Super Sellout Legacy of Outgoing "Super Minister"
In the hours following the announcement on September 4 of the resignation of the man known as Quebec's "super minister" Pierre Fitzgibbon, business circles praised him eloquently, especially his reform of Investissement Québec and the development of the battery supply chain.
The Legault government's reform, starting in 2020, of the Crown corporation known as Investissement Québec is the reform in question. As Minister of the Economy in 2019, Fitzgibbon sponsored Bill 27, An Act respecting mainly government organization as regards the economy and innovation, adopted by the Quebec National Assembly on December 6, 2019. One of the objectives of this Act, according to Fitzgibbon himself, was to double foreign investment in Quebec within five years. The way to achieve this was to transfer a whole range of services from Quebec's Ministry of Industry and Innovation to the Investissement Québec (IQ) agency, so that IQ would be a one-stop shop for private companies based in Quebec. He also set up IQ international to facilitate the export of products from Quebec-based companies and "accompany foreign companies as they set up shop in Quebec."
According to results released by IQ and its international arm for the fiscal year April 2023 to March 2024, $13.1 billion in new foreign direct investment came into Quebec, almost six times higher than recorded for fiscal 2018-2019 ($2.3 billion). According to IQ's press release, "investments related to the establishment of the battery industry on Quebec soil, as well as those in the natural resources sector, represent a significant share" of prospecting activities carried out between April 2023 and March 2024.
What Investissement Québec doesn't mention is that all these investments have been accompanied by pay-the-rich schemes worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, put forward by the Trudeau and Legault governments. Currently, several of these foreign investments in the battery industry remain uncertain, including Ford, EcoProBM and SK On's $1.2 billion cathode plant project in Bécancour, which has been on ice since April 30. The fate of Northvolt's future $7 billion battery cell plant in McMasterville also remains uncertain following the parent company's recent setbacks in Sweden.
During the presentation of IQ's latest financial year in May, journalists wanted to know whether IQ international was present in Israel. IQ international CEO Hubert Bolduc proudly boasted that he had been on the first mission that Fitzgibbon made to Israel in 2022, "the one that gave him [Fitzgibbon] the idea to say that there's something to be done in that country. Tech, innovation, cyber security... We saw things there that made us realize that there was something to learn from Israel in these sectors," he added. "If we're lucky enough to have eyes and ears over there, we'll take a look at all the projects. [...] We're going to be opportunistic," he said.
The fact remains that the Quebec government opened a trade office in Tel Aviv in 2023 and refuses to close it, despite repeated calls from numerous human rights organizations and the many petitions circulating, including one to the National Assembly that garnered nearly 12,000 signatures in the space of a few months.
What all this reveals is that unprincipled politicians from cartel parties who criss-cross the world like travelling salesmen, selling off Quebec's natural resources to the highest bidder, do not represent the aspirations of the workers and people of Quebec. The alternative the working class is striving for is a nation-building project in which the economy is the guarantor of everyone's well-being, not that of a handful of narrow private interests.
This article was published in
Volume 54 Numbers 8-9 - September 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54082.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca