[A-List] Rhodesia Weighs in on the « solidaires » vs. the « lucides »

["Jim Yarker" <sjy_estrien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quebec more solidaire than lucide


Editorial - The Gazette (Montreal) - lundi 15 janvier 2007

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Are you a "lucide," or a "solidaire ?" It?s been a timely question in Quebec 
ever since October 2005, when a dozen prominent Quebecers including Lucien 
Bouchard published Pour un Quebec lucide. This manifesto appealed for fiscal 
sobriety, warning that demographic change plus a growing public debt would 
mean economic crisis for the next generation.

Within weeks, an equal and opposite group published Pour un Quebec 
solidaire, proposing that the state should do even more and that income 
should be more evenly distributed. The $121-billion provincial debt is not a 
problem, they said, and corporate taxes should be higher.

The duelling documents launched a public debate. Now it seems to be settled 
: Results of a major new opinion survey, published last week, showed 
Quebecers far more solidaire than lucide : only 36 per cent find the "Quebec 
model" of an omnipresent and costly state to be too burdensome [so does that 
include the massively better-funded anglo health care and educational 
institutions, for which the Gazette has lobbied consistently and tirelessly? 
- jy], while 57 per cent say the opposite. Fully 83 per cent oppose higher 
electricity rates, a central "lucide" proposal for balancing the 
government?s books. Only on health care do Quebecers show a preference for 
more private-sector solutions.

And young adults, the survey found, were least concerned about the fact that 
fewer taxpayers are going to have to pay far more in taxes to keep all this 
going in the next few decades. This fits with the experience of Action 
democratique leader Mario Dumont. In the last Quebec election, Dumont 
thought he had a winning issue in galvanizing young adults to demand some 
"generational equity" while baby boomers are still in the workforce. He got 
nowhere.

It?s a discouraging survey. Too many Quebecers, young ones in particular, 
are living in denial of intractable realities.

When the crisis hits, as the lucides have assured us that it must, we will 
hear a loud chorus of "Why weren?t we warned ?"