MONTREAL - Already rich with a history of policy-makers encouraging baby-makers, Quebec could become the first province to pay entirely for in-vitro fertilization treatment under an election promise made Monday by the governing Liberals.
Premier Jean Charest has joined a long line of Quebec political and religious leaders to play a role in family planning.
The Roman Catholic Church spent centuries imploring Quebecers to reproduce as their religious duty. Liberal premier Robert Bourassa introduced so-called baby bonuses in the 1980s. More recently the ADQ party has urged the government to pay for fertility treatments.
Now the ADQ says Charest has stolen its idea by promising parents two fertility treatments, courtesy of the Quebec government.
Opposition Leader Mario Dumont says he's happy to see help for people who have troubling conceiving a baby, but he castigated Charest for the sudden policy shift. He noted that the premier has spent a year torpedoing the suggestion.
"He's trying to be a progressive hero but for 12 months, he was trying to bury this," Dumont said in Joliette, northeast of Montreal. "I hate personal attacks in an election campaign but I have to say that Jean Charest is shameless."
Charest announced the help as part of his health-care platform in the campaign for the Dec. 8 election, dovetailing it with his emphasis on the economy as the No. 1 issue for voters.
It's a tactic that plays to polls that have indicated the economy and health care are actually tied neck-and-neck in terms of priorities for Quebecers.
"When I say `the economy is first,' I also want to say `the economy and health, the economy and education' and `the economy for all Quebecers to live better'," Charest told a group of supporters.
Charest announced several financial incentives to keep nurses in the public sector and plans to boost the number of family doctors and encourage more medical students to choose family medicine as their specialty.
Quebec already offers a 50 per cent tax credit for families who need fertility treatments but Charest announced Monday that if his team is re-elected, the first treatments would be covered by the provincial health plan.
Parents who wish to keep trying in the event of failure would be covered by the tax credit for further treatments.
The Liberals estimated that 1,500 births annually would be generated by the plan, with costs estimated at about $35 million per year.
The plan is a reversal from a stand taken by Philippe Couillard when he was health minister last year. Couillard opposed covering the cost of treatments because he said infertility isn't an illness. Couillard isn't running in this election.
Beverly Hanck of the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada praised the Liberal plan and said it's a one-of-a-kind in Canada.
"It's wonderful," she said. "Quebec is the only province that is doing anything substantial for patients so they're really leading the parade in that."
Hanck, the executive director of the Montreal-based organization, said she has been working with other provinces on the issue, although money has always been a sticking point. Ontario and Alberta are also considering bringing in some kind of help.
Hanck praised the refundable Quebec tax credit, although she said she would like to see it raised even further.
"All of Canada has a total fertility rate of about 1.5 and you need 2.1 to be replacing your population," she said.
"I think politicians are very foolish not to be looking at this," said Hanck, although she praised the Quebec parties for their attentiveness to the issue.
Birthrate has long been an issue for Quebec, most famously in the pre-Quiet Revolution period when Quebecers were urged to have babies in a symbolic settling of scores for the conquest of 1760.
That so-called 'Revenge of the Cradles' had come to an end by the end of 1960s, as Quebec underwent an abrupt transformation from its religious, largely rural past where giant families were the norm.
Within a generation such traditions were replaced by a largely secular Quebec, increasingly urban, and with one of the lowest birthrates in the world.
But the latest trend has seen a small-scale baby boom, with an eight per cent jump in 2006, the biggest birthrate hike since 1909. In 2005, there were 1,700 fertility treatments, costing between $10,000 and $20,000 per treatment.
Dumont didn't dwell on the fertility issue, however. His main focus on Monday was crime.
The ADQ leader said his government would offer increased help to crime victims and crack down on drunk drivers as well as sexual predators, whose names would be inscribed on a public sex-offenders registry.
Dumont said he would also hire 400 additional provincial police and boost the size of the force's cyber surveillance squad.
Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois announced her education platform Monday, which included promises to cut class sizes to provide a better learning environment and help children with learning difficulties.
Another aim is to fight Quebec's dropout rate, which Marois said has climbed to 30 per cent on Charest's watch.
"The issue of school dropouts is preoccupying for Quebecers," Marois said. "For families, it is a tragedy. For Quebec, it is a social catastrophe and, as studies have shown, a catastrophe that has a heavy economic cost."
