Quebec: Charest not keen to test popularity

[Harold Schiffman]

Charest not keen to test popularity

March 10, 2008
Sean Gordon
Quebec Bureau Chief

QUEBEC CITY–Fortified by a record-setting confidence vote from his
party, Quebec Premier Jean Charest took aim yesterday at his political
foes while lowering expectations over his minority government's next
crucial test: this week's provincial budget. Though Charest won the
support of 97.2 per cent of party members at a weekend policy event –
he joked he was awaiting a congratulatory telegram from former Cuban
dictator Fidel Castro, who used to post similar numbers – he's not
overly keen to test his standing among voters. Quebec Finance Minister
Monique Jérôme-Forget will table her annual budget on Thursday, a
document Charest promised will be anything but flamboyant.

"I don't think there will be an election campaign, frankly, honestly.
I know Quebecers don't want an election campaign. There's no reason to
have an election campaign," he told a news conference. "There's not
going to be anything in this budget, by the way, that's going to be so
offensive to the official opposition parties that they're going to say
`I want to go into an election.'"  Though the most recent opinion
polls show Charest's party is ahead for the first time since it
narrowly escaped defeat last spring, the underlying trends among
francophone voters suggest the sovereignist Parti Québécois would
likely win at least a minority government if a vote were held in the
coming weeks.

And the official Opposition, l'Action démocratique du Québec, which
has slipped into distant third, is clearly anxious to avoid taking an
electoral beating. In an unusual move, the ADQ laid its cards on the
table at a brief weekend news conference at a hotel across from the
Liberal convention, pleading for "family-oriented" measures in the
budget. "We're opening the door. We're extending a hand," ADQ finance
critic Eric Caire said. Yesterday, Charest suggested he'll deliver on
those demands, and also pressed both the ADQ and the PQ to render
their verdicts on his budget Thursday night, avoiding the type of
political psychodrama that gripped the province over a budget impasse
last summer.

The convention, which was clearly intended to dispel any lingering
questions over the solidity of Charest's leadership, also sought to
reorient the party's message. Charest articulated a primarily economic
vision, aimed at creating "a new economic space for Quebec" and
"opening up the frontiers of the North." The Liberal rank-and-file
also settled on a raft of resolutions expected to result in new bills
this spring, including making water a "national resource" that would
be subject to royalties, and the expansion of both the provincial
parental leave and daycare programs.  But the convention was also
notable for what wasn't discussed.

The Liberal executive rearranged the convention schedule so that a
series of proposals on language were put off to another party meeting
in the fall. Charest said, however, that wouldn't stop him from
pressing ahead with new measures to facilitate the integration of
immigrants into the French-speaking majority and improving
French-language education, without input from a party membership whose
priorities differ on language matters. Indeed, weekend workshops on
language showed rank-and-file members are not on the same page as
party leaders who want to stick to a tougher line to avoid being
outmanoeuvred by the ADQ and PQ on questions of identity – a
difference of opinion that never made it to the convention floor.

The party also emerged from the convention without a constitutional
platform or any specific language on federal-provincial relations,
other than a desire to strike a national labour mobility agreement – a
proposal announced at a premiers' summit last summer. By skirting two
of the perennial issues in Quebec politics, Charest is instead banking
on defining himself as a competent and capable steward of the Quebec
economy.  "We are the party of the economy," he said, adding that his
government has already taken steps to cope with a possible recession.
With those claims, Charest is effectively donning the mantle of late
Liberal premier Robert Bourassa, whose key argument against the
sovereignists was that they couldn't be trusted with managing the
province.

Charest focused most of his partisan attacks on PQ Leader Pauline
Marois, invoking ADQ Leader Mario Dumont's name only once.
He road-tested some new attack lines against Marois and the PQ, saying
the party wants to take Quebec back to "an era that exists only in
their minds."  "What do we see when we look closely at what the PQ and
ADQ are saying? Close-mindedness, or worse, a turn inward," he said.
"The reaction to change cannot be wariness."

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/326818

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