19 juin 2023
The Legault Polimeter 2.0: 150 promises to track
Will the Legault government succeed in keeping a greater proportion of its electoral promises than it did during its first mandate?
Will the Legault government succeed in keeping a greater proportion of its electoral promises than it did during its first mandate? In a post-pandemic context, what effect will climate disasters such as ice storms, floods and forest fires have on the Legault government's ability to implement its political project for this second majority mandate? To help answer these questions, the Centre d'analyse des politiques publiques (CAPP) of Université Laval's Faculty of Social Sciences is today launching the Legault 2.0 Polimeter.
The Polimeter team has identified 150 promises in the CAQ's electoral platform, based on documents posted on the political party's website during the last election. The Polimeter will track their fulfillment in real time over the next years, with the aim of offering citizens, media and researchers user-friendly access to transparent and reliable political information.
To date, the Polimeter team has classified 37% of the CAQ's 150 promises as outstanding, 37% as in progress, 14% as partially realized, 11% as realized and 1% as broken. "After about 8 months in power, the CAQ has broken one promise," notes Lisa Birch, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Université Laval and Executive Director of CAPP. This is the case for the third link in the Capitale-Nationale region.”
Lisa Birch notes that, for this second mandate, the CAQ has made the environment, the shift to a green economy and ways to overcome the shortage of skilled labor its top priorities. The defense of Bill 21 banning religious symbols, the implementation of Bill 14 promoting the French language, and the francization and regionalization of immigration remain nationalist priorities. In health and education, the Legault government is investing in the development of digital records, infrastructure renovations and increasing the number of health-care professionals and graduates in high-demand jobs.
"Compared to its first mandate, the CAQ government seems to be moving faster towards fulfilling its election promises. At this stage, there is a fairly large number of partially fulfilled promises. However, the number of promises has decreased substantially: from 251 for the first mandate (2018-2022) to 150 for the current mandate," mentions Alexandre Fortier-Chouinard, data scientist and researcher at CAPP.
"Among the promises that the CAQ quickly fulfilled at the start of its mandate were those related to the Anti-Inflation Shield, notably the lowering of the first two tax brackets, the one-time amount transferred to families in December, a one-time amount for seniors, changes to the social assistance system, and the rapid adoption of a bill limiting rate increases for government services to 3%," he says.
The Polimeter team regularly updates the results to take account of new actions undertaken by this second Caquist government. Over the next four years, each promise will be rated as "fulfilled", "partially fulfilled", "in progress", "pending" or "broken". Each verdict will be supported by a quote from credible sources such as government press releases, legislation and other official or journalistic sources.
The Polimeter team invites citizens to explore its web application, which allows them to compare this government's first mandate with its current one, and to follow the evolution of verdicts until the next election in 2026. The results, along with information on the methodology, can be accessed at https://www.polimeter.org/en/legault.
For information and interviews:
Lisa Birch, Executive Director
Centre d'analyse des politiques publiques (CAPP)
Faculty of Social Sciences
Université Laval
418-609-3920
Lisa-Maureen.Birch@capp.ulaval.ca
Source:
Public Relations Teams
Université Laval
418-656-3355
