The fate of Philippe Couillard's government rests on six cabinet ministers, broken down into two groups. Contrary to a well-entrenched political tradition, there is no lawyer among them. Their mandate is to drastically cut public expenses so that the government can reach its goal of Zero Deficit by the end of 2016. This year will be crucial, as the labour unions and the various groups hurt by the austerity measures are mounting a huge battle against what they describe, in a gross overstatement, as "the demolition of the Quebec model."
The first group is made up of two economists, Treasury Board president Martin Coiteux and Finance Minister Carlos Leitao, and former banker Jacques Daoust, who is in charge of economic development. The second group consists of three physicians: Mr. Couillard himself, a former neurosurgeon, Health Minister Gaétan Barrette, a radiologist and former head of the powerful Federation of Specialist Physicians, and Yves Bolduc, a general practitioner in charge of the Education portfolio. Mr. Bolduc is the only weak link in the group. He's made so many blunders that many observers expect him to be replaced by the end of the year.
Will the government fail? Will public anger grow to such a degree that substantial reforms will become politically unthinkable? Such an outcome is possible, considering the experience of the former Jean Charest Liberal government, whose first move in 2003, at the outset of its nine-year reign, promised to "re-engineer" the province's costly state apparatus. By the end of the first year of the first mandate, the project was buried under the outcries of the public-sector unions.
The Couillard government has two advantages over Mr. Charest's, though. First, the second opposition party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, which is popular among suburban francophone voters, basically agrees with the government's economic agenda, while the leaderless Parti Québécois, the official opposition, is busy for the best part of the year with its own leadership race.
Second, unlike Mr. Charest, a career politician whose main goal was to be re-elected, Mr. Couillard and his key ministers all had successful careers in the private sector and their hands are not tied by an overwhelming desire to stay in politics. Thus they're mentally equipped to sustain a great deal of public furor. Most of them are there to do a job – that is to reduce Quebec's astonishing overspending – and if they fail they'll go back to their former activities.
Currently, the action is spread over several fronts. For instance, public-sector employees will see their salaries frozen and their pensions reduced. Teachers will see increased class sizes. The extravagant daycare program and public funding for fertility treatments will be drastically streamlined, with richer families paying a larger part of the costs. Physicians, especially GPs, whose average productivity has declined as their revenues were going up, will be stuck with new regulations forcing them to see more patients.
The government's calculation – and its hope – is that after two tough years of cuts and various sacrifices, the reward will come in 2017, as a rebalanced budget will allow the government to set up new popular measures in time for the 2018 provincial election. This is the traditional approach of governments bent on rationalizing public spending. It worked at the federal level. But Quebec is a smaller society where the notion of acquired rights is extremely strong and public protests can rapidly reach epidemic proportions. So we'll see.
Lysiane Gagnon