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The Quebec model: A remarkable performance
La Presse – December 3, 2002
Ideas
By Jean-François Lisée
If Mario Dumont’s ADQ or Jean Charest’s QLP wins the elections next year, following a campaign during which they will have argued at length that Québec is poorly managed, smothers initiative and entrepreneurship, confiscates active capital and discourages individual success...they will inherit the most buoyant economy in North America, not to say the most buoyant economy among the seven most industrialized nations.
No one can deny that the economic skies in Québec are very sunny, particularly over Montréal where the unemployment rate is lower than in Toronto. But, weaned as we were on a discourse emphasizing our general incompetence, the poor choices we have made, the failures of the Québec model, we naturally tend to believe that the economic success we are experiencing is a simple epiphenomenon, a short-lived aberration that cannot last.
Insistent figures
But the figures are insistent. Québec’s collective wealth, based on real gross domestic product, has been growing more rapidly than that of the G7 countries for five long years. This is true whether Québec is compared with Canada, with the United States, with the major European countries, or with Japan.
Growth in Québec was stronger than growth in the United States for each of the four last years and stronger than growth in each of the G7 countries for at lest three of the past five years. In all, over the last five years, growth in Québec, at 19.6%, has been more than double the G7 average of 9.5%. Compared with the G7, Québec gave 210% of its all, so to speak.
The difference is yet greater if the calculation is transposed to a per capita basis, that is, if the collective wealth is divided by the real number of inhabitants - you are richer if two of you earn a total of $100 than if four of you earn the same $100. On this basis, Québec achieved two and a half times the G7 average, or 250%. Compared with the average of its North American neighbours, Québec’s performance rises from 110% of the gross average to 150% per capita.
Demographic growth in Québec during these same five years was exactly equal to the G7 average. And since the drop in the birth rate is of greater concern in Québec than elsewhere, this growth is even more dependent on its ability to attract and retain immigrants. Despite what is commonly believed, the Québec economy exerts a stronger attraction on immigrants than is the case for the average industrialized country. If the United States is removed from the group, Québec is seen to have weaker demographic growth than the U.S. but stronger growth than the other G7 countries.
It looks like what has been true during the past five years will also be true in the future. According to forecasts made in November by the Bank of Montréal for North America and by the European Commission for Europe and Japan, Québec will still be leading the pack in 2003 and 2004, two years for which forecasts are available. In gross figures, Québec will experience growth equal to 110% of the average growth of its American neighbours and 160% of the average growth of the G7. Taken individually, no country will perform better than Québec.
Since Québec is not, unfortunately, a country, you could legitimately argue that such and such a state, province or region has outperformed it. Which is quite possible. But if we look simply at our main competitor, Ontario, this is not the case. Since 1960, with all its ups and downs, Québec’s per capita GDP grew much more rapidly than Ontario’s. This is true in particular for the last economic cycle which began in 1989, and specifically for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, and, according to the Bank of Montréal’s forecasts, for the next two years as well. It is difficult not to see a strong trend here.
Québec also holds another record. It is the place in North America with the least income inequity. The family poverty rate, for instance, based on 50% of real median income, is 18% in the United States, 12% in the European Union, 10% in Canada and 9% in Québec.
Can we do better? Doubtless. The Québec model has changed considerably over the past ten years, which probably explains its performance today. It can and must continue to adapt and innovate. But there is a danger in denying wholesale its economic and social achievements. There is a danger in trying to change everything in a system whose qualities are not appreciated. There is a danger that the very foundations will collapse.
Jean-François Lisée is a guest researcher at the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales de Paris, and a member of the Interuniversity Research Centre on Socio-economic Changes and Regulations
(Our translation)
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