With the stated aim of preventing “two-tier” childcare from emerging, the Quebec government recently blocked subsidized private daycare centres from engaging in extra-billing for supplementary activities. This coercive measure is a logical outcome of the centralization and standardization process that began a decade ago. Although the Quebec childcare model is seen by many as being among the most advanced in Canada or even the world in terms of family policy, the perverse effects of government management are being felt increasingly. Does this policy really suit the parents it was meant to help?

April 2007 will mark the fourth anniversary of Jean Charest’s election as premier of Quebec. In the autumn prior to the election, a Quebec Liberal party congress had adopted an “Action Plan for the Next Liberal Government.” A year after the election, the new government published a “Modernization Plan.” Has the Liberal government kept the promises it made in those proposals? This Economic Note presents a summary of its achievements, with a particular focus on its promises to provide tax relief and to reduce the role of the state.

Établir une liste des impôts est une tâche complexe non seulement à cause des problèmes méthodologiques et à cause de la prolifération des prélèvements de toutes sortes, mais également à cause d’une raison typologique. Des prélèvements à taux différents (TVQ générale et TVQ sur les véhicules hybrides, taxe sur les spiritueux artisanaux et non artisanaux, multiples exceptions à l’imposition des gains de capitaux, etc.) sur une matière fiscale qui peut sembler homogène constituent-ils un seul ou plusieurs impôts? C’est une question indécidable qui, à elle seule, rendrait impossible de dresser une liste littéralement «exhaustive» des impôts dans toute leur diversité (ou leur fouillis).

This booklet is a French translation of the condensed version of the book The Road to Serfdom (1944) by Friedrich A. Hayek. It was prepared using G. Blumberg’s complete French translation published at Presses universitaires de France and contains an introduction (“The Man Who Changed Everyone’s Life: The Ubiquitous Ideas of Friedrich A. Hayek”) written by Brian Lee Crowley, President of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. The original condensed version was published for the first time in the April 1945 edition of the Reader’s Digest magazine.

Last April, Canada and the United Kingdom announced an "Open Sky" agreement which, when concluded, will represent another major step in the liberalization process of the air transport market between the two countries. The agreement was reported to provide for unlimited so-called "Fifth Freedom Rights" for both countries to enable Canadian airlines to carry traffic to and from third countries through the U.K. The same reciprocal rights are to be available, of course, to British carriers through Canada. It remains to be seen whether the European Commission, which has successfully contested the rights of the European Union members to negotiate air bilateral deals independently of Brussels, will choose to challenge this agreement.

There is a strong relationship between suburbanization (pejoratively called “urban sprawl”), automobile use and the strong economic growth that has occurred in high-income nations since World War II. Millions of Canadian households were able to stop renting and begin accumulating their own equity as a result of the lower cost houses built on the less expensive land on and beyond the urban fringe. They were able to take advantage of a much larger array of employment and shopping opportunities because they could get anywhere in the metropolitan region in a comparatively short period of time, rather than the limited destinations that could be reached quickly on transit. In short, a world or a Montreal without cars or suburbs would be far less affluent.

Although subsidies are often criticized for their undesirable economic effects and for the way they discriminate in favour of particular sectors or firms, they maintain a strong presence in our economy. Governments not only seem incapable of trimming them but tend to invest in new forms of business assistance that are subtler and harder to evaluate, leaving them less open to reproach. The concept of subsidies includes not only direct dollar transfers but also other forms of aid that do not involve actual disbursements or that are considered as investment rather than spending. While disbursements are easy to measure, other types of subsidy are merely implicit, and precise data on their extent are often unavailable.

Making Canada a world leader in democratic governance and the practice of federalism is not dependent on the size of our population, our military, or our economy. Rather it is largely dependent on the extent to which our citizens and politicians are prepared to commit themselves to this objective and to support and adopt the reforms and policies that will make it a reality. With this end in view, we invite you to examine the policies proposed in this volume, support their adoption, and participate personally in the revitalization of democracy and federalism in Canada.

How do the living standards of people in Quebec compare with those elsewhere in North America? This issue stirs up a profusion of emotional reactions from diverse standpoints. Differences of opinion stem in part from the fact that the available data fail to provide a clear image and can easily cause confusion. Some vague general indicators suggest that living standards in Quebec may be comparable to those in Ontario. Other more objective data show, however, that Quebec is relatively poor compared to the other Canadian provinces and U.S. states.

Governments in Canada and elsewhere around the world continue to control the prices of many goods and services. These controls, aimed at helping certain producers or portions of society, result in a number of pernicious effects that damage the economy and impair wealth creation. It would be preferable to let prices play their proper role in the economy and to establish other public policies providing direct assistance to those who require such help.