PQ won’t rule out referendum
A gift to Liberals, who point to economic impact
The thing about leading a party dedicated to removing Quebec from Canada is that when an election rolls around, people will want to hear about your plan to separate.
On Wednesday, the campaign’s first day, Parti Québécois Premier Pauline Marois avoided that distraction by refusing to answer a single journalist’s question after calling the vote for April 7. But by Thursday the media troops were rebelling, and she submitted to her first news conference of the campaign.
Some 50 minutes later, things were no clearer. Asked about the possibility of holding a third referendum on independence if the PQ wins a majority, Ms. Marois said she would not discuss “strategy” in public. “There is no commitment to hold a referendum, but neither is there an engagement not to hold one,”
Economic indicators are flashing
she said. “I think the agenda must be kept open.”
But even her non-answer was a gift to the Liberals, for whom the faintest whiff of a referendum is enough to fire up their campaign.
Liberal leader Philippe Couillard devoted the day to the economy, introducing three new recruits who bring credibility to his team in a field where it was lacking.
But in Quebec, even the economy has a constitutional angle. Mr. Couillard warned that PQ suffocation of business with red tape and taxation would only worsen if Ms. Marois wins a majority. “As soon as we start dangling the possibility of a referendum on the separation of Quebec, investors stop or move away,” he said.
He and his candidates hammered the PQ minority government on its economic record over its 18 months in power. “What I see now are economic indicators that are yellow or red and are flashing, telling us there is a danger,” said Jacques Daoust, the former head of Investissement Québec, the government’s investment arm, and now Liberal candidate in the riding of Verdun. “They tell us, be careful, you’re headed for a wall.”
Martin Coiteux, an economist at the Bank of Canada and at Montreal’s HEC business school running in the riding of Nelligan, said that by increasing taxes, slowing northern development and reducing infrastructure spending, the PQ has created a gloomy climate for business.
“Since Ms. Marois came to power, what I have seen is Quebec’s economic engines being turned off one after another,” he said.
Carlos Leitao said he is prepared to trade his job as chief economist with the Laurentian Bank to run for the Liberals in the riding of Robert-Baldwin because he fears for the future of the province. “For an aging society like ours with a very high level of public and private debt to slide into a zone of economic stagnation, it becomes extremely serious and worrisome,” he said.
Mr. Couillard promised the Liberals would spur the creation of 250,000 jobs in the province over a five-year mandate. He said the jobs would result from a resurrection of the Plan Nord, the development plan for Quebec’s north launched by former Liberal premier Jean Charest, a new maritime strategy and increased infrastructure spending.
“The base of Liberal economic philosophy is that jobs and prosperity are created by private entrepreneurs. That is the reality of life,” he said. “The state does not create jobs directly. The state creates an environment so private business invests and creates jobs.”
The Coalition Avenir Québec also focused on the economy Thursday, unveiling its plan to eliminate Quebec’s deficit in its first budget with a hiring freeze in the civil service and $1.3-billion in spending cuts for 2014-15. CAQ leader François Legault also vowed to recover $300-million “stolen” from taxpayers by corrupt companies awarded government contracts.
Liberal candidate Mr. Leitao, who was born in Portugal, said he had an additional reason for entering politics: The dangerous “politics of exclusion” feeding the PQ’s charter of values, which would prohibit public-sector workers from wearing conspicuous religious symbols.
“I am an immigrant. I was always welcomed. I feel I am well-integrated in Quebec society,” he said. “What I see now, where the Parti Québécois wants to lead Quebec society, it is not at all the Quebec I knew, not at all the Quebec where I feel at ease.”