For the PQ, budget headaches

THE OPPOSITION will be the least of the government’s worries; the real problem will be the need for cost-cutting

An epidemic swept through the Liberal caucus in the National Assembly on Wednesday, affecting onethird of the members.

Fortunately, the symptoms were mild and lasted only long enough for the affected MNAs to miss a vote in the Assembly. They all made a full recovery.

The disease is “confidence flu.”

It causes an opposition party to break out in a sweat at the thought of voting to bring down a minority government on a confidence motion before the opposition party is ready for a general election.

This time, it affected the official-opposition Liberals. Not counting the Assembly speaker and deputy speakers, only five voting members of the Parti Québécois and seven from the Coalition Avenir Québec missed the vote on Premier Pauline Marois’s session-opening speech, while 16 Liberals did.

This allowed the other Liberals to vote with the CAQ against Marois’s motion to approve her speech, without bringing down the government. The vote was 47-44 in favour of the government, with the two Québec solidaire MNAs abstaining.

There might be another outbreak of confidence flu in the opposition benches before the Assembly is to adjourn for the winter recess Dec. 7. It would occur just before the vote on the budget that Finance Minister Nicolas Marceau is to table on Tuesday. And it would be the Liberals again who would be affected.

Their finance critic, Raymond Bachand, has said his party will vote against the budget because Marceau has said it will contain tax increases. But Bachand has also indicated that some Liberals might be absent for the vote.

If opposition MNAs come down with the flu, the minority government can breathe easily.

More serious political problems for the PQ will arise from the budget after the political ceasefire during the holidays.

The budget will cover the 2013-14 fiscal year, which doesn’t begin until April 1, as well as the remainder of the current one. That’s so the government can avoid the usual budget vote in March, when the Liberals will have a new leader.

For 2013-14, the Marois government has promised the Wall Street bond-rating agencies, which determine how much interest Quebec has to pay on its debt, that it will honour its predecessor’s commitment to balancing the budget. But first it has to come up with $1.6 billion in the next four months in order to meet the previous government’s deficit objective for the current fiscal year. And it will have to do all this with less revenue than provided for in the previous government’s budget, since the economy is growing at a slower rate.

This will force the government to take austerity measures in the form of revenue increases or spending cuts over the next year and a half — which happens to be the normal life expectancy of a minority government.

Spending cuts, in particular, would be unpopular with the Québec solidaire voters to whom the PQ government has been appealing since it took office — and to the left wing of the PQ itself.

It hasn’t helped the government’s position with these groups that only a week before Marceau tables his budget, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced that balancing the federal budget would take a year longer than expected.

Predictably, Quebec leftists responded by arguing that if a Conservative government in Ottawa could postpone balancing its budget, then so could a progressive PQ government in Quebec City.

So when Marceau delivers his budget speech on Tuesday, he’ll be in the middle of a tug of war between the left and the bond-rating agencies.

The opposition parties across the aisle of the Assembly will be lesser concerns for him. One of them might be coming down with the flu.