Quebec gets a mediocre grade on a report card measuring provincial prosperity.

Party representatives share platforms over lunch with Conseil du patronat

The Quebec employers’ council has given Quebec a C in its annual report card of provincial prosperity, the same rating as the past two years.

Alberta and Ontario got a B, British Columbia a B-minus.

Despite slight improvement in the availability and quality of labour, Quebec still is burdened by heavy payroll taxes, high debt levels and relatively low levels of job training, the Conseil du patronat study concludes.

“Over the next few years, Quebec will have to confront many challenges that go beyond candidates and parties, including the aging demographic and its effect on our collective productivity, our ability to attract new private investment, the means to stimulate entrepreneurship and our public finances situa- tion,” noted council president Yves-Thomas Dorval.

Although the Conseil is not endorsing any particular party in the current election campaign, Dorval said it’s important that whoever gets elected understand that “you don’t have prosperity without companies succeeding and investing, and you don’t have companies succeeding in a sustainable manner without favourable conditions.”

Spokespersons for the three main parties outlined aspects of their platforms touching on prosperity at a luncheon hosted by the Conseil.

Parti Québécois candidate Nicolas Marceau said the party will return Quebec to balanced budgets and rein in the infrastructure and health-care costs that he said are the main contributors to current deficits.

Asked about Quebec’s unusually high payroll taxes, which amount to $6,000 a year for an employee with a salary of $40,000, Liberal MNA Alain Paquet said they provide services such as paid parental leave that significantly improve the quality of life here.

Christian Dubé of the Coalition Avenir Québec said Quebecers are “seriously overtaxed,” something the party is addressing with a pledge of $1,000 of tax reduc- tions for middle-class families over the next five years.

On the question of snowballing deficits for public-sector pensions, Dubé said the problem is serious, but “it’s not for the whole (Quebec) population to make up the shortfall.”

The Conseil study ranked the provinces on 21 criteria. Quebec led British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario in three categories (graduate rate for university undergraduates, research and development spending and the cost of operating a company), had comparable ratings in three others (levels of post-secondary education among adults, marginal effective tax rates on business investment and multifactor productivity), but lagged in the other 15, which included tax burden, patents, economic integration of immigrants and percentage of the adult population with a high school diploma.

“This is far too many,” the Conseil said.

“The basic question that needs to be asked is: Is our enviable quality of life, which we can certainly appreciate, acquired on credit or is it dependant on the redistribution of Canadian wealth?”