PQ Blows Its Chance

As the Charter of Values hearings drone on in Quebec City, the repetitive and adversarial exchanges have drained Quebecers of their energy and patience.
Although punctuated by some amusing 'redneck' testimony that has offered a bit of comic relief, the melodrama has become a painful affair that Quebecers seem ready to be done with.
I doubt if any of you out there haven't yet made up your mind as to where you stand on the issue and I'm pretty sure that the rest of Quebecers who care, have also made up their mind by now.
Enough already!

I don't know how the Charter of Values bill will fare, whether or not it will be passed, but the debate over the issue is essentially done and further discussion moot.
Yet on and on it goes, the painful and endless debate is like a nagging toothache which reminds us that the situation cannot get better with time, only worse, until the inevitable date with the dreaded dentist.
I can't imagine what another hundred or so witnesses will contribute, except to further annoy and exasperate us, trying our patience and wearing us out mentally.

And so I am getting the sense that Quebecers have had quite enough of this debate and that if the PQ is planning to hold an election over the issue, they've badly over-played their hand by dragging this out to such painful lengths.

This week was a turning point in the media, after the incredible stupidity of the 'Zombie' testimony, people on both sides of the issue were left shaking their heads in disbelief, stunned where the debate has evolved.

ZOMBIE PANIC IN QUEBEC

I've reviewed  one of the websites that features a compendium of testimony at the Charter hearings and noticed that most of the clips have precious few views.
It's perhaps understandable, considering that much of the testimony is repetitive and boring and so most clips have under a couple of hundred views. Link

Compare that to the embarrassing 'Zombie Clip which I posted on Youtube (adding English subtitles) which has passed 100,000 views since last Friday and which has garnered over 700 comments.

Clearly we are fed up and so it may very well be that the PQ and Pauline Marois have badly miscalculated, the Charter of Values essentially  'jumping the shark.'

Last week, I noticed the Francophone newspapers and television news networks turning away from the Charter story to embrace the issue of the economy and the larger issue of Quebecers living beyond their means.
Despite the fact that Pauline and the PQ have successfully steered the debate towards the politics of division, there is only so much emotion that can be tapped before the people tire.

Le Journal de Montreal ran a series of articles entitled "Le Quebec dans le rouge" (Quebec in the red) which outlined in pretty gruesome detail, the fact that Quebec is living beyond its means.

"Tomorrow, the Journal will begin publishing a major series: Quebec in the red. It will raise a fundamental problem: Quebec spends more than it can afford, and this for a long time . Its debt is crushing, yet the needed reform of the state is delayed, even though everyone knows that the eternal postponement of deadlines may make even more difficult the inevitable business of improving public finances."

The articles sparked enormous reaction and it fell to PQ ministers to downplay and reject the scholarly work by economists at Quebec's most important business school, the HEC.
According to PQ minister, Stéphane Bédard Quebecers 'aren't living above their means,' a patently ridiculous assertion, perhaps as monumentally stupid as Bernard Drainville's opinion last week, that Bill 101 had no negative effect on the Quebec economy over the years.

"You know, long-term forecasts by economists say little about what will happen, but a lot about the person who says it," he opined. Struggling this year with an announced deficit of $2.5 billion, the President of the Treasury Board remains convinced that Quebec is not in a structural deficit. Link{fr}

Huh?
There's only so much fantasy you can weave because in the end the numbers don't lie.

And so the media has cottoned to a new story, the lamentable shape of the Quebec economy and the dire prospects that is attached to spending beyond ones means.

Last week, reports surfaced that the deficit for the month of October'13 (the last reporting period) exploded to $600 million in just one month, bringing the aggregate deficit total to $1.8 billion with five more months to go in the fiscal year.
To keep to the forecasted $2.5 billion deficit each monthly deficit in the five remaining months would have to drop to about $140 million and that is well nigh impossible to expect.

I caught an interview with  ex-politician and now journalist Jean Lapierre who told viewers that insiders are telling him that the numbers have collapsed and that government revenues are falling farther and farther behind projections.

And so Pauline will likely try to take a play out of Jean Charest's playbook by calling an election before the bad news hits (remember the Caisse de dépôt  affair in 2008?)

"By calling a vote for last December, Quebec Premier Jean Charest was able to campaign for re-election before the extent of losses suffered by his province’s pension fund was known. Link

I'm not sure Quebecers are going to fall for that old stunt. Fool me once, shame on you....

The bigger issue of whether Quebec is living above it means will become the dominant issue in the next election campaign.
Given that the PQ is spending like a drunken sailor to shore up the economy, they had no choice but to stake out the position that we are not over-spending,  boxing themselves into a pretty uncomfortable corner,.

Considering the manifest evidence to the contrary, evidence that even morons who can't balance their own chequebook can readily understand, the PQ find themselves  outside the majority opinion in relation to the 'living-above-our-means' debate.
For the PQ, defending the Quebec model, is a lose, lose, situation and I'm going to enjoy watching them squirm, like the Liberals have in the Charter debate.

In politics a week or a month can be an eternity and while the PQ could have played the Charter debate into a winning election strategy, that moment has passed.
In the election campaign to come, be it sooner or later, economic considerations will be the most important issues of the day. The Charter will remain a consideration for voters, but not the oveririding issue that the PQ counted on.

As the political issues change in Quebec, so does the momentum, the political pendulum now clearly on the back swing.

Pauline has always been cautious, and now seemingly over-cautious to a fault.

It was Winston Churchill who best summed up the failure to take advantage of a favourable situation back in World War Two when a wildly successful Allied beach assault in Italy went to naught when the commanding General cautiously delayed the advance to Rome (over what were undefended roads,) giving the Germans the precious time to bring up reinforcements and re-equip those few troops in place.
It gave rise to one of Churchill's great bon mots;

"I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat into the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale!"

It's my favourite idiom regarding someone who fails to act on an advantage, even though this familiar bromide says it much more succinctly:

She who hesitates is lost!