Polimeter Legault: Despite the pandemic, the CAQ government is on its way to fulfilling 81% of its election promises

Québec City, June 17, 2021 – Nearly 15 months before the end of its first mandate, François Legault’s CAQ government is on its way to fulfilling in whole or in part 81% of its 251 promises formulated during the 2018 election campaign. According to the Polimeter, a tool that tracks and publishes data about pledge fulfillment in Canada since 2013, this is an exceptional performance for a first-time government in office for two and a half years.

The details of the CAQ’s pledge fulfillment record are as follows: 30% of its promises are kept already, 4% are partially kept, 47% are in progress, 15% of the promises remain “not yet rated” and 4% are broken.

"Even if only 34% of the promises are already kept in whole or in part, globally this result of the first CAQ government is impressive," commented the executive director of the Center for the Analysis of Public Policy and associate professor at University Laval`s Department of Political Science, Lisa Birch. "François Legault’s team may do better than the majority of preceding Quebec governments since 1994, the first year for which we have full data.  At the end of their mandates, these past governments successfully kept in whole or in part 62% of their promises on average.”

For comparison purposes, the Polimeter team’s data shows that since 1994, the third Charest liberal government (2008-2012) obtained the lowest score with 47% of its pledges kept in whole or in part, followed by Marois’ Parti Québécois government that kept 50% of its promises in full or in part.  The best performance was Couillard’s Liberal government with 81% followed by Bouchard-Landry’s Parti Québécois government with 74%.

“Although a major crisis like the pandemic with its economic and social consequences usually makes it more difficult to keep promises, this does not seem to be slowing down the Legault government who still has about 15 months to fulfill its pledges before the 2022 elections are called,” added Yannick Dufresne, assistant professor at Université Laval’s Department of Political Science.

“The Legault government acted early at the start of its mandate, before the COVID crisis, which explains the high percentage of promises in progress,” explained Antoine Baby-Bouchard, a research assistant who has worked with the Polimeter team for 5 years. “It remains to be seen whether this government will be able to concretize all its promises that are currently in progress or not yet rated.”

The Polimeter team ensures a regular update of the results in light of new initiatives by the CAQ government.  At the end of François Legault’s mandate, the Polimeter team will analyse all available documents and revise all the verdicts to classify each promise definitively in one of the following categories:  "kept", "partially kept" or "broken". All the promises that are "not yet rated" and "in progress" will be integrated into the previous categories.

A new web application web for a richer, more convivial experience 
The Polimeter is now available through a web application that offers a richer, more convivial navigation experience. This new application proposes improved functions for sorting by government, by pledge status, and by key word.  Users can visualize pledge fulfillment over time, consult documents that support verdicts and explore the performances of other governments. Polimeters are available since 2013 for the governments of Quebec and Canada, since 2018 for New Brunswick and 2021 for Ontario.  

"We are pleased to dedicate this new web application to François Pétry, (1948-2020), Emeritus Professor from the Political Science Department at Université Laval, for his passion, his rigor and his vision of a Polimeter that enables citizens to have reliable data about pledge fulfillment by their elected representatives," said Lisa Birch, who was a close collaborator of Professor Pétry for 16 years. "When Polimeters started in 2013, François and I dreamed of an application like this one that would enable citizens, the media and researchers to sort and visualize promises as they pleased," she added.

The new web application is available at https://www.polimeter.org/en/legault.