François Legault’s ‘government of accountants’ is under attack for its spendthrift ways

OTTAWA — Youri Chassin, an economist and member of the Quebec National Assembly, unleashed a scathing attack on his own party when he announced his resignation from the CAQ caucus last month.

“The party of equality between generations presented the largest budget deficit in the history of Quebec, at $11 billion!” he wrote, in Le Journal de Montréal.

The increased spending and increase in the number of civil servants has been too much for Chassin, who was first elected in 2018. “Rather than lightening structures and bureaucracy, we hired at full capacity and spent at unprecedented levels, creating several new public bodies in the process,” he wrote.

In a September interview with the National Post, Chassin said he felt resigning was his only option. He wanted to shock his former boss. He wanted to wake him up.

Legault, he said, had lost his way. The premier, who has boasted repeatedly over the years about being an accountant and having a “solid” economic team with four accountants at the top of the government hierarchy, is not delivering. The government of accountants has generated the largest deficit in Quebec history.

“I’m not too sure where they got their license to be named professional accountants honestly, because they’re not doing the job that needs to be done,” said Quebec Liberals’ finance critic Frédéric Beauchemin.

As he begins the second half of his second term, François Legault is facing increasing criticism over his management of public finances. Even within his own team.

“The CAQ needs to pull itself together because we are reaching the midpoint of the mandate. It is now or never, we will not have any other opportunities,” said Chassin.

The president of the Quebec Public Service Union, Christian Daigle, tends to agree that something must change. Daigle represents over 26,000 workers who serve directly the Quebec population. Its members are road workers, police officers and court clerks, for instance.

In 2018, the CAQ leader promised to cut 5,000 bureaucratic jobs. Six years later, the government added over 10,000 workers. The government now has 78,836 full-time equivalent civilian servants. Last year, the government added 4,000 employees to its bureaucracy reportedly to manage the large amount of asylum seekers and IT problems at the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec.

Over the last decade, Daigle said his membership has stayed about the same. The government says this is inaccurate and there was, actually, an increase.

Asked what these new bureaucrats do every day, Daigle looked baffled. “They were hired in other senior positions, managerial positions, director positions or attaché positions, I don’t really know where. I don’t really know what they do,” he said.

In an interview, Quebec Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel maintained that her government has had to make serious financial decisions in recent years, adding billions to improve services to Quebecers that have been cut in the past.

“When you look at the raw numbers for staff growth, you can’t say, ‘oh my God, that’s outrageous!’ without looking at what those numbers confirm,” said LeBel.

And what do they confirm? She said that more than 90 per cent of those workers offers direct services to citizens when you combine the public service and the health and education networks. She also added that people are needed “to administer the new programs that we’re putting in place.”

“However, our challenge and our desire for the past few years has been to question each of the additions of administrative staff, but not the service to the population,” said Minister LeBel.

The government has not set a specific target for its civil service, but it wants to better manage staffing levels. “We will never stop adding teachers, nurses and nursing assistants when we have to keep up with population growth,” she added.

The government has injected billions of dollars into health, education, transports and IT. Nurses and teachers have been hired, but the CAQ has also centralized services. It created the Quebec Health Agency, a separate entity led by “top guns” executives from the private sector, as Health Minister Christian Dubé (an accountant) put it. And Quebec has granted 17.4 per cent salary increases to government employees in the areas of education, health and social services.

“Does it make sense that we just keep on growing the size of the government faster than the size of the population? For me, that just doesn’t jive,” says Beauchemin adding that his party often feels like “the only adult in the room”.

According to the Montreal Economic Institute, the Legault government has injected $50 billion in new spending since 2018.

“François Legault has a higher growth rate in spending than the last 20 years combined… We were basically told that this is a government that manages public finances well, but when you look at the reality, we are very, very far away,” said Gabriel Giguère, a senior policy analyst at the institute.

At the same time, the government cut income taxes last year, a measure that costs more than $1 billion in revenue each year.

In Quebec, the Legault government’s spending has united the left and right to denounce billions in expenditures for little reward on services.

“It’s a record that is rather thin, I would say… In many places, delays are increasing, in many places, citizens are dissatisfied,” said Daigle.

In 2023-2024, the Québec ombudsman concluded that there were 13,045 reasons for requests concerning public services to citizens, an increase of 3.1 per cent compared to the previous year. Approximately 35 per cent of these requests were deemed justified, also an increase compared to previous years.

Geneviève Tellier, a professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa, believes that the Legault government fears a backlash among the population if it were to exercise budgetary rigour.

“It must find ways to offer services, quality services to the population,” she says. “I think it has no choice but to spend even if it is probably not what it wants,” she adds.

Meanwhile, Minister LeBel has her eyes fixed on “optimizing” the state. And, after years of spending, if budgetary prudence takes hold in Quebec it could even bring Youri Chassin back to the CAQ caucus.

“I still have my card,” he said.

National Post [email protected]

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