Liberal, CAQ members huddle for weekend of policy debates

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QUEBEC — The Quebec Liberal and Coalition Avenir Québec political parties gather this weekend to hash out fresh policy initiatives ranging from offering a tax break for people with two jobs to finding a way to limit the access of youth to social media.

With members of Québec solidaire spending the weekend in Jonquière embroiled in an existential debate on the future of the party, the Liberals and CAQ, in separate cities, are holding their own councils.

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The Liberals are meeting for two days in Bromont to debate the first half of a series of new policies designed to relaunch the party with a focus on the economy and, specifically, the productivity issue.

For their part, CAQ members are in St-Hyacinthe on Saturday talking about the effects of social media on youth.

While there is no guarantee the policies adopted by the parties will become part of their election platforms in the 2026 campaign, they, nevertheless, will get consideration.

For the Liberals, seeking a way out of the political hinterland, the policies up for debate are the result of a long relaunch process that started after the 2022 election defeat.

“The framework resolution is a series of measures we are calling a new economic plan for Quebec,” André Pratte, chairperson of the Liberal party policy commission, said in an interview with The Gazette on Friday.

“They are measures designed to improve the prosperity of Quebecers and to do that we need a big project. The big project this time is not James Bay or the Plan Nord or the Projet ÉCO. The big project is increasing the productivity of the Quebec economy.

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“If we don’t attack this issue, Quebecers and the government of Quebec are going to rapidly get poorer.”

The Liberals, for example, will debate a plan to create a new industrial policy to support innovation, research and development of companies playing a key role in Quebec.

If adopted, a Liberal government would set new annual productivity growth targets for companies as well as helping small and medium-size businesses finance their technological needs.

“Increasing productivity is not working harder,” Pratte said. “When we talk of increasing productivity, it means giving workers the technical and educational means, and training to produce more in the same number of hours.”

On the same productivity theme, the Liberals would give people holding down two jobs a tax break to deal with the inflationary spiral. A resolution up for debate says the revenue from a second job would not be added to the revenue of the first.

The measure, should the Liberals one day form a government, would cost the treasury about $202 million a year.

There are other resolutions on the table. A Liberal government would present, in the first year of its mandate, a plan to get Quebec back to balanced budgets. The last CAQ budget presented in the spring includes a record $11-billion deficit with no plan on how to eliminate it.

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The Liberals will also debate a motion sponsored by the D’Arcy McGee riding association to make Holocaust education mandatory in the curriculum in all schools starting in the sixth grade.

And another motion says a Liberal government would cancel the recent tuition increases for out-of-province university students.

Over at the CAQ, members will be focused on other issues currently making headlines in Quebec.

The CAQ youth wing is arriving for the meeting with a resolution that proposes to set the minimum age for youth to be allowed to use social media such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok at 16.

“It is more and demonstrated that social networks include numerous risks for the mental health of youth and, in particular, pre-teenagers between 11 and 15 years old and young girls,” the resolution argues.

Such a resolution goes further than the one adopted in Florida that set the age at 14. In France, it is 15. In all cases, however, enforcing such a rule has proved to be a problem. Premier François Legault at one point had rejected this idea, but now says the government will study it.

The youth wing has a second resolution to create a framework on the use of screens in schools as well. The use of such screens should be strictly limited to academic issues.

The CAQ government has already barred the use of cell phones in elementary and high school classrooms, but now is examining extending the ban to cover the whole school.

The Parti Québécois has been arguing for a total ban.

pauthier@postmedia.com

twitter.com/philipauthier

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