CAQ leads by 5%, but Liberals still in game: poll
Non-francophones and youth vote strongly in Couillard’s corner
QUEBEC The Coalition Avenir Québec continues to lead the pack in provincial voter intentions but Quebec’s Liberals are far from dead, making fresh gains as nonfrancophones drift back to the party, a new poll suggests.
Despite efforts by CAQ Leader François Legault to make inroads in the minority community, 69 per cent of non-francophones say they plan to vote Liberal on Oct. 1. That’s a seven percentage point increase over the last 10 days.
It’s not quite the 80 per cent levels the Liberal Party used to bask in, but combined with other factors — including Philippe Couillard creeping up in the category of voter trust, pollsters say the Liberals are still in the game.
The CAQ lead remains fragile and this poll was conducted before the bad optics of Tuesday’s stunning resignation — in the middle of the campaign — of CAQ party president and candidate Stéphane Le Bouyonnec.
After almost one full week of campaigning, the new Léger poll conducted for The Montreal Gazette and Le Devoir, pegs support for the CAQ at 37 per cent, a point higher than a similar poll by Léger 10 days earlier.
The president of the Coalition Avenir Québec — who was also the party’s candidate in La Prairie — announced Tuesday afternoon that he is stepping down to avoid “the risk of harming the campaign.”
Stéphane Le Bouyonnec, 56, had come under fire since June, when it was revealed he had been chairman of the board of directors of Techbanx, an Ontario online loan service that charges astronomical interest rates that would be illegal in Quebec. He announced in June he was quitting the board and divesting himself of shares in the firm.
At that time, CAQ Leader François Legault had said the association “was an error,” but not one that merited “being fired as a candidate.”
But in a hastily called meeting with journalists in Quebec City, Legault said that while he had wanted to give Le Bouyonnec “a second chance” by keeping him on as party president and candidate, the latter had chosen to resign.
Legault did not explain why Le Bouyonnec was stepping down on the sixth day of the election campaign when his involvement with Techbanx had been known since June.
“There’s nothing new. The only thing is that the person who is involved has acknowledged his mistakes and decided to withdraw,” Legault said.
Legault added that Le Bouyonnec had endured a lot of criticism on social media and did not want to expose his family to it any longer.
“It’s often said that social media are very harsh,” said the CAQ leader, who added he had a lengthy meeting with Le Bouyonnec Monday night, where he accepted his resignation.
In a message in French posted on Facebook, Le Bouyonnec said he was stepping down so as not to jeopardize the party’s electoral chances.
“It is out of the question for me to let our political opponents use my professional background to make dubious amalgams and thus harm the chances of our Coalition,” he wrote.
Legault said the party will choose another candidate in La Prairie, and that one of the CAQ’s vicepresidents will fill in as president.
Legault praised Le Bouyonnec, who was a CAQ MNA from 20122014, for his pioneering work in helping to build the party.
Earlier, the CAQ leader announced that if elected, he would eliminate 5,000 public sector jobs by attrition — one per cent of the civil service.
“Never with these savings will we reduce services to citizens,” Legault vowed at a press conference in downtown Quebec City.
The next government must have the courage to slash the cost of government, he said, but without cutting services to citizens, he said.
Legault said a CAQ government would save $1.2 billion over four years by reducing the number of government data centres and reducing the cost of purchasing government supplies — an $800-million economy — and by not replacing 5,000 civil servants who will be retiring in the next four years — a savings of $380 million.
About 36,000 employees are expected to retire during that period.
Four years ago, the CAQ proposed eliminating 20,000 government jobs. Legault said the change does not indicate that his party is moving to the centre of the political spectrum from the right, but rather that he is setting conservative goals.
“We have a plan that is very realistic and feasible,” he said, adding that no civil servants will be fired as a result of the cuts.
Legault said Quebec has a larger proportion of civil servants in administrative jobs than other Western governments. By empowering lower-level civil servants to make decisions and eliminating unnecessary reporting to the upper hierarchy, it is possible to trim expenditures, he said.
The Quebec government has 457 data centres, while the Ontario government has only two, Legault said.
A CAQ government would also spread purchasing among smalland medium-sized businesses rather than placing huge orders with large firms, he added.
Christian Daigle, general president of the Syndicat de la fonction publique et parapublique du Québec (SFPQ), called the CAQ plan to cut 5,000 jobs “unrealistic.”
“With austerity measures of recent years, we are already understaffed,” he said.