François Legault won a resounding victory with 90 MEPs elected last autumn. Many challenges await the CAQ team as many sections of Quebec society are in a poor position.
Overview of a formative year:
Restoring health… one stone at a time
Shortly before Christmas, Minister Christian Dubé announced that he intended to present a bill to regulate and tighten the screws in private employment agencies. Health’s pilot is well-intentioned and well-liked by Quebecers, but he needs to show he can reverse the trend. It is imperative to reduce the mandatory overtime of caregivers, which makes the public grid very unattractive. Improvements also need to be made to frontline care access desks. The other important health mission: to catch up on the surgeries postponed because of the pandemic.
solutions in education
During his inaugural speech last November, the Prime Minister reiterated that “the top priority remains education, the greatest lever for personal and collective development”. But new incumbent Bernard Drainville has not yet spelled out his course of action. There is something to worry about. The Quebec Auditor General announced that the Department of Education does not have a clear picture of the delays in education that have occurred during two years of Covid. And the dropout rates haven’t been updated since. The teachers benefited from a significant salary increase, as promised by the CAQ. You must now get more resources to avoid overcrowded classes with special needs students.
shortage of staff at the farm
The Minister of Justice has improved the system, notably by setting up special courts for sex crimes and domestic violence and by improving the compensation system for crime victims.
It must be frustrating for Simon Jolin-Barrette to find himself in a crisis because the Quebec Court of Justice judges have decided to sit every other day.
There was already a serious shortage of staff. But alongside finding court clerks and police officers to ensure the trials go ahead, the minister must find a solution to his showdown with Chief Justice Rondeau.
language and immigration
Only he knows why, François Legault has decided to end his confrontational tone towards the federal government after nevertheless making regaining powers over immigration a matter of “nation’s survival”. And that, even if Justin Trudeau openly dreams of a Canada of 100 million people, where Quebec would take in 112,000 immigrants a year.
French-speaking Quebecers will be drowned in the Trudeau Plan. The chief caquiste knows it. It must develop a robust strategy and build ramparts for Quebec. Then, as he recognized himself, Law 96 modernizing the Charter of the French Language is not enough. The Legault government must therefore come up with new initiatives to promote the language.
Answers for the 3rd link
The Québec-Lévis tunnel project became a national tangle for François Legault during the election campaign because he hardly had any answers to give. This will therefore be the year of the publication of a needs study that must take into account the new reality of teleworking. It will also someday require the government to disclose the results of drilling conducted over the past two years. The initiative costs billions, has bad press, and has its fair share of detractors in Quebec, but it is wanted by a majority of citizens in the Capitale-Nationale and Chaudière-Appalaches.
It’s up to the government to show it’s not a scam.
