The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) reimbursed the two $100 donations that bereaved parents had paid to meet with Minister Geneviève Guilbault to invite her to reduce the alcohol level allowed while driving.
• Read also: Parents grieving because of drunk driving: $200 for 2 minutes with Geneviève Guilbault at a fundraising cocktail
Early Friday morning, the general director of the CAQ contacted Élizabeth Rivera and Antoine Bittar: “We wrote to them to offer them a refund,” explains Brigitte Legault.
Then, in an interview on the show 24•60 Friday evening, Ms. Rivera said she and her partner had already received the refund.
“We will respect their choice, whatever it is. The CAQ ended its popular funding last week precisely to prevent cases like this from tarnishing our integrity. We are sorry for this turn of events,” added the general director.
Reached by telephone, Mr. Bittar said he accepted the reimbursement, which will be donated in the form of a donation to an organization dedicated to the fight against impaired driving.
Sincere apologies
The CAQ, says Antoine Bittar, also offered its “sincere apologies”.
The day before, the testimony of the Rivera-Bittar couple in a parliamentary committee caused significant discomfort when it revealed that an employee of the county office of CAQ MP Marilyne Picard offered to pay them each $100 in order to meet the Minister of Transport in a CAQ financing cocktail.
Since the death of their daughter at the hands of a drunk driver, the couple has been campaigning to lower the alcohol level allowed while driving from 0.08 to 0.05, a measure rejected by the Legault government in its reform of the Code of road safety currently under study.
For Antoine Bittar, the reimbursement proposal made by the CAQ demonstrates that the party “realized that it was really not the thing to do.”
Sensitization
However, the couple had accepted this arrangement in order to raise awareness and prevent other families from experiencing tragedies like theirs.
Regarding the fundraising cocktail, Mr. Bittar says that several people seemed to have been invited, like them, to talk about their file with the minister. “We were introduced to Ms. Guilbault, we talked, then at a certain point – as I told you, we had two minutes each – we were told “well, we’ll stop now, it’s up to the next ones to speak” “, he explained.
Asked why Ms. Picard’s employee judged that the fundraising cocktail was the only way for the couple to meet her, Geneviève Guilbault herself raised the idea that the invitations had perhaps been made in connection with county records.