François Legault’s party is too weak to govern

Things are looking up somewhat for the Coalition Avenir Québec going into the home stretch of this election campaign.

In the early going it appeared that François Legault’s fledgling party would be squeezed out of serious contention by the polarizing trend in the campaign, one that favoured the Parti Québécois and the Liberals at the expense of the third-party CAQ.

But then strong performances in the two leaders’ debates and missteps by both the Liberals and the PQ have been followed by an uptick in CAQ support in the latest polls. One survey this week showed Legault by far the most popular of the three main party leaders, with a 54-per-cent approval rate to 45 per cent for Philippe Couillard and 31 per cent for Pauline Marois.

While analysts hold some doubts about the extent of the CAQ surge and the solidity of its new-found support, Legault has offered Quebecers much to like with his seductive pledges of tax cutting and government downsizing.

He has promised to cut every Quebec family’s tax bill by $1,000. Gone would be the health tax, and gone too would be school taxes, along with school boards. He would cancel the increases in daycare fees announced in the PQ budget, and simply index them to inflation. His latest promise is to cancel the 4.3-percent hydro rate increase that goes into effect this month, and also limit further increases to the inflation rate.

He would furthermore downsize the province’s bloated public service by 36,000 pos- itions, cutting administrative posts in favour of service-delivery jobs. And along with all this, he proposes to eliminate the current $2.5-billion budgetary deficit in a single year.

Then there is Legault’s grandiose Projet St-Laurent, which envisages a St. Lawrence River Valley blossoming with innovation hubs like a sort of Silicon Valley North. It is a beautiful dream, but current realities suggest that it is nothing more than that, given the state of Quebec’s sagging economy and growing indebtedness despite the highest tax rates of any jurisdiction on the continent.

As well, abolishing school boards is easier said than done.

There is a strong case that English boards at least have constitutional protection, and it would be difficult for a Quebec government to maintain English school boards while de- priving francophones of theirs.

Nor is it conceivable that all that is promised could be accomplished with the rag-tag team of candidates that Legault has been left with, following the loss of top names from the 2012 election. There are some creditable people, such as incumbent MNAs Eric Caire, Gérard Deltell and François Bonnardel, but no one on the CAQ slate apart from Legault has experience in government.

Even with the party’s recent bump in the polls, a CAQ government is still highly unlikely after next Monday. It would be nice to see Legault triumph personally in L’Assomption riding, just northeast of Montreal Island. But in other ridings across Quebec, CAQ supporters who see the party’s fundamental talent weakness, and who do not want a referendum on sovereignty, should vote for the Liberals.