The shadows of Couillard’s government – Les ombres du gouvernement Couillard

Pour la version française veuillez cliquer ici pour lire l’original au Le Devoir

An abbreviated translation  from the opinion letter in Le Devoir by Bassam Adam, J. Denis Duchesne et Éric Lapointe Professeurs de philosophie au Cégep Garneau

At a time when the Liberal government is preparing to rescue Bombardier’s CSeries by injecting 1.3 billion of tax payers money , they’re cutting services to the population. How can this “risky spending” be explained within a context of restrictions?

With manipulations of the figures and lies, public finances is hiding the real issues which explain these actions. Two concrete examples reveal the true intentions of this government which the Fonds des générations and the question of the financial deficit.

The Fonds des générations, was created to reduce the public debt, but with simple accounting manipulation becomes a “passive” debt for the Couillard government , whereas  by the previous governments it was considered an “active” debt, an investment, since the money is still in the hands of the government.

The economist Jean-Pierre Aubry, suggested the purpose of this plot is to create the illusion of a deficit to justify eventual cuts.

According to our government, we will have had a deficit of 5.8 billion for the fiscal year 2014-2015 with  a forecast deficit of 7.3 billion for 2015.  The problem is that these figures are not based on a real budget, but on the simple addition of all the requests from government departments, companies and organizations left on the table by the former PQ government.

The Quebec auditor general a “neutral arbitrator”,  in his analysis of the economic and fiscal update of December 2014, confirmed that the deficit of 2014-2015 is not of 5.8 billion, but of 2.3 billion, and that the foreseeable deficit for 2015-2016 is not of 7.3 billion, but of 0 !

The real purpose behind this game of shadows  is to seek the redefinition for the role of State that the liberal government intends to put in place.  What and who will this re positioning of the State serve? Is it simply to remove the governments role of social actor, protector of the common good against the all around assaults of neo-liberal market forces , and to become a side by side partner of free trade and globalization?

The Quebec auditor general analysis of the economic and fiscal update of December 2014, confirmed that the foreseeable deficit for 2015-2016 is not of 7.3 billion, but of 0 !

Hence the need for the precautions and evasions? All this to call into question the social model of democracy, making the state the representative of the common interest and not the economic partner of market forces alone, of Bombardier and its CSeries?

As in a theater of shadows, what we are shown only serves to distract, confuse and only to hide what constitutes true reality which, through an austerity policy, conducts cuts across all social services, education, health, in the CPE in services for seniors, the environment, etc. Ultimately, when these services become deteriorated to the point which the ‘private’ succeeds to make them , will we then feel justified in the accomplishment of privatization?

Read the original letter in Le Devoir (French)

Source Le Devoir