Eric Girard

Eric Girard has served as Quebec's Minister of Finance since the CAQ's first election in 2018, making him one of the longest-serving provincial finance ministers in Canada and one of the key architects of the CAQ's economic record. He came from a background in banking and financial services — including senior positions at National Bank — and brought financial sector expertise to a portfolio that had often been held by politicians without that technical background. Quebec's fiscal trajectory under Girard has moved from inherited Liberal surpluses through pandemic deficits and into a structural deficit position that the CAQ has been slower to address than originally projected. Infrastructure investment has been significant — the expansion of the Réseau express métropolitain, the Troisième lien tunnel debate in Quebec City, hospital construction — but the province's net debt position has grown, and the medium-term fiscal outlook faces pressures from an aging population and healthcare costs. On the economic development side, Girard has presided over Quebec's battery sector investment surge — gigafactories in Bécancour, lithium processing investments in the Saguenay — that represents a genuine strategic bet on the electrification economy. Whether Quebec captures the value from its lithium and mineral resources and its hydroelectric advantage depends on policy choices that Girard's ministry is central to. He has been a competent and serious finance minister. Quebec's fiscal situation is less comfortable than when he started, though the reasons are partly global and partly choices about infrastructure investment that have real economic rationale.