Quietly, without fanfare, Quebec has become something of an economic star.

In November, the province’s unemployment rate was 6.2 per cent, the lowest in four decades. It actually did better than Ontario (6.3 per cent unemployment) and was well below the national average. Only booming British Columbia had a better number.

Quebec City’s jobless rate is 4.4 per cent. Montreal’s is 6.8 per cent — actually lower than Toronto’s 6.9 per cent, and well below Calgary’s. Pretty impressive.

Since May of 2014, when the Liberals under Philippe Couillard were elected, the province has created 139,500 new jobs. If trends continue, the province is on track to creating the 250,000 jobs Couillard promised during his four-year mandate ending in 2018.

After Couillard promised merely to break even, updated figures now show Quebec actually finished the 2015-16 fiscal year with a $2.2-billion surplus and is in a position to post another surplus this year. That’s right, a surplus — while every other province but B.C. was in the red last year. Quebec recently reduced its gross debt by $610 million, the first time it’s paid down the debt since 1959 — the year the Queen opened the St. Lawrence Seaway and Maurice Duplessis was Quebec’s premier.

Give it up for Carlos Leitao, the low-key former bank economist who is Quebec’s finance minister. He makes promises and keeps them. He’s boring. He’s also probably the best finance minister in the country.

After decades of neglect, the province is investing heavily in infrastructure. In Montreal, it seems that every second hospital is getting a shiny new addition. The decrepit highway network is being rebuilt at a cost of billions.

You might expect voters to be pleased. Not on your life. In four recent byelections, the Parti Québécois won two, the right-of-centre Coalition Avenir Québec won one and the Liberals took one. There was no change in the standings in the National Assembly — but the Liberals barely held on to Verdun, a ‘safe’ riding in Montreal, and got less than 15 per cent of the vote in the two ridings won by the PQ. Pundits considered it a sharp warning to the Liberals that voters aren’t happy.

Now, I know that byelections are poor indicators of general voter sentiment. Turnout is usually very low and citizens can deliver an angry message at no cost when a government has a comfortable majority, as the Liberals do now. And Quebeckers have a right to be cranky. Quebec’s hard-won fiscal prudence has come through iron discipline on spending, which has meant painful cuts to services in health care and education, among others.

The Liberals aren’t necessarily out of the woods. Politicians who deliver the economic goods aren’t always rewarded. The Liberals aren’t necessarily out of the woods. Politicians who deliver the economic goods aren’t always rewarded.

Quebec’s Liberals are well aware of the dangers of continued austerity. Armed with a bit of fiscal flexibility, they’re planning to eliminate an unpopular health care contribution tax on Jan. 1, two years ahead of schedule. This week they announced an extra $100 million to reduce wait times in hospital emergency rooms. More spending on education, regional development and infrastructure has also been promised.

All of this is not meant to suggest that Quebec doesn’t face some significant economic challenges. Its population is aging rapidly. One of the reasons unemployment is trending lower is that there are fewer active workers around.

And when it comes to debt, economists point out that Quebec has had little choice but to adopt severe measures. “They had to move forcefully,” says Robert Hogue, senior economist at Royal Bank of Canada, noting that Quebec had the unenviable record of having the highest net debt to GDP ratio of any province, at more than 49 per cent. That’s started to decline and Newfoundland and Labrador, in the midst of a real fiscal crisis, will soon be catching up.

Ontario, which continues to run deficits and has shown much less self-control than Quebec, is still seeing its net-debt-to-GDP ratio rise, but it’s still below Quebec’s and its economy is much bigger and more robust than that of its neighbour.

Quebec also has got to get used to lower long-term growth rates. This year, real growth is expected to be 1.4 or 1.5 per cent — next year won’t be much better. That’s okay, but not enough to encourage dancing in the streets.

No longer can we look at Quebec as the nation’s economic basketcase. The PQ is trying to keep the separatist flame alive, but with millennials clearly uninterested in the futile nationalist and language battles of their parents and grandparents, the province can expect political and economic stability for some time to come.

The Liberals aren’t necessarily out of the woods. Quebec voters are no less fickle than voters anywhere else. People claim they want politicians to be straight with them and do the sensible thing — but when you behave that way and produce results, you’re just as likely to be disdained as praised. Politicians who deliver the economic goods aren’t always rewarded.

Look south of the border. The Democrats delivered expanded health care and an unemployment rate of 4.6 per cent. But they got pushed out of office by a reality TV star with a nimble Twitter finger and a fabulous knack for self-promotion. The Washington Post put it this way in a recent headline. “Why Trump Gets More Hype out of 1,000 jobs than Obama gets out of 16 million.”

The public, it seems, finds it hard to understand the importance of making economic policy on the basis of long-term trends, even when those policies have a far greater impact on their lives than keeping a few hundred jobs at one air conditioner plant in Indiana.

So until Premier Couillard start tweeting more and Minister Leitao starts turning up everytime a new coffee bar opens its doors and hires three workers, they may find the political going pretty tough.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.