The nationalist and conservative government of François Legault has failed to gain approval for Bill 61, a legislative tour de force aimed at “restarting” the Québec economy, which aimed to give it extraordinary powers to speed up infrastructure projects that would be taken on by the private sector. The Prime Minister promises to try again this fall. Until then, he will continue to lead the Canadian province most hit by COVID-19 using austerity decrees, while benefiting from a historic financial aid package from Ottawa.
Introduced on June 3rd, this omnibus (all-encompassing) law has the goal of “accelerating” 202 public infrastructure projects, which had already been included in the Québec infrastructure plan for the upcoming 10 years even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bill 61 has the goal of “accelerating” 202 public infrastructure projects, which had already been included in the Québec infrastructure plan for the upcoming 10 years even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
They are mostly for constructing new highways, building and renovating hospitals and nursing homes. A smaller number of these projects are to renovate or expand schools.
Some of these projects are needed to maintain important public services. However, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), the party leading the government, will open a neoliberal Pandora’s box by accelerating these plans.
The first draft of Bill 61 gave the government the right to expropriate land without legal appeal and grant state contracts without public tendering. Accountability would only happen once a year and the ministers involved could not be sued. It also allowed the provincial government to skirt around laws on environmental quality, city planning, and endangered species protection in order to speed up construction. Finally, it extended the public health emergency for an indefinite period, thus giving the government the right to continue to decree conditions in the health sector.
Saved by the end of the parliamentary session
As the government proposed Bill 61 very late in the parliamentary session, it needed unanimous support from opposition parties for it to be adopted. This meant the proposal had to be watered down. Had it not been for the late submission, the government could have simply adopted the proposed bill using its parliamentary majority.
In the most recent version of this government project, participants cannot simply destroy natural habitat in exchange for money. They must first seek to avoid and then minimize environmental impacts and then provide financial compensation. Now only city authorities will be able to grant contracts without following the norms laid out in the law on public contracts.
The government also agreed to limit the public health emergency to October 1st, the period when we might see a second wave of COVID-19. It was also forced to drop the article that prevented its members from being taken to court for implementing this new law.
By using procedural maneuvers, the opposition parties were able to modify the bill and eventually stop its adoption at the end of the parliamentary session. However, the government will be free to adopt this project in the fall, when parliamentary work starts up again. The concessions that have been made are only superficial, and do not fundamentally alter the purpose of Bill 61, which is to compensate for the loss of profits of large private companies using public money.
Acceleration to benefit the private sector
Prime Minister Legault has asserted many times in press conferences that “acceleration is for the elderly.” But it seems his determination to “not lose time” comes as a result of from the private sector.
The Employers’ Council has, since the end of April, claimed that the entire economic activity of the country should be restarted, even as Quebec was at the peak of coronavirus-related deaths. The Federation of Chambers of Commerce wants Bill 61 measures to “become permanent” and applied to the whole private sector. The Real Estate Alliance, consisting of the four most important associations of the construction and commercial real estate industry, shares the same position.
Bill 61 is not a plan to get out of the crisis. It involves no additional investment for those public sectors which need it most: health and social services, affordable housing, and public transport. Whatever its final version, Bill 61 will benefit first and foremost private engineering and consulting firms that will be in charge of the projects, and the large construction companies that will implement them.
The acceleration of these infrastructure projects means the finalization of contracts, and thus profits, as fast as possible even if this means hurting our health, polluting our environment, and managing public money in an opaque and arbitrary way.
An opportunity for corruption and collusion
The majority of oversight organizations, including the Citizens Protector and the follow-up committee of the Charbonneau Commission, the public inquiry into corruption in public construction contacts, established in 2011, agree that Bill 61 will open the door to organized crime, corruption and collusion.
Decades of cuts in public services, particularly for engineer positions in the Ministry of Transportation of Québec (MTQ) and within municipalities, has led to a loss of internal expertise in project evaluations. This situation is at the root of the corruption scandals which have rocked the construction sector for the last few years.
On the same day that the Treasury president Christian Dubé presented Bill 61 in a press conference, the Auditor General of Quebec, Guylaine Leclerc, released a report that said that the MTQ is too often incapable of correctly evaluating the price of contracts it grants.
The relaxation of procedures envisaged by Bill 61 will risk throwing Québec back into a new cycle of collusion and corruption. The Prime Minister himself has recognized the partisanship behind his bill: the infrastructure projects were chosen in line with the proportion of votes cast for the CAQ in the province’s regions!
Skirting laws to reestablish private profit
The CAQ is trying to capitalize on the current crisis to return to the good old days of neoliberalism, maybe even to those runaway liberal days of the 1930s under Maurice Duplessis. This type of “free” market economics, freed as much as possible from the constraints of the state, ultimately only accomplishes one goal: to guarantee the profits of large companies.
This attempt by the Québec government to evade environmental laws during the pandemic is part of a Canadian trend. For example, Justin Trudeau’s federal government announced in early June that marine oil exploration off the coast of Newfoundland would be exempt from the required environmental evaluation process. The same approach is followed in Alberta where the government has suspended its environmental rules, including accountability, for companies.
Austerity is no way out
The Québec state is currently negotiating with unions in the public and partly state-controlled sectors to renew collective agreements for 2020–2025. Maintaining the public health emergency measures until October 1st will allow the government to keep total control over their work conditions and continue the policy of rule by decree until then.
The Minister of Health and Social services, Danielle McCann, is proceeding with her plans to reduce her department’s staff. To do this she is introducing complicated hazard pay calculations and overhauling personnel schedules, using any excuse to reduce government spending in times of crisis!
On June 1st, the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, during an interview on state media, revealed that following the serious deficits caused by the current crisis, his government would “quickly get on the trajectory of reducing provincial debt.” Clearly, the CAQ is preparing for the return of massive austerity, which is what lies at the origin of the COVID-19 catastrophe in Québec.
Epicenter of COVID-19 in Canada
As of June 14th, more than 5,222 people have died of COVID-19 in Québec. This represents 64% of all deaths in Canada. Québec accounts for more than 54% of all infections in the country (53,952 out of 98,787), even though the province only represents 23% of the population. Many reasons have been brought forward to explain the greater prevalence of COVID-19 in Québec, including an early spring break, the population being older, overall population health, etc.
Others, starting with the Director of Public Health in Québec Dr. Horatio Arruda, have attempted to hide the ineffective management of the crisis by personifying the coronavirus as a roaming beast that could hit at any instant.
But the massacre in nursing homes has forced everyone to admit the obvious. Decades of budget austerity and a runaway race for profit have caused the critical lack of personnel, awful work conditions and salaries, crumbling infrastructure, lack of space, dysfunctional services, and even known criminals owing private nursing homes.
At least 85% of the people who died from COVID-19 in Québec lived in a private or public nursing home, or in private residences for the elderly. More than 200 of these establishments are still affected by the epidemic. The work conditions of orderlies responsible for basic care are so bad that only 38% of them are still on the job five years after starting. Before the pandemic, the health care system was already in need of about 6,400 more orderlies per year.
Having been called to rescue the situation, the Canadian military produced a report on May 27th on the work of their 1,350 employees who worked in 25 Québec nursing homes during the crisis. The report highlights the disastrous policies of managers. It underlines their inability to manage contaminated zones, their neglect in overseeing the correct use of protection equipment, and the lack of personnel.
The massacre in the private sector
It is no coincidence that the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 are concentrated in fully private nursing homes.
It is no coincidence that the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 are concentrated in fully private nursing homes.
Even though these only represent 9.7% of all nursing homes, they make up about a third of “red listed” establishments, meaning those with more than 25% of residents being infected.
Already in 2012, the Auditor General of Québec had rsounded the alarm regarding the poor management of these nursing homes. Notwithstanding overwhelmingly negative reports, complaints covered up, and strikes for better work conditions in nursing homes, the CAQ put all its eggs in one basket by moving elderly hospital patients to nursing homes, releasing many hospital beds to confront the coronavirus. This strategy was catastrophic, it infected many nursing homes.
With the diminishing numbers of infections and deaths in June, the Legault government is gearing up for a rapid ending of confinement. Bill 61 brings up the issue of a general, safe return to work, that is, of a real plan to get out of this health, ecological and economic crisis.
More vulnerable to a second wave
Even though the curve has flattened, and the numbers of cases and deaths related to COVID-19 are going down, workers still do not have access to reliable information on contagion nor on the status of stocks of personal protective equipment. The shortage of health care workers is worse than before: 5,000 workers are infected and many more have quit from exhaustion. Hospital emergency rooms remain dangerously close to or even over their maximum capacity.
The government’s strategy is throwing us right into a second wave of infections, probably in the fall. Ottawa has just decided to extend the Canada Emergency Response Benefit to 24 weeks. However, chances are the different governments will claim in the fall that their coffers are “empty.” Without public programs to stimulate personal consumption, capitalist governments will have but one option to “relaunch” the economy: cuts in salaries, work conditions, and jobs.
Between austerity and state money
The Legault government can afford to remain in austerity mode since the Canadian government is doing a lot of spending. Most of the financial aid handed out since the start of the pandemic to companies and individuals having lost revenue has come from Ottawa. Already in mid-May, the federal government had announced $154 billion in direct aid. This is the largest program to save the economy in the history of the country.
During the 2008 financial crisis, Stephen Harper’s conservative government only injected $40 billion over two years. The Québec government had essentially contributed through infrastructure investments.
Twelve years later, the new economic crisis — accelerated by the pandemic — presents a danger unrivaled in history. During the confinement, the unemployment rate in Québec went from 4.5% in February to 17% in April. The province suffered the most pronounced job loss in Canada — a fall of 18.7% or 821,000 more people unemployed. The closing of all construction sites on March 23rd had a significant impact on these figures.
A hasty return to work
This did not prevent the Legault government from repeating the strategy that Jean Charest had used in 2008, only expanding it with indirect support to companies of $2.5 billion. The CAQ is especially relying on aggressive back-to-work policies, without any consultation with those workers affected.
The first measures for restarting economic activity were announced in mid-April, when the number of COVID-19 cases was still rising, and against the recommendations of many scientists.
Mines started up again on April 15th, residential construction had to wait just another five days. In early May, retail stores gradually opened up outside the greater Montreal metropolitan area. Already 90% of construction workers had returned to work by mid-May, a week before the complete reopening of construction sites. Primary schools, daycare centers, and the manufacturing sector also restarted in mid-May. According to the Statistics Institute of Québec, the relaunch lowered the unemployment rate to 13.7% and employment rose in May, but at what price? Commenting on the ending of the confinement measures at the end of April, Dr. Arruda was hoping that “not too many people would die.” Since then, more than 2,700 deaths have been added to the sinister count.
Leaving the austerity cycle
There does exist an alternative to the vicious circle of austerity/state intervention/austerity. Filling the pockets of the private sector with public money at each crisis is not a sustainable solution, even though this seems to be the only solution proposed by parliamentarians and the large unions.
Certainly, getting out of this crisis requires massive re-investments in health and social services. This means the state must create quality green jobs and take over private companies that provide essential medical services or produce essential medical equipment. These companies, as well as the banks and major companies in the key sectors of the economy, must be taken into public ownership with workers’ control and management. The democratic planning of production is the only way to sustainably fulfil the needs of the population.
