CAQ’s arbitrary numbers are good politics, but bad policy

True story: Before the 1970 Quebec election, Robert Bourassa was sitting with his head back over a sink, getting a shampoo for what the former French paratrooper with the mysterious past who served as his combination bodyguard-hairdresser described as his “nervous hair.” (Wait, that’s not the whole story.) Suddenly, an idea came to the then Liberal leader, who had been seeking a way to establish himself in the minds of the electorate as the best choice for the economy. “One hundred thousand jobs!” Bourassa said to himself. He would promise that number of jobs would be created in the first year of a Liberal government. And it worked, so well that Bourassa led his party to victory in the election, and along the way acquired the nickname Bob la Job. (The economy then came through with the promised jobs, but only in the first calendar year of Bourassa’s government.) Plucking numbers out of thin air for campaign promises still works. This week, Bourassa’s current successor, François Legault, took steps toward keeping two such commitments on which his Coalition Avenir Québec government was elected Oct. 1. They are to reduce the number of immigrants Quebec accepts next year to about 40,000, and to raise the minimum age for legally buying cannabis to 21. Both numbers are arbitrary rather than evidence-based, apparently chosen simply because, like Bourassa’s 100,000 jobs, they’re easy to remember. And the promises containing them are good examples of the CAQ’s populism in responding to conservative voters’ fears with simple, one-sentence solutions that in the election proved to be good politics, but in government look like bad policy. Raising the minimum age for legally buying cannabis from the present 18 is for voters who didn’t want to see marijuana legalized in Canada in the first place. But why 21? Why not 25, since young people are more likely to experience harm from cannabis before that age, because their brains are still developing? On the one hand, the Coalition government ignores that argument for raising the age all the way to 25. On the other, it rejects the advice of experts it consulted, who recommended leaving it at 18. It’s inconsistent to trust 18-year-olds’ judgment when it comes to voting, and on whether to risk their lives by joining the armed forces or their health by drinking alcohol or using tobacco — but not about weed. And prohibition has repeatedly been shown to succeed not in preventing the consumption of a forbidden substance, but only in creating an illegal market for it. The federal government’s strategy in legalizing cannabis depends on eliminating the illegal market that already exists. Eighteen-year-olds who wanted to get a buzz on were already getting their hands on weed before it became legal. The Quebec government’s statistics institute reported that in 201415, 38 per cent of Quebecers between the ages of 15 and 24 said they had consumed cannabis in the past year. The more the legal purchase is restricted or made expensive or inconvenient, the more of an opening it leaves for illegal dealers. And raising the legal minimum age for purchase to 21 would make the rules in Quebec, the province of joie-de-vivre, the strictest in the country. The reduction in immigration by about 20 per cent is one of several promises in which the Coalition offered to defend the language, culture and values of French-speaking Quebecers against minorities. The CAQ says too many of the approximately 50,000 immigrants that Quebec now accepts annually are failing to learn French immediately. But it doesn’t say why more of the present number wouldn’t succeed with the help of additional resources for teaching French, which the government has promised, and which this week’s financial update showed it can well afford. Legault says his government is nationalist, and its priority is the economy. But business people and local elected officials across the province say reducing immigration can only worsen an already growing manpower shortage. And Quebec’s population growth, and therefore its political influence within Canada, now depends mainly on immigration.