A KEY MEMBER OF GOVERNMENT
Quebec’s budget is balanced for 2015-16 because of Martin Coiteux
The two officials of the Quebec English School Boards Association sitting in the lobby of the hotel shortly after Thursday’s budget lockup at the adjacent Quebec City convention centre didn’t have to say a word.
They were slumped in armchairs, their faces wearing discouraged expressions. Then one of them did speak, to a passing journalist: “Not a good budget for students.”
A news release the association had issued explained why. It said school boards needed a three per cent increase in funding simply to keep up with rising costs. Instead, it said, they were getting the equivalent of a three per cent cut, representing a loss of about $35 million to the English boards.
That’s real austerity, and there are many more examples in the Liberal government’s budget for the fiscal year beginning April 1.
It was telling that the QESBA release blamed Treasury Board President Martin Coiteux for the budget and didn’t mention Finance Minister Carlos Leitão, who delivered the budget speech. For the budget is really Coiteux’s more than Leitão’s.
The government had made Leitão’s task relatively simple. It had committed itself to keeping its Parti Québécois predecessor’s promise to the bond-rating agencies to balance the 2015-16 budget, following a $2.4-billion deficit this year. It’s the agencies, Premier Philippe Couillard said in an interview last December, that “control the (province’s) public finances, whether we like it or not.”
There are only two ways to balance a budget. One is to bring in enough income to cover costs. If that can’t be done, spending must be cut.
Once the government made the choice to balance the budget without adding to the already-heavy tax burden in Quebec, it was left with no choice but to cut spending.
And while taxation is the finance minister’s responsibility, government-wide spending is that of the Treasury Board president. So the buck was passed to Coiteux.
Martin Coiteux has been in active politics only since the general election last April. Prior to that, he was an economics professor at the HEC Montréal university business school, and then a senior regional representative for the Bank of Canada.
Though he had criticized Quebec’s high taxes for hurting the province’s economy, it was the former government’s proposed “values charter” that made him decide to run against the PQ, even though the Liberals were then trailing in the polls.
He quickly showed that he is the best communicator in the Liberal government. Two months after its election, when Leitão presented his first budget, it was already apparent that Coiteux was at least as important as the finance minister because of his role in controlling spending.
Public opinion in the polls and even financial experts were skeptical about whether the government would be able to present a balanced budget for 2015-16. It has, however, due in large part to Coiteux.
And his key role in the strategy described in Thursday’s budget, which is political as well as financial, has confirmed his position as the most important member of the Couillard government after the premier.
There is disagreement as to whether Coiteux is motivated primarily by conservative ideology or financial pragmatism.
In an “expenditure management strategy” among the documents Coiteux released with the budget on Thursday, he argued that the “big province-wide effort” of “overhauling the State” must continue.
That’s so interest payments on the public debt can be reduced, prosperity can be increased and taxes can be lowered, but also to “allow Quebec to protect the social programs it values, ensure true social justice and restore intergenerational equity.”
So Coiteux’s purpose is not to destroy the “Quebec model” of government, but to save it — even if it’s no longer recognizable.
(Martin Coiteux’s) key role in the strategy described in Thursday’s budget ... has confirmed his position as the most important member of the Couillard government after the premier.
Don Macpherson