Julien Daigneault is a member of Alternative Socialiste (ISA in Quebec).
Bill 61 project unmasks austerity to come
The nationalist and conservative government of François Legault has failed its legislative tour de force aiming to “restart” the Québec economy. It was unable to get its Bill 61 approved; a bill that aimed to give it extraordinary powers in order 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 from Ottawa.
Introduced on June 3, this Omnibus law on relaunching the Québec economy had as a goal to “accelerate” 202 public infrastructure projects by giving exceptional powers to the government. These projects were already planned per the Québec infrastructure plan for the upcoming 10 years, a plan concocted before the COVID-19 pandemic. The projects under the proposed Bill 61 (PL61 in French) are mostly for constructing new highways and constructing 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 CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec, the ruling government’s party) will open a neoliberal Pandora’s box by accelerating these plans.
The first draft of PL61 gave the government the right to expropriate land without any possible contestation. The granting of public contracts could be done without calls for bids. Accountability could only happen once a year and the ministers involved could not be sued. The provincial government would be allowed to skirt various laws about environmental quality, city planning, and endangered species protection, in order to speed up construction. Lastly PL61 extended the public health emergency for an indefinite period, thus giving the right to the government to continue to decree conditions in the health sector.
Saved by the end of the parliamentary session
Since the government proposed Bill 61 very late in the parliamentary session it had to obtain unanimous support from opposition parties for it to be adopted. This made the government put water in its wine in order to push the project forward. Had it not been for such a late submission, the government could have simply adopted the proposed bill using its parliamentary majority.
In the most recent version of this government project, promoters cannot simply destroy natural habitat in exchange for money. They must first seek to avoid and then minimize environmental impacts before giving out financial compensation. Also, only cities now would be able to give away 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 1, the time at which we might see a second wave of COVID-19. The government also agreed to get rid of the article that allowed its members to avoid being brought to court in exercising this new law.
Playing the game of procedures allowed opposition parties to modify the bill and eventually stop the adoption of PL61 at the end of the parliamentary session. However, the government will be free to adopt this project this fall when parliamentary work starts up again. The concessions it made were only on the surface and did not fundamentally alter the purpose of PL61.
The purpose of PL61 is to compensate the loss of profits of large private companies using public money.
Acceleration, a scheme in the service of the private sector
Prime Minister Legault asserted many times in press conference wanting to “accelerate for the elders.” But it seems his determination to “not lose any time” comes from pressure of the private sector.
The Employers’ Council claims since the end of April that the entirety of economic activities should have restarted, even as Quebec was at the peak of coronavirus-related deaths. The Federation of Chambers of Commerce wishes that PL61 measures “could become permanent” and that they would be applied to the whole private sector. The Real Estate Alliance, formed by the four most important associations of the construction and commercial real estate industry, shares the same position.
Let us be clear, PL61 is not a plan to get out of the crisis. It involves no additional investment for the public sectors which need it the most: health and social services, affordable housing, and public transport. No matter its final version, PL61 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 execute them.
Accelerating these infrastructure projects aims to finalize 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 (an public inquiry into corruption in public construction contacts, established in 2011), agree that PL61 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, led to a loss of internal expertise in project evaluations. This situation is at the root of corruption scandals having rocked the construction sector for the last few years.
On the same day that the Treasury president Christian Dubé presented PL61 in a press conference, the Auditor General of Quebec Guylaine Leclerc was releasing a report that found the MTQ is too often incapable of correctly evaluating the price of contracts it grants.
The “lightening” of procedures by PL61 would risk throwing Québec back into a new cycle of collusion and corruption. The Prime Minister himself recognized the partisanship behind his bill: the infrastructure projects were chosen proportionally to the electoral vote of the CAQ in the province’s regions!
Skirting laws to reestablish private profit
The CAQ is trying to capitalize on the current crisis to come back to the good old days of neoliberalism, maybe even to those runaway liberalism 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 large companies’ profits.
This attempt by the Québec government to evade environmental laws in times of 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. Same approach in Alberta where the government suspended its environmental rules, including accountability from companies.
Austerity is no way out
Concerning the public and para-public sectors, the Québec state is currently negotiating with unions to renew collective agreements for 2020-2025. Maintaining the public health emergency measures until October 1 will allow the government to keep total control over their work conditions until then. The policy of governing by decrees could continue until then.
The minister of health and social services, Danielle McCann, will go forward with her plans to thin out her department. From complicating hazard pay calculations to personnel schedule overhauls, anything goes to reduce government spending in times of crisis!
On June 1, the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, unveiled during an interview on state media that, following the important deficits caused by the current crisis, his government would “quickly get on the trajectory to reduce provincial debt.” Clearly, the CAQ is preparing for the great return of austerity, that which is at the origin of the COVID-19 catastrophe in Québec.
Epicenter of COVID-19 in Canada
As of June 14, 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: 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 crisis management 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 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 nursing home (private or public) or a private residence for elders. 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 already was in need of about 6,400 more orderlies per year.
Called to the rescue, the Canadian military produced a report on May 27 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 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. 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 rung the alarm regarding the deficient management in these nursing homes. Notwithstanding overwhelmingly negative reports, shushed complaints, 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 high-speed 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 the state’s 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 most colossal 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. As for the Québec government it had essentially contributed through infrastructure investments.
Twelve years later, the new economic crisis – accelerated by the pandemic – presents a danger unrivaled in history. With 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 (-18.7% or -821,000) during that same period. The closing of all construction sites on March 23 had a significant impact on these figures.
A hasty return to work
This did not stop the Legault government from using the same type of strategy that Jean Charest had used in 2008, only expanding it by an indirect support to companies of $2.5 billion. The CAQ is especially relying on aggressive back-to-work policies, without having consulted affected workers.
The first measures for restarting economic activity were announced in mid-April, with the still rising numbers of COVID-19 cases, and against the recommendations of many scientists.
Mines started up again on April 15 whereas residential construction had to wait another five days only. In early May, retail stores gradually opened up outside the greater Montreal metropolitan area. Already 90% of construction workers were back to work in 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 were 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 parliamentarians’ and big unions’ only solution.
Certainly, getting out of a crisis requires massive reinvestments in health and social services. However, to unequivocally come out of the current crisis, the state must create quality green jobs and take over private companies that provide essential medical services or produce essential medical equipment. These companies, in tandem with others in key sectors of the economy, must be placed under control of the workers. The democratic planning of production is the only way to sustainably fulfill the needs of the population.
