With little to say on coronavirus, is Quebec's budget 'of the future' out of sync with the present?
Finance minister’s budget bets outbreak is more public health than economic problem
As he rose in the National Assembly on Tuesday afternoon to table the provincial budget, Finance Minister Eric Girard declared "we have confidence in the future."
It's the sort of pat statement you can expect from a finance minister on budget day, or any politician, frankly, on days that end in y.
But these are not normal times. The COVID-19 outbreak, combined with an emerging oil price war, sent markets tumbling on Monday.
Though they recovered somewhat on Tuesday, the volatility only increased expectations that the big economies will see slower growths in the months ahead, if not an outright recession.
Girard's confidence in the future — reflected in a budget based on GDP growth projected at two per cent — makes him a somewhat lonely figure at the moment.
His budget speech made all of one reference to coronavirus, and the budget itself contained no specific measures to deal with the outbreak or its economic consequences.
In Ottawa, by contrast, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Tuesday that the virus will have "significant economic impacts for Canadians." Trudeau is expected to announce mitigation measures later today.
Even U.S. President Donald Trump, who spent weeks downplaying the risks of COVID-19, is now preparing a stimulus package.
This is not to say the Quebec government is sitting on its hands as the number of cases mount slowly in the province.
The government is readying clinics to speed up testing and ensuring hospitals have the resources in place to treat patients safely.
But in Girard's eyes, coronavirus appears to be primarily a public health problem for the moment.
WATCH: Finance minister explains the numbers behind the budget
The Quebec economy is structurally sound enough, he said, to withstand whatever blows it will suffer over the coming months, be it oil shocks or tightened consumer spending.
Carlos Leitão, the finance critic for the Opposition Liberals, suggested otherwise. He's calling for contingency funds and further budget updates to respond to an evolving situation.
In claiming Girard's budget "lacked prudence," Leitão is hoping to demonstrate the government is out of touch with public anxieties.
Meagre efforts on climate change
The ambivalent response to global economic uncertainty is not the only way Girard's budget "of the future" appears out of sync with the present.
With great fanfare, Girard unveiled a plan to spend $6.7 billion over the next six years on measures to deal with climate change.
On closer inspection, though, this too comes across as a timid response to the climate crisis, due to cause a host of economic problems of its own.
Of the $6.7 billion, only $322 million will be spent this year (though spending is set to rise to $1 billion in 2021-2022).
And of that $322 million, only $118 million will go into tackling emissions in the transport sector, which is responsible for the bulk of Quebec's emissions.
A chief cause of those emissions, as the budget documents readily acknowledge, is the perennial popularity of SUVs and other light trucks.
Quebec, to its credit, decided to maintain a generous tax rebate on purchases of electric vehicles.
But it ignored a suggestion made by several environmental groups, in the pre-budget consultations, to bring in a feebate system.
This is a policy tool, lauded by the International Monetary Fund among others, that would impose fees on consumers who buy polluting vehicles, in order to offer rebates to those who buy more fuel-efficient ones.
As it stands, more Quebecers are buying way more gas-guzzlers than plug-ins. And as long as that's the case, it will be very difficult for the province to meet its emission targets.
How old are those targets?
Those targets, by the way, are out-of-date.
Premier François Legault's government has committed itself to bringing Quebec's emissions 37.5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030.
That target was set by Philippe Couillard's Liberal government in 2015, in the run-up to what became known as the Paris Agreement.
At the time, it was a fairly ambitious target. The problem, though, is that the science on climate change has since evolved.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group of researchers whose work informs the Paris targets, now says that reductions of 45 per cent below 2010 levels are required by 2030 to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.
For Quebec, that means annual emissions should be around 45 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (Mt of CO₂e), if it wants to be doing its fair share in the fight against climate change.
But the government's goal is only to get to 54 Mt of CO₂e by 2030. Meanwhile, the latest figures available suggest the province was responsible for 79 Mt of CO₂e in 2017.
In other words, Quebec is giving itself an easier emissions target and taking a go-slow approach to meeting it. That's a luxury we can no longer afford, according to climate scientists.
On Tuesday, not long before Girard tabled his budget, UN secretary general António Guterres presented a report of his own.
His dealt with the latest evidence on climate change. "We are currently way off track to meeting either the 1.5 or 2 degree targets that the Paris agreement calls for," Guterres said.
Girard's budget may be dressed in the rhetorical finery of the future, but in many ways it's out of touch with the emergencies of the present.
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