By HENRY AUBIN - It's disturbing enough to learn that, according to the insurance industry's Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, there's a five-to-15 per cent chance that a "damaging earthquake" could hit Montreal in the next 50 years. Even more alarming are statements by engineers that the Régie du bâtiment du Québec, the agency in charge of safe construction, too rarely enforces the provincial construction code's regulations for seismicresistant buildings.

As the president of Seismic Industries Inc., a specialist engineering firm, told La Presse, "If there's a big earthquake in Montreal tomorrow, everything will fall. I guarantee it."

But think: Would it be realistic to expect serious enforcement of such regulations, important as they are?

Public institutions are generally assessed piecemeal, in isolation from each other. Let's widen the scope and see from a Montreal perspective how the Quebec government and city hall are carrying out a whole range of key responsibilities. The following examples, presented in no special order, will put the Régie's troubling performance in context.

SCHOOLS

The dropout rate in Quebec's public schools is the highest of any province. In 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available, 55 per cent of boys lacked a diploma five years after entering secondary school. The share of secondary-school students going to private schools on Montreal Island climbed to 31 per cent that year, a sign of parents' growing disenchantment with the public system.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Montreal's rate for clearing crimes (essentially, making an arrest) ranked eighth among Canada's 10 largest cities, according to a Statistics Canada report in December. Only Vancouver and, dead last, Quebec City, were lower.

Note that Montreal has more officers per size of city than any other police force.

HEALTH

Quebec spent less per capita on health ($3,341) than any other province in 2010, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. The government says this shows the system is efficient. Another way of looking at it is that it means less money for doctors and nurses, leading to more of their departures from Quebec and greater shortages in those occupations. It also means less money for disease prevention, home care and other valuable programs. The Fraser Institute said in December that Quebecers' median wait for surgical or therapeutic treatment was 18.8 weeks, just above the national average of 18.2 weeks. Ontario was at 14 weeks.

FINANCIAL HEALTH

Quebec's financial regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers, has shown lack of vigilance in fraud cases, particularly Norbourg Financial Group's fleecing 9,200 investors of savings.

MUNICIPAL ETHICS

The Commission municipale du Québec was created in 1932 to, among other things, investigate ethical misconduct and financial irregularities by municipalities. Radio-Canada reported in November that the commission had not investigated a single case in 20 years.

ENVIRONMENT

In 2006, data collected by the Commission on Environmental Co-operation, a tri-country panel created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, revealed that while industrial pollution in the rest of Canada and in the U.S. was declining, it was growing in Quebec. Lenient law-enforcement helped explain that: In the 2005-06 fiscal year, Quebec nailed polluters of air and water for a total of $1.3 million in fines, while fines in Ontario for the same period came to more than $4 million. True, Ontario has more industry, but taking that into account the disparity is still large.

Since then, Ontario has remained roughly constant while Quebec has become even more lenient. Annual fines have ranged from $613,000 and $1.1 million. Note, too, that until the environmentalreview bureau, BAPE, called it to order this month, the government appeared ready to open the door to a potentially record-setting polluter, the shale-gas industry.

UNIVERSITIES

With rare exceptions, their quality is below average, according to Maclean's ratings. McGill ranks No. 1 among the 15 Canadian schools in its category (medical-doctoral), while Université Laval, Université de Montréal and Université de Sherbrooke are 12, 13 and 14 respectively. Among the 12 schools in its group (comprehensive), Concordia and UQAM are 11 and 12.

Under-financing helps explain this. Quebec's universities calculated in December they would need a total of $620 million to reach funding parity with their counterparts elsewhere in Canada. Last week's Quebec budget only partly filled that gap when it upped student tuition by $375 a year for five years. This would put tuition at the fifth year at $3,793 - still 26 per cent less than today's Canadian average.

MONTREAL

Quebec's imposed merger of Montreal Island in 2002 has raised costs, reduced the quality of services and weakened spending oversight.

Quebec and city hall have also shown no interest in reforming North America's largest city council and most the complex municipal structure (borough councils, city council, agglo council). Sluggish overgovernance appears here to stay.

MONTREAL'S NEW HOSPITALS

The Quebec government decided in 2006 to build the two facilities with publicprivate partnerships on the basis of a recommendation of an agency, the Agence des partenariats publique-privé du Québec. Quebec's auditorgeneral found in 2009 that transparent bias against the alternative, traditional financing, had skewed the agency's recommendation. But it was too late to reconsider.

MEGA-PROJECTS

It has become de rigueur for large-scale plans to lag years behind schedule. The Quebec government's local examples include the Turcot Interchange, Notre Dame St., the two hospitals and the purchase of métro cars. Cost controls have proved ineffective. City hall's record is no better.

MANAGING PUBLIC SERVANTS

One measure of employees' motivation (or lack of it) is absenteeism. The average worker in Quebec's public administration (which excludes the health system, schools and crown corporations such as Hydro-Québec) reports in sick 12.7 days a year, according to the Conseil du Trésor. Statcan says the average for private-sector workers across Canada is seven days.

DEALING WITH PUBLIC-SERVANT BLOAT

Quebec's public-administration workers make up a greater share of the total workforce (2.2 per cent) than in all provinces as a whole (1.6 per cent), says Statcan. The Quebec government is finding it hard to deliver on its promise to reduce it. The Conseil du Trésor's latest figures, for 2008-09, show the public administration had 67,283 full-time equivalent jobs - just nine fewer than four years before.

DEBT

Public debt in Canada's most indebted province (by far) continues to swell despite promises to shrink it. The Montreal Economic Institute calculates total debt (including that of the government and its offspring, such as municipalities and Hydro-Québec) to have jumped 5.9 per cent in the current fiscal year to $234 billion. The finance ministry's projections go as far as 2015: They show that debt will keep growing throughout this period.

ANTI-CORRUPTION VIGILANCE

It was little thanks to public institutions that scandalous public-works contracts began emerging 2½ years ago. Journalists took the lead in exposing. The Sûreté du Québec, the Montreal police, the municipal affairs ministry and transport ministry had slept for years while the rot spread.

RESPONSE TO PUBLIC CONCERN OVER CORRUPTION

The Quebec government spurned creating a public inquiry into improper ties between contractors and politicians and instead will merge later this year various anti-corruption teams into a permanent institution, UPAC. UPAC's propensity for nailing politicians is already in doubt. For one thing, it will report to the government rather than to the multiparty National Assembly. For another, the government has chosen as UPAC's leader an ex-Sûreté officer with close ties to this government. Don't expect much boat rocking.

MONTREAL'S TAXES

A 2009 study by Edmonton's city hall compared taxes on single detached houses in 20 Canadian cities. It took into consideration both property taxes and school taxes. Conclusion: Montreal homeowners shoulder the heaviest load. (It averaged $3,585. Toronto was No. 2 at $3,314.)

OVERALL FISCAL PERFORMANCE

In a report published in December called Economic Freedom in North America: 2010, the Fraser Institute calculated total tax revenue in each of the 10 provinces and 50 U.S. states as a percentage of gross domestic product. This revenue was collected by provinces/states and federal and municipal governments, and it came from taxes on income, consumption, property and sales as well as payments to social security plans.

Quebec's ranking among the 60: dead last.

TO SUM UP:

To be sure, a few public institutions are successful. The Société de transport de Montréal and the auditor-general bureaus of both the provincial government and Montreal leap to mind. The Office Québécois de la langue française has also performed relatively well: Its petty law-enforcement excesses have become fewer over the years, and on the whole it has helped keep linguistic peace.

Let's also note that some of the low-performing bodies - including the Autorité des marchés financiers and the Commission municipale - are responding to criticism with sudden energy, although it's too early to know if they've changed for good.

Let's stress, too, that Montreal and Quebec as a whole remain very pleasant places to live in. (In a survey last month of 140 cities, The Economist ranked Montreal 16th, tied with Paris, albeit behind No. 1 Vancouver and No. 4 Toronto.)

For many of us, the great things about Montreal include its lively cultural scene, the mingling of language groups, a greater spirit of racial tolerance than in many parts of North America, safe streets, a vigorous media and a civilized way of dealing with political differences - you seldom see graffiti relating to la question nationale, much less hear of violence. But these qualities reflect those of ordinary citizens.

What we have, then, is two Quebecs. One is an impressively bouncy, convivial society at large. The other Quebec consists of sluggish, self-entitled and financially undisciplined public institutions. To be sure, bureaucracies the world over are noted for such traits, but ours have become a caricature of the genre. Their failure to deliver is at the root of our immobilisme.

Little wonder, too, that these institutions are so vulnerable to corruption. It's easy to understand why people in workplaces that have no purposeful sense of direction can surrender to cynicism and, in some cases, to venality.

I don't know how to fix our failed institutions. But I do know that we as a society won't find a solution until we squarely recognize that, compared to those in the rest of the country, most of our public institutions range in quality from sub-average to downright poor. The lax monitoring of earthquake regulations is an apt reflection of the quiet crisis that we're undergoing - a crisis of competence.

haubin@montrealgazette.com