Bouchard plan is hardly revolutionary

William Watson
The Gazette (Montreal)

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

The first thing to realize about the manifesto A Clear-eyed Vision for Quebec that Lucien Bouchard and 11 other Quebec notables brought out last month, is that it isn't really revolutionary, except perhaps in one respect.

That one respect is its call for ideological tolerance. We should get rid of policy taboos, they say. All alternatives should be on the table. It shouldn't be the case, for instance, that within the government sector, only the tenured members of the Supreme Court talk about the possibility of private supply of health care. People who suggest different ways of doing things shouldn't immediately be pilloried.

That message is as important in the rest of the country as it is here. There are too many policy alternatives in Canada that dare not speak their name. More power to Bouchard for having said so. (Well, not exactly more power to him. We saw 10 years ago where that led. But do give him credit for saying what needs to be said.)

But apart from that, the manifesto really isn't very revolutionary. In one of their first paragraphs, the clear-eyed 12 say "We are ... convinced that it is not at all necessary to throw out our societal model to address the challenges" that now confront Quebec.

The 12 don't want to give up on "solidarity," or caring, as it's called in the rest of the country. But they do want to get rid of controls, monopolies and paralysis. Thus, they would free up tuition so our universities could upgrade themselves, but they would tie the repayment of student loans to income, so low-income Quebecers wouldn't have to repay. They would raise electricity rates so the benefits of Quebec's most important natural resource went to all Quebecers, not just big industrial electricity users, and they would use the resulting revenues to help finance, for instance, massive investments in education. That's hardly right wing.

The 12 don't actually say much about health care but presumably some among them would want to free up supply to let in all providers - public, private, non-profit, you name it - while still making sure through government regulation or finance that everyone had access to the system.

The idea we should use the market more to make sure public services are performed cheaply and efficiently but at the same time guarantee access by using the power of the public purse is now pretty standard in lots of jurisdictions. For anyone who thinks it's radical or revolutionary, there is a two-word answer: Tony Blair.

Flexible, responsive public services that are subjected to competition are the hallmark of his Third Way. New ideas do sometimes take a long time to seep through Canadian permafrost, but this one has been around for literally decades now.

The one other way in which the manifesto really is revolutionary is when it says: "Every person, group and leader must resist the first reflex, which is ubiquitous in Quebec today: protecting their interests and appealing to the government to intervene."

In Canada, too, they might have added. The mythology of Canadian politics is that big government is the tangible expression of our altruism. The reality is lots of people, not just those who get to expense their chewing gum, do very well out of it. A main reason the resistance to making government smaller and taxes lower is large numbers of people, not all of them deserving, would lose as a result. When the unions send their members into the street at the slightest provocation, is it really the public interest that motivates them?

The 12 evidently think pressure groups can be persuaded to give up their privileges for the greater good and that as a result difficult changes can be made with almost everyone on board.

If we can do that, then "Vive la Revolution!" But we should believe it when we see it.