Jean Charest campaigned in his late fall election for a strong majority government to face the looming economic storm. Did Quebecers buy it?

The turnout at the polls on Dec. 8 was 57%, the lowest ever in Quebec’s electo-ral history. Voters may have been skeptical, but Charest got his majority and his third straight Quebec election win.

Then the whispers started again: Charest might be “The One” to replace the hapless, mired-in-minority Stephen Harper as Conservative leader in Ottawa and prime minister of Canada.

True, Charest has spent more of his political career as a Tory in Ottawa than as a Liberal in Quebec. But the leader once known as “Capitaine Canada,” the federalist who would slay the separatist dragon, appears to have decided he really is Québécois after all.

Charest talked about Quebec as a nation within Canada before Harper proposed recognition of the “Québécois as a nation within a united Canada.” He pushed the limits of Quebec’s powers within Canada, signing a manpower mobility agreement with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France last fall, and wagged the dog by asking Canada to sign a bilateral agreement with Europe, with the aim of further developing Quebec/France relations.

The same warmth cannot be claimed for the Quebec/Canada relationship. Harper had counted on taking more Quebec seats in last October’s federal election, with the goal of winning a national majority. Did Charest, his predecessor as Tory leader in Ottawa, give him a hand? No way. Charest remained loudly neutral, repeating Quebec’s traditional demands for more money and more power. Harper’s Tories lost Quebec votes in the October election.

Being viewed as a Quebec nationalist did not hurt Charest in his own campaign. But since Quebec’s December election, Charest has not been up to much. Chapleau, the La Presse editorial cartoonist, drew Charest with his two hands on the wheel — asleep with a beatific smile.

In his government’s March budget, Charest did not go beyond the five-year, $42-billion infrastructure program he promised in the election campaign, although a good whack of that money — $15 billion — will be spent in the current fiscal year.

The budget maintained Quebec’s expensive $7-a-day daycare plan and a parental-leave plan, offering parents up to 75% of their salaries and benefits for as long as 50 weeks after the birth of a child. The deficit budget also increased spending on health and education.

There was financial aid for Quebec-based companies feeling the credit crunch; but with titans of the provincial economy such as Rio Tinto Alcan Inc. and AbitibiBowater Inc. in trouble, there doesn’t seem to be a plan to help them or an alternative course for Quebec’s economic development.

Unlike Ontario, Quebec has no auto plants. But its aerospace sector, which Charest used to tout as a Quebec success story, also has been laying off workers as the global economy contracts.

But Charest has another problem: no backup in his cabinet. A recent poll showed that about 80% of Quebecers could not identify his ministers. Two exceptions in notoriety were Philippe Couillard, his urbane, ever-reassuring health minister; and Monique Jérôme-Forget, his often folksy finance minister.

Couillard and Jérôme-Forget gave Charest’s government credibility. But Couillard stepped down before the election and Jérôme-Forget left before Easter.

In Jérôme-Forget’s parting shot, she fired off a proposal to federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty asking Ottawa for $2.6 billion, in return for Quebec completing the harmonization of its sales tax with the federal goods and services tax.

In the past, only the Atlantic provinces have gained harmonization money from Ottawa. But as the Quebec minister pointed out, Flaherty “opened a door” when he offered Ontario $4.3 billion to harmonize.

It may be viewed outside Quebec as another case of the province’s chequebook federalism, but it plays well with Quebec voters. And it appears to be all the Charest government has going for it right now.

Charest may have his two hands on the wheel, but if he isn’t sleeping, he at least appears to be coasting in neutral. IE