Budget 2024-2025 : CAQ maintains its course straight into the wall

March 13, 2024

The Groupe des Treize (G13), an organization of which the FFQ is a member that coalitions twenty-three national feminist organizations committed to defending women’s rights in Quebec, greets the Caquist government’s 2024-2025 budget with perplexity. The G13 is concerned by the absence of structuring solutions to the crises facing Quebec society, and by the tactics used to justify the implementation of austerity measures starting next year.

Yesterday, the Caquist government announced a budget focused on health and education. While the media insisted on repeating the historic $11-billion deficit, our perplexity about the budget and the media discourse grew: “It’s as if the government didn’t take note of the many crises currently raging in Quebec: the environmental crisis, the housing crisis, the crisis in our public services, the worsening poverty and growing inequalities!” exclaims Sara Arsenault of the Fédération des femmes du Québec.

G13 members include community organizations that work on a daily basis with, by and for those most affected by these crises. “What’s in this budget, Mr. Legault, for the most marginalized women and people?” asks Marie-Eve Blanchard of Regroupement Naissances Respectées (RNR). There’s nothing new to deal with the housing crisis, nothing to enable people on social assistance to live in dignity, and all this in a context where a health reform that was roundly criticized and passed under a gag order gives a large share to the private sector; where an equality strategy continues without a ministry to coordinate it; where a deafening silence on the environment weighs heavily.

For us equality experts, the chronic absence of gender analysis from an intersectional perspective (ADS+) in the government budget is problem number 1. If the government were to respect its commitments to equality, it would use ADS+ to question the impact of budget decisions on women and people at the crossroads of oppression. As a result, we would have informed public policy decisions and effective results to reduce inequalities, respect human rights and build the egalitarian society Quebecers deserve.

Instead, the CAQ is serving up a budget that keeps heading straight for the wall. We anticipate that it will soon be brandishing the debt scarecrow to scare the population into passing austerity measures and slashing what’s left of our social safety net. “The debt doesn’t keep us awake at night… but the people who find themselves on the street, those who are hungry, those whose electricity is cut off, those who don’t have access to health care and those whose future is weakened by climate inaction, that keeps us awake at night,” says Annie-Pierre Bélanger of Relais-femmes.

This government is capable of investing in field hockey, top guns in the private sector or defending its discriminatory laws in court. Why is it so lacking in courage to look after its institutions and services, and perform its public service?

G13 is made up of the following organizations : Action cancer du sein du Québec (ACSQ), Réseau d’action pour la santé des femmes (RQASF), Action travail des femmes (ATF), Alliance des maisons d’hébergement de 2e étape pour femmes et enfants victimes de violence conjugale (Alliance MH2), Association féministe d’éducation et d’action sociale (Afeas), Centre de documentation sur l’éducation des adultes et la condition féminine (CDEACF), Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail (CIAFT), Fédération des associations de familles monoparentales et recomposées du Québec (FAFMRQ), Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ), Fédération des maisons d’hébergement pour femmes (FMHF), Fédération du Québec pour le planning des naissances (FQPN), Femmes Autochtones du Québec inc. (FAQ) / Quebec Native Women Inc., Mouvement pour l’autonomie dans l’enfantement, L’R des centres de femmes du Québec, Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale, Regroupement Naissances Respectées (RNR), Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel (RQCALACS), Relais-Femmes, Réseau d’action des femmes handicapées du Canada (RAFH Canada) / Disabled Women’s Network of Canada (DAWN Canada), Réseau d’action pour l’égalité des femmes immigrées et racisées du Québec (RAFIQ), Réseau des lesbiennes du Québec (RLQ) / Quebec Lesbian Network, Réseau des Tables régionales de groupes de femmes du Québec et Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI)