People who live in democratic precincts like Quebec are fortunate in having the privilege of casting a vote for what they want in government and for by whom they are governed.
The downside of the arrangement is that democracy is imperfect; it is, as Winston Churchill observed, the worst of governing systems — except for all the others that have been tried.
Depending on the number and alignment of parties in contention, the one elected to govern may not be the one that the majority of voters want in power. This tends to be the case in Quebec, as well as in federal elections, in our time.
Nor is the democratic system any guarantee that an election result will deliver a society the governance that it needs.
What Quebec clearly needs at this time is a government that will engender stability and social peace, that will rally Quebecers in a concerted effort to meet the challenges that this province must face up to in the coming four to five years that would be a normal government’s mandate in office.
Quebec needs a government to play a constructive role in the Canadian confederation, on which its well-being is greatly dependent. It needs a government prepared to address the hard realities of the province’s economic situation. A dominant factor of this situation is that Quebec is burdened by the greatest debt of any province in the country, a debt proportionally one of the highest in the industrialized world. It is currently in excess of 50 per cent of Quebec’s gross domestic product, and still growing.
This province is further burdened by a health-care system that is to a large extent failing the existing needs of the population, and that will be subject to even greater demands as the baby-boom generation enters its senior years. It has an underperforming education system, with an alarming high-school-dropout rate and underfunded universities. It is plagued by crumbling infrastructure that suffers from years of neglect and incompetent construction. It is faced with a spiking demand for public-service pension payments, again a function of the aging boomer generation.
All of this will require funding beyond what the province is currently able to manage at a time when there are comparatively fewer demands on public finances than there will be in the very near future. This looms at a time when Quebec’s economy, according to reliable measurement by such as the Conference Board of Canada, is registering the most sluggish growth in the country, with the exception of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
The election campaign did not inspire great hopes that the vote would produce a government committed and able to meet these challenges. The debt challenge received only cursory attention when it was mentioned at all, and the provincial economy’s underperformance was largely glossed over.
Happily, on Tuesday night the worst possible result was avoided. That would have been a Parti Québécois majority government, or a PQ minority egged on by the more radically leftist and equally separatist Québec solidaire. A majority of voters opted for a change in government, but a majority also voted against the PQ, which will have to govern in a minority situation.
It is encouraging that the majority of seats will be held by the Liberals and the Coalition Avenir Québec, who do not share the PQ’s obsession with driving Quebec out of Canada, or the PQ’s more repressive language policies, such as extending Bill 101 rules to CEGEPs and small businesses in the province. It will also make it more difficult for the new administration to fully roll back the controversial university tuition fees as Pauline Marois pledged during the campaign. Its relatively meagre share of the popular vote should further serve as a restraint on its comportment in office.
However, it is highly unlikely that the PQ administration, even with the majority opposition pressure from parties with more rational economic policies, will effectively come to grips with the province’s economic shortcomings. On the contrary, among the major parties in the campaign, the PQ showed the least concern over the province’s indebtedness and offered the least convincing policies for dealing with the looming fiscal challenge.
The election result shows a province sorely divided on what its people want in the way of governance and, as a result, facing an unstable future. It is highly unlikely that the government Quebecers have elected with this vote will give the province what it needs.