Remaniement ministériel

Remaniement ministériel majeur à Québec :
Séguin expulsé du Conseil des ministres

Québec - Avec un gouvernement en chute libre dans les sondages, et une cascade de faux pas, Jean Charest va tenter aujourd'hui de renverser la vapeur en annonçant un remaniement majeur de son Conseil des ministres.

Mais pour y arriver, le premier ministre a décidé de prendre des risques énormes. Yves Séguin, le populaire ministre des Finances, a été expulsé hier du gouvernement après avoir refusé le ministère de la Justice, confirmait-on hier soir au cabinet de M. Charest.

M. Séguin représentait " un problème de confiance " pour M. Charest. Il était depuis des mois sous haute surveillance, " manquait de solidarité ", soutenait-on hier donnant en exemple une entente de coulisse avec le péquiste François Legault sur un projet de loi sur la Caisse de dépôt et son obstination à bloquer, pendant des mois, une entente sur les infrastructures avec Ottawa. M. Séguin s'opposait en outre fondamentalement aux baisses d'impôts promises par le PLQ, ajoute-t-on. Demander à M. Séguin de quitter les Finances équivaut à le congédier, expliquaient en fin de soirée des vétérans libéraux. Dès son recrutement en 2003, M. Séguin n'avait pas caché qu'il n'acceptait qu'à la condition d'aller aux Finances.

M. Séguin n'avait rien vu venir de ce coup de force jusqu'à ce que le cabinet du premier ministre lui demande de rester à Québec hier- il devait partir en vacances en début de journée hier. Le cabinet du premier ministre avait tout fait pour éviter les fuites- les principaux ministres touchés avaient confirmé hier après-midi leurs activités prévues pour ce matin.

M. Séguin sera remplacé par Michel Audet, le titulaire du Développement économique. C'est le jeune Claude Béchard qui prendra la relève au Développement économique, laissant libre son poste de l'Emploi. Le nom de Line Beauchamp circulait pour le remplacer, mais cette dernière, en soirée hier, tentait avec énergie de demeurer à la Culture.

M. Béchard deviendrait aussi vice-premier ministre.

Chagnon et Hamad

Deux départs ont été confirmés; Jacques Chagnon perdra la Sécurité publique au profit d'un nouveau, Pierre Moreau, avocat de la Rive-Sud.

Sam Hamad, c'était prévisible, perdra les Ressources naturelles- il avait depuis longtemps indiqué qu'il serait prêt à rester comme backbencher si on le lui demandait. Jean Charest scindera son poste, pour Nathalie Normandeau qui devrait normalement atterrir à l'Énergie et sûrement pour Pierre Corbeil qui continuera aux Ressources naturelles.

Françoise Gauthier, malmenée dans sa région du Saguenay, sera délogée de l'Agriculture. Elle restera à un poste moins important au sein du gouvernement. On prévoit la remplacer par Yvon Vallières, un vétéran, élu dans Richmond.

Pierre Reid a donné hier soir, selon des témoins à Montréal, un discours où, clairement, il déposait son bilan en Éducation. Fidèle à Jean Charest dans la controverse autour des écoles juives, il reste au Conseil des ministres- à des fonctions moins importantes.

Michelle Courchesne obtiendrait la Culture, si Line Beauchamp accepte d'aller aux Relations avec les citoyens, ce qui n'était pas encore acquis tard hier.

Fournier à l'Éducation

Surprise de taille, Jean-Marc Fournier passera à l'Éducation, lui qui, depuis des années convoitait les Transports. Depuis des mois, il piaffait d'impatience, estimant avoir livré la marchandise aux Affaires municipales avec le dossier controversé des défusions.

Dans la région de Québec, Margaret Delisle sera finalement ministre; déléguée à la Santé, elle secondera Philippe Couillard qui restera à la Santé. Julie Boulet, déléguée aux Transports, restera ministre.

Jacques Dupuis restera à la Justice, mais laissera tomber avec soulagement la Réforme électorale.

Le sort d'Yvon Marcoux semblait incertain. Les libéraux, après avoir sondé dans Vaudreuil, craignaient le pire d'une élection complémentaire. Dans l'entourage de Jean Charest, on indiquait que M. Marcoux restait en selle.

Sciemment, Jean Charest aura attendu la tenue du caucus de Montebello, terminé mercredi, pour ne pas envenimer les relations avec des députés déjà angoissés par l'impopularité du gouvernement.

Si le remaniement avait été réalisé avant cette première rencontre de l'année, les déçus auraient pu étaler leur dépit publiquement devant les caméras.

Les tergiversations sur le Suroît, la crise du financement des écoles juives, la controverse autour du CHUM et finalement la bévue d'Hydro-Québec en matière de sécurité forcent M. Charest à redresser tout de suite la barre, ce que, idéalement, il voulait faire en septembre prochain.

On pensait pouvoir attendre la suite des choses au PQ, mais la série de tuiles- la sécurité des barrages n'était que la dernière d'une longue liste- a forcé la main de M. Charest.

Agacé par les fuites dans les médias le cabinet du premier ministre n'a avisé qu'à la toute dernière minute les ministres touchés. Marc-André Blanchard, le président du PLQ, a confié à plusieurs que l'article de La Presse du 22 janvier avait poussé M. Charest à renoncer à ses chaises musicales.

Remaniement ministériel

Hydro flap spurs Charest to shuffle cabinet :
Quebec Premier moving to limit damage

Quebec PQ - Quebec Premier Jean Charest is reshaping his government with a major cabinet shuffle this morning after a political storm over Hydro-Québec's handling of security breaches at its power installations.

A news report in which a television crew walked unchallenged into a Hydro-Québec facility was one of many incidents over the past month that has hampered the government's efforts to win back voter confidence. Mr. Charest has struggled to take control of the political agenda and cope with a divided cabinet.

A spokesperson for the Premier's office confirmed late last night that Liberal caucus members were asked to remain in Quebec City overnight and did not deny that a cabinet shuffle would be announced today.

Sources said that Culture Minister Line Beauchamp could take over the education portfolio from Pierre Reid, who will move to citizenship. Ms. Beauchamp will be replaced by Michelle Courchesne.

Finance Minister Yves Séguin could announce today that he is quitting politics after he was told he would lose his portfolio. Reports last night said that he would be replaced by Economic Development Minister Michel Audet.

Municipal Affairs Minister Jean-Marc Fournier, who successfully handled the thorny municipal de-merger issue last year, is expected to be named deputy premier. Current Deputy Premier Monique Gagnon-Tremblay is expected to be named Quebec delegate to Paris. Veteran MNA Yvon Vallière is expected to be promoted to agriculture minister and another backbencher, Laurent Lessard of Thetford Mines, could join the cabinet as junior minister.

Mr. Charest's biggest problem may be with Health and Social Services Minister Philippe Couillard, who has been at odds with him over where to build a francophone megahospital in Montreal.

Mr. Couillard is by far the most popular and credible of Mr. Charest's ministers, and the Premier could ill afford to drop him. Mr. Couillard has sided with groups proposing a downtown site for the new hospital against the powerful business lobby, which has Mr. Charest's support in calling for a location outside the downtown core.

Other senior cabinet ministers who will be handed new portfolios will include Family Minister Claude Béchard. The minister responsible for energy, Sam Hamad, has long been rumoured to be on Mr. Charest's hit list since the government had to abandon a plan for a gas-powered generating station at Suroît because of public opposition. The revelations about the security flaws at Hydro-Québec's major power facilities only added to his woes. Tourism Minister Natalie Normandeau will take over the energy portfolio and Pierre Corbeil will get natural resources.

Mr. Reid has been under close scrutiny over the decision to cut $103-million in university bursaries, which sparked a bloody confrontation between police and students at this week's Liberal caucus retreat.

Mr. Reid was also at the heart of another controversy involving the government's reversal of its decision to give full funding to private Jewish schools.

Mr. Charest's problems were compounded by a public opinion poll showing that almost 70 per cent of voters disapproved of the way he is governing the province. A cabinet shuffle was rumoured late last month but was postponed until the spring, but the latest Hydro-Québec incident forced the Premier to act.

The reports of major security flaws at Hydro-Québec's dams and power plants have also sent the utility scrambling to reassure customers at home and abroad.

Concerns were expressed yesterday that the Crown corporation did not make good on its promise to improve security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We expect corrective measures will be taken," said Paul Cellucci, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Canada.

Other hydroelectric utilities in the country were taken aback by the news reports underscoring Hydro-Québec's lack of security in protecting facilities since the 9/11 attacks.

Manitoba and British Columbia immediately had a second look at the security measure upgrades they introduced more than three years ago to ensure against similar security breaches.

"It has caused us to double-check our systems and make sure that they are appropriate and that something similar could not be a problem here," said Glenn Schneider, public affairs manager for Manitoba Hydro.

Yesterday, Mr. Charest tightened Hydro-Québec's leash, demanding daily reports on the state of security measures being implemented at all hydroelectric installations. He is also awaiting an independent assessment of the utility's security measures by the provincial police.

During a one-hour meeting yesterday with Mr. Charest, Hydro-Québec president André Caillé was called on the carpet for failing to inform the government of the security breaches.

"We expected and hoped to be informed more rapidly when these events happened," Mr. Charest said. The Premier refused to comment on whether Mr. Caillé was negligent in the handling of Hydro-Québec's security.

Hydro-Québec announced yesterday that more than 150 security guards were hired and immediately deployed at the major facilities to ensure 24-hour surveillance of its strategic installations.

Hip-hop protest strikes a chord

Loco Locass is a Quebec hip-hop band that even your mother would love. Its members, Biz, Chafiik and Batlam, are the opposite of the angry young misogynists that often typify that musical category. They've got a social conscience that would make Bono blush. They've also got a mega-hit under their low-rise belts. Since its release last fall, their single Libérez-nous des Libéraux (Liberate us from the Liberals) has convincingly conquered the charts and chronically charmed the critics. To the point that not even Premier Jean Charest -- the target of their disarming ditty -- can ignore its impact on his embattled government.

In a speech on Monday, Mr. Charest, in the throes of a crisis within his own party, shot back. "If we have to have a theme song, it should be: 'Liberate us from the status quo.' " Three days after ejecting Yves Séguin as finance minister and overhauling his cabinet, Mr. Charest promised "profound changes" for Quebeckers as his government takes on the sacred cows of the welfare state.

Of course, the speech and cabinet shuffle are part of Mr. Charest's renewed attempt to undo his image as, well, a ditherer. His apparent inability to make a decision and stick with it has cost him as much political capital as his early mandate tough talk, which needlessly antagonized Quebec's unions because few or none of Mr. Charest's promised reforms of the Quebec state have come to pass.

Indeed, Mr. Charest's first two years in office have made a mockery of the Liberals' 2003 campaign slogan, Nous sommes prêts (We're Ready). So, the Premier's attempt now to take the bull by the horns must rightfully be met with skepticism. Nowhere is this as true as with Mr. Charest's renewed vow to cut taxes.

Quebec commentators rushed to interpret the ouster from cabinet of Mr. Séguin -- who, post-shuffle, has been repeatedly described in the Quebec media as the provincial Liberal Party's "social conscience" -- as a sign the Charest government is tilting further to the right. To be sure, Mr. Séguin, as finance minister, had resisted implementing the $1-billion in annual income tax cuts the Liberals had promised during the 2003 election campaign. But he did so not primarily because of a heightened social conscience, but because he knew he couldn't cut taxes and balance the books at the same time.

Mr. Séguin and Mr. Charest are both, fundamentally, centrists. It was Mr. Charest, after all, who mused shortly before becoming leader of the Quebec Liberals in 1998 that the Parti Québécois government's hard-won, four-year plan to eliminate the deficit could be extended a year to accommodate higher social spending.

Of course, that was unacceptable to the business elite -- and they know who they are -- who engineered Mr. Charest's coronation as Liberal leader in the hopes of neutralizing then-premier Lucien Bouchard. The business bigwigs had genuine affection for Mr. Bouchard, but the latter's inability to purge his party of its extreme separatists made it too risky for them to back him. So, they backed Mr. Charest instead.

This is why Mr. Charest, as Premier, has to dance with the one who brought him. Quebec business wants tax cuts, so Mr. Charest must do everything humanly possible to produce them. Or at least sound like he is. "We will continue to lighten Quebeckers' tax burden in order to leave to citizens the fruits of their efforts," Mr. Charest said on Monday.

Just how new Finance Minister Michel Audet (pronounced, ominously perhaps, Oh-debt) will do this without plunging Quebec further into hock or Mr. Charest's government lower in the polls (if that were possible) is about as clear as a foggy morning in Gaspé.

Health, education, debt service and Quebec's sacrosanct social programs (such as $7-a-day daycare) account for more than three-quarters of the province's $54-billion annual budget. The cost of these programs is rising faster than government revenues. And don't think for a minute that last fall's health accord with the federal government, under which Ottawa will send an additional $4.3-billion to Quebec over the next six years, will ease much of the pressure on the province's public finances.

It takes a Laffer-inspired, supply-side leap of faith to believe that the state's cup will runneth over with revenue generated by the stimulus that comes with income tax cuts. Mr. Charest is far too cautious, if not indecisive, a politician to take that leap.

So any income tax cuts must be offset by equivalent increases in user fees. But here, business is split. Raising electricity rates, for example, sparks less resistance from the financial services industry (despite all those kilowatt-consuming computers) than from manufacturers.

As it nears the midpoint of its mandate, the government has precious little time left to impose any major shift in taxation. The coming spring budget is its last kick at the can. By next year, with or without Mr. Charest, the Liberals must seriously turn their attention to engineering their re-election.

Or mitigating the extent of their defeat. Because Biz, Chafiik and Batlam have struck a chord with a majority of Quebeckers. konrad@sympatico.ca

Charest’s shuffle won’t save him

There’s not much point shuffling the deck after you’ve lost all your cash. Which brings me to Premier Jean Charest’s major cabinet shuffle last week. Sort of like Paul Martin trying to shed his "Mr. Dithers" image by travelling abroad, doing his best to look busy. Sometimes, it’s just plain too late. Like now.

As my faithful reader is aware, I no longer believe the Charest Liberals can bring about the changes they promised in the 2003 campaign. They ran on a daring platform: "re-engineer" the state by trimming it down to the essentials and slash taxes by $1 billion a year for five years. At first, Mr. Charest held firm in the face of protests – led by public-sector unions and the usual social-activist set – and introduced a few bills, such as making sub-contracting a wee bit easier, that made sense. As in: They were a good start.

Unfortunately, Mr. Charest’s resolve lasted only about 10 months. A year ago almost to the day, I said "goodbye to the best chance my native province had to rid itself of the 40-year-old Quebec model," and resigned myself to "goodness" knows how many more years of high taxes coupled with wall-to-wall state interventionism effectively controlled by public-sector unions and social activist groups. In other words, we’re back to business as usual. Blech."

Indeed. The intervening year has been marked by a series of policy back-and-forths on education reforms, family policy, where to build the francophone teaching hospital, subsidizing private Jewish schools, and the sad situation in Kanesatake, where things have gone from bad to worse since thugs burned down Grand Chief James Gabriel’s house over a year ago. (And people thought only Mr. Martin could dither so. Ha!)

Not only was the re-engineering promise unfulfilled, so was the commitment to cut taxes. Oh, and municipal affairs are a mess. One of the government’s rare decisions, to turn $103-million in education bursaries into student loans, has caused no end of sometimes violent demonstrations and is giving student activists the perfect excuse to go on strike, as some 25,000 students are scheduled to do starting today.

Mr. Charest did earn some brownie points last fall when he extracted a special side deal from Mr. Martin at that famous Ottawa conference where they claimed to have solved health care for a generation. For a few days, the Quebec premier received praise and accolades in the National Assembly and in the media. But it didn’t last a week; his popularity has gone down steadily ever since and a recent survey showed a big majority (68 per cent) of Quebecers are dissatisfied with him.

The only good news recently came from the Caisse de dépôt et placement, the province’s pension-fund manager, which posted a neat 12.2 per cent return on investment, thanks to reforms introduced by Caisse chairman Henri-Paul Rousseau. That’s a nice change from the almost 10-per-cent loss in 2002. But Mr. Charest can hardly take credit for the good news; Mr. Rousseau was appointed during the last months of the previous Parti Québécois government – possibly Bernard Landry’s best decision.

What to do when stuck in such a rut? Shuffle your cabinet. Mr. Charest last week got rid of trouble-making Finance Minister Yves Séguin and replaced him with the quieter (who isn’t?) and more efficient Michel Audet. Gone, too, are Sam Hamad and Jacques Chagnon, in charge of Natural Resources and Public Security, respectively. Much-publicized security flaws at Hydro-Québec’s installations contributed to Mr. Hamad’s demise, as the Kanesatake mess did Mr. Chagnon’s. Poor Pierre Reid, a decent man with practically zero political skill, was also demoted, from Education to Government Services.

At the new cabinet’s swearing-in ceremony, Premier Charest insisted on the need for a united front. "I am demanding of everyone discipline, coherence and solidarity in our actions," he said, a clear jab at Mr. Séguin, who never missed a chance to disagree with his government’s agenda and air his grievances in public as a minister nor, one expects, from the back benches.

Some observers think the shuffle indicates Jean Charest means business, that he wants to put his electoral platform back on track. But not if it’s a substitute for decisive action instead of a prelude to it. Now that the usual suspects know they can stop this government with street protests and other such nonsense, ya think they’ll see the new cabinet lineup and say, "Oh, different ministers. We better go with the flow"?

Nah, I didn’t think so. This cabinet shuffle will do Jean Charest as much good as trying to look busy will do Paul Martin. Your bluff as been called. Your stack is gone. Why deal again?

Le gouvernement Charest se comporte comme un pilote d'avion "à moitié cinglé"