were held, yet the alternative is a party headed by aging separatists, who continue to maintain against all evidence that Quebec would be better off as an independent country.
We would hate to see Quebec leave. It is a beautiful, vibrant, cultured part of Canada. But it has to face up to the fact it is deep in debt, living a life beyond its means, while being underwritten by Canadian taxpayers.

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