Shift your gaze a little to the left at its protectionist leanings
MONTREAL: If economic conservatives are looking for the great right-wing hope in Quebec’s election campaign, they may have to shift their gaze a little to the left.
The Coalition Avenir Quebec – headed by millionaire businessman Francois Legault – has billed itself the champion of small businesses and defender of the province’s entrepreneurial spirit.
But in the party’s platform, plans to slash taxes sit alongside a promise to prevent foreign takeovers. The benefits of risk-taking are vaunted, right next to a pledge that a CAQ government will play a bigger role in protecting business.
For an ostensibly fiscal-conservative party, its policies leave some economists wondering what it has against the free market.
After reading through the CAQ’s platform, Laval University economist Stephen Gordon described it as “pork piled upon pork.”
“It’s basically a businessman’s wish list,” he said.
“But that’s not the same thing as being market-based.”
The CAQ has cast itself as the party of change in the Quebec election campaign. The early success in recruiting anti-corruption crusader Jacques Duchesneau has allowed it to steal the limelight from its more established counterparts.
But lost in the background are the party’s economic proposals.
Some are indeed fiscally conservative. It would use 10% of resource royalties to bring Quebec’s debt down to the national average; eliminate 7,000 civil-service jobs; cut personal income taxes and fees by $1.8 billion over five years.
Although Quebec’s jobless rate is now closer to the national average than it has been for decades, it still lags slightly behind the national norm.
Legault says he wants to revive the entrepreneurial spirit in Quebec.
“We don’t take chances anymore in Quebec,” Legault said at a recent campaign stop.
“To succeed in business, what’s important is the batting average… There will always be failures, but if we are too afraid of failure then we’ll stop innovating in Quebec.”
Warning to free-market economist: There’s a catch.
When Legault speaks of a “batting average,” the bat-swinger he’s talking about is the state. What he’s arguing is that the state shouldn’t fear picking winners and losers because, if it invests strategically, it will do more harm than good over time.
And the entrepreneurial spirit Legault speaks of would be supported by the province’s public pension fund – which, to a certain way of economic thinking, is a dangerous and counter-productive idea.
Such economists warn that pension funds fare worse when guided by politics. And they say that if you want to stifle innovation in an economy, an excellent way to go about doing that is to provide assurance to your businesses that you’ll protect them from foreign competitors.
Legault plans to direct $5 billion from the Caisse de depot, the province’s $160 billion pension manager, to a new natural-resources fund that would buy a stake of up to 49 per cent in extraction businesses.
He would also force the Caisse to invest in large Quebec businesses to help them repel foreign takeovers – a timely promise, given the current U.S. bid for the Rona hardware chain.
On the eve of the campaign, Legault spoke out against the takeover by American rival Lowe’s. More recently he tweeted his opposition to Bell’s proposed merger with Astral Media saying, “Another company headquarters leaves Quebec! That’s enough, this has to change!”