{"id":920361,"date":"2026-10-04T14:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T14:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/920361\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T14:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T14:12:13","slug":"will-quebecs-next-government-keep-its-campaign-promises-data-suggests-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/920361\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Quebec’s next government keep its campaign promises? Data suggests no"},"content":{"rendered":"

For weeks, Quebec politicians have been travelling around the province, promising to fix health care, improve education and lower the cost of living.<\/p>\n

But with voters heading to the polls on Monday, a review of more than three decades of data offers a reality check: a provincial government is more likely to break or walk back a campaign promise than it is to keep it.<\/p>\n

According to researchers with Universit\u00e9 Laval’s Polimeter project<\/a>, Quebec governments have fully delivered on only 49 per cent of their election commitments since 1994.<\/p>\n

The researchers say a government’s ability to follow through on its promises is dependent on the economic situation, the length of its mandate and the nature of the promises themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Promises that are fully within the government’s purview and powers are easier to keep,” said Lisa Birch, the co-founder of Polimeter and researcher at the Centre for the Analysis of Public Policy.<\/p>\n

Birch gave the example of the previous Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec government’s pledge to strengthen the province’s secularism laws, which required only passing legislation in the National Assembly, and defending the laws in court.<\/p>\n

Those that involve meeting a target that requires, for example, overcoming a chronic labour shortage or negotiations with Ottawa are far harder to meet, said Alexandre Fortier-Chouinard, a post-doctoral researcher at Universit\u00e9 Laval who works on the Polimeter project.<\/p>\n

“The most difficult to fulfil were those that included both an action and the outcome that would follow from that action,” said Fortier-Chouinard.<\/p>\n

Take then-premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault’s 2018 pledge to guarantee a family doctor for every Quebecer.<\/p>\n

The promise was ambitious and clear, but the outcome relied on a health-care system plagued by a shortage of workers. Despite government attempts to legislate higher patient quotas for physicians, the target proved mathematically impossible to hit. <\/p>\n

“If you have a shortage of family doctors, no matter how hard you try, it’s not going to be something you can fulfil,” Birch said.<\/p>\n

By the 2022 campaign, the CAQ had abandoned the pledge entirely<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2026 platforms faced with constraints<\/p>\n

The next government will face severe constraints of its own: a lack of workers in key sectors like construction, a persistent deficit and an unpredictable economic future given the ongoing trade war with the United States. <\/p>\n

Several parties, including Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois and the Conservatives under \u00c9ric\u00a0Duhaime, have promised to scale back government bureaucracy while at the same time improving services in areas such as health care and education. <\/p>\n

That will be difficult to do, Birch said.<\/p>\n

“When the parties promise at the same time to cut back the public sector to attain the deficit target, but also to maintain the essential services that the state provides, they enter into a contradiction,” Birch said.<\/p>\n

Liberal Leader Charles Milliard, for instance, wants to build 100,000 new housing units annually. But according to modelling by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Milliard’s proposal faces overwhelming hurdles.<\/p>\n

In its most optimistic scenario, the CMHC projects Quebec can build roughly 72,000 units per year \u2014 largely due to a shortage of construction workers.<\/p>\n

“We still are mainly a private economic system,” Birch said. <\/p>\n

“Private actors, developers and contractors have to submit projects and get them funded… These things are all going to take time.” <\/p>\n

WATCH | PQ aims for a majority, and a conflict-filled future with Ottawa:\"\"<\/p>\n

With PQ leading polls, analyst unpacks their strategy in final stretch of Quebec election campaign<\/p>\n

Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon appears to be setting the table for confrontation with Ottawa. He\u2019s promising to abolish the office of the lieutenant governor and fight any attempts by the federal government to increase immigration in the province. CBC Montreal News host Debra Arbec speaks with political analyst Antonine Yaccarini.A challenge for the next government<\/p>\n

When the CAQ took power in 2018, the party inherited a budget surplus from the Liberals and fully kept roughly 55 per cent of its platform commitments.<\/p>\n

However, Polimeter data reveals a steep decline during the party’s second mandate.<\/p>\n

Plagued by a growing provincial deficit, battles over federal health transfers and disputes over public sector reforms, the government struggled to fulfil its promises. <\/p>\n

In its second term, the CAQ’s success rate dropped to 37 per cent, with another 34 per cent left only partially completed.<\/p>\n

Overall, Fortier-Chouinard said that when “the economy is performing better, tax revenues increase for the government, and that helps balance the books and move forward with pledges.”<\/p>\n

During a period of economic uncertainty, that is far more difficult, he said.<\/p>\n

“When the economy is not doing so well and there’s a considerable amount of uncertainty, it’s going to be a little bit harder for the government to pursue some of its pledges.”<\/p>\n

Beyond the party platforms, Birch noted that voters must also consider a government’s “implicit mandate” \u2014 its ability to manage the unknown.<\/p>\n

“When they’re elected, they’re elected to fulfil their election promises, but they’re also elected to govern on all matters that arise during the course of the mandate,” Birch said. <\/p>\n

“Ones that they could have foreseen, but also ones that they could never have foreseen. For example, the CAQ could not have foreseen the pandemic.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For weeks, Quebec politicians have been travelling around the province, promising to fix health care, improve education and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":920362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-920361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}