(Quebec) A drop in petrol prices, the opening of a new front with unions and a reduction in the basket of services to asylum seekers are envisaged by the Legault government.
Caquistes are immersed in the midst of reflection pending the ministerial reshuffle, attempted Prime Minister François Legault to relaunch his unpopular government.
This reckooring of cards is expected after the Labor Day (1is september). The return of the National Assembly is scheduled for September 16, but we juggle the idea of repelling this return to the room.
François Legault could extend the session and open a new one later. He would then pronounce a new inaugural message, an opening speech of the session.
This exercise is used to present the government’s roadmap by the end of the mandate in a year.
The context was different, but during his first mandate, François Legault had extended the session and opened a new one in the fall of 2021, a year before the general elections.
In a gesture rarely seen, François Legault telegraphed his ministerial reshuffle from the end of June. The work has since slowed down in the cabinets and the administrative machine, where new bosses and new mandates are expected.
Tackle
However, a stirring is underway at the Caquists. Some ideas stand out and are in the boxes.
They are added to the nationalist and identity match plan already planned, with the Quebec draft constitution and the strengthening of secularism.
Marot of the conservative chief Éric Duhaime, the predilection theme of the PQ chief Paul St-Pierre Plamondon last spring, the prize of petrol is a source of concern to the government.
The latter plans to reduce it, but the means does not seem clear at this stage, although an obvious route is to reduce the tax on petrol.
Éric Duhaime wants Quebec to come out of the carbon market – which is the only political leader to offer – and decreases the tax on petrol.
Photo Philippe Boivin, the press archives
The drop in gasoline is a source of concern to the government.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon proposed last spring to partially harmonize the price of petrol with Ontario, then deploring a difference of 20 cents per liter. He suggested a reduction in gasoline tax.
The measure would cost between $ 700 and $ 800 million, according to him and could be funded in different ways: a puncture in the “green fund” (electrification and climate change funds), another in the government’s consolidated fund (the account in which government revenues are paid) and a tax on oil profits.
The petrol price file has become a warm subject following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to abolish the carbon tax in force elsewhere in the country (but not in Quebec, where carbon pricing goes through the carbon market). He cut the grass under the foot of his conservative opponent Pierre Hairyvre, who had made this measure a flagship promise.
Union contributions
The government also intends to open a new front with the unions. It is a question, for example, of restricting the use of contributions by unions.
In June, the young Caquists adopted a proposal in this sense, so that the contributions “do not serve for supporters or out of their mission”. François Legault had campaigned for such a measure in 2014, without however implementing it once in power.
At the Congress of young people from his party, the Prime Minister said they are “right” to want to tighten the screw to the unions, but he did not make a clear commitment.
“When we see, among other things, a union that uses members’ money to contest law 21 on secularism, it may not be what we want in Quebec,” he deplored on June 7, alluding to the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE).
In his speech, he also referred to another proposal from the young people of his party, that aimed at that “the resolutions taken by union associations and students authorizing the triggering of a strike, a position or an expenditure not in their mission are subject to a voting by majority of their members”.
“Voting strikes after exhaustion at 2 am is perhaps not the best way to make important decisions,” said Legault.
Caquist deputies relay the proposals of young people internally, but some go further, going so far as to question the Rand formula – an option that François Legault has always been rejected so far.
Under the Formula Rand, all employees of a union work environment are automatically members of the union and pay contributions, deducted by the employer and paid to the union.
In return, the union has the obligation to defend all members.
The government therefore did not finish with the unions after having led a significant charge last spring. We only have to think of the laws limiting the exercise of the right to strike and forcing unions to be transparent on their financial statements.
Asylum seekers
Quebec has been asking for a long time, in vain, that Ottawa reduces in half – from around 160,000 to 80,000 – the number of asylum seekers present in the province. François Legault has already suggested forcing them to move elsewhere to the country.
Quebec has already studied various options last year to encourage them to leave Quebec without however going ahead: paying compensation to the applicants in exchange for their departure, paying their transport to another province or reducing the services offered by the State as a drop in the amount of social assistance.
In 2024, more than $ 500 million in social assistance were paid to asylum seekers.
Evoked last spring, the idea of reducing the basket of services offered to asylum seekers is going into discussions in Quebec at the moment. These services are expensive and raise a problem of equity compared to taxpayers, it is said.