Charles Milliard wants you to believe Quebec is a patient bleeding out on the operating table, and his new economic plan is the tourniquet. Every editorial board, lobbyist, and career pundit has nodded along, treating his manifesto like a masterclass in fiscal pragmatism. They love the safe framing. They love the predictable talking points about productivity, taxation, and modernization.
It is all smoke.
I have watched politicians roll out recycled economic roadmaps for two decades, and Milliard’s strategy is a masterclass in treating symptoms while ignoring the structural rot. The lazy consensus says Quebec needs a softer tax touch and more state-sponsored hand-holding for local enterprises to compete globally. This misses the entire point of modern capital allocation. Quebec does not suffer from a lack of political ambition; it suffers from an addiction to institutional protectionism that suffocates true market friction.
When you strip away the polished PR and the carefully curated focus groups, Milliard’s plan offers a familiar cocktail of state-directed capitalism. It assumes bureaucrats in Quebec City possess the divine foresight to pick winning industries, subsidize the right innovation hubs, and manage a workforce transition without crushing organic growth. History suggests otherwise. Every dollar funneled through bureaucratic filters is a dollar stolen from agile risk-takers who actually understand how to build things people want to pay for.
The Myth of the Protected Market
Let us address the foundational flaw in mainstream economic commentary across the province: the obsession with local champions.
Milliard’s platform leans heavily on the idea that Quebec businesses need special shields to survive against international giants. This is backward. Protectionism breeds complacency. When you insulate regional enterprises from brutal, unfiltered global competition, you get bloated balance sheets and anemic output.
Look at productivity numbers. Economists love to obsess over output per hour worked. Quebec consistently lags behind Ontario and the US average. The standard prescription from political platforms is to throw more government grants at hardware upgrades or artificial intelligence training programs. That is like handing a bicycle mechanic a golden wrench and expecting them to build a rocket ship.
Productivity is not a hardware problem. It is a cultural and structural crisis born of over-regulation. Companies do not invest heavily in high-value automation when labor costs are artificially distorted by red tape and when failing businesses are routinely propped up by regional development funds.
Imagine a scenario where the provincial government froze all corporate subsidies tomorrow morning, slashed regulatory compliance costs by half, and let the market decide which companies deserve to scale. Chaos would ensue for six months. Brilliant. Out of that chaos, the deadweight would drop off, leaving a lean, hungry core of enterprises capable of competing anywhere on earth without needing a politician to hold their hand.
Breaking Down the Taxation Fallacy
Another cornerstone of the Milliard thesis is tax relief, framed through the usual lens of giving families and businesses breathing room. Sounds great on a campaign poster. It falls apart under basic financial scrutiny.
Tax cuts financed by structural debt or deferred public spending are just a tax on tomorrow. If you want to spur real economic velocity, lowering corporate tax rates while keeping the regulatory apparatus bloated changes nothing. The friction of doing business in Quebec—permitting delays, labor code rigidities, sectoral permit requirements—costs companies more in lost time than a few percentage points on their corporate tax bill.
I have seen mid-sized manufacturing firms abandon expansion plans in Montreal not because of tax brackets, but because getting a simple industrial zoning variance takes eighteen months of meetings with municipal boards that treat every entrepreneur like a polluter.
Milliard’s plan addresses taxes because it is easy to put on a slide deck. It avoids addressing the labor laws and bureaucratic gatekeeping because that requires political courage. Real reform means making enemies among the entrenched interest groups who profit from the status quo.
The Innovation Delusion
Politicians love the word innovation. It is a blank check for spending public money on things they do not understand.
The economic blueprint rolling out of the Liberal camp talks endlessly about positioning Quebec as a leader in the green economy and tech sectors. This assumes economic development is a top-down engineering project. It is not. Silicon Valley did not happen because a governor in California signed a bill funding a regional startup incubator. It happened because venture capital, talent density, and regulatory flexibility collided by accident.
When governments try to manufacture clusters, they usually end up funding well-connected mediocrity. Real innovation is messy. It looks like a three-person software outfit in a basement burning through cash until they find product-market fit. It does not look like a state-subsidized battery plant managed by a board of political appointees.
Milliard wants you to think his blueprint unlocks a new era of prosperity through smart investments. In reality, it doubles down on the exact model that has kept Quebec’s economic growth tracking below its potential for a generation.
What Actually Works
If you want to fix an economy, you stop trying to manage outcomes and start clearing obstacles.
- Axe Sectoral Subsidies: Stop picking winners. The market is a better investor than any finance minister. Let capital flow where returns are highest, not where lobbyists are loudest.
- Streamline Permitting: If a business cannot get a construction or operational permit within thirty days, the default should be automatic approval. Bureaucratic delay is a silent tax on momentum.
- Reform Labor Rigidity: Flexibility is the lifeblood of modern enterprise. When labor codes make it impossible to restructure teams rapidly, companies stop scaling locally and start looking south of the border.
The debate sparked by political economic plans always centers on who gets the money and how much the state should intervene. That is the wrong argument entirely. The question we should be asking is how fast we can get the government out of the room.
Charles Milliard is offering a polished version of the same old medicine. It tastes sweet, it goes down easy, and it leaves the patient just as weak as before.
Stop waiting for politicians to save the economy. They are the ones who broke it.
