“My only regret is not having done enough to contribute to the birth of the country of Quebec”, concludes André Bouthillier (born in 1952), in his “account of an exhilarating professional career”, in journalism (especially in To have to), public relations and politics.
“There are risks you have to take to survive,” he says. Does the word sound like Andrée Ferretti’s: “Who doesn’t make independence fight it”?
No, although Bouthillier’s autobiography is titled Risk appetite. The ultimately flexible temperament of the man and his close ties with private enterprise distanced him from his elder socialist Andrée Ferretti (1935-2022), born Bertrand, independentist since 1956, even if, like her, he had just a modest Montreal environment.
The expression of his close friendship with the Premier of Quebec, François Legault, who also came from a modest background on the island of Montreal, constitutes the most touching pages of the autobiography. Bouthillier allows us to guess the inner political drama experienced by two passionate people in very different ways.
Economic competence
About Legault, he writes: “To my great regret, he gave up his dream of making Quebec a country. However, I find it hard to believe in his—timid—profession of faith in Canadian federalism, which challenges laws passed by the National Assembly in the Supreme Court. »
He wonders if the Premier of Quebec will be able to “stop the wave of Anglicization” and “prevent Canadian multiculturalism from crushing our identity”.
“I don’t know if I should thank you for getting me involved in all this…”, Legault said in 2001 to Bouthillier, who was at the origin of his political career. He had designated him to Jean-François Lisée, adviser to Prime Minister Lucien Bouchard, as a sovereigntist businessman, worthy of becoming a minister with economic competence in a PQ government.
Collusion and partisanship
Long before this discreet influence on Quebec provincial politics, Bouthillier felt that his series of articles, in 1984 in The dutyon a Quebec Liberal scandal at the federal level, “undoubtedly” contributed to the resounding victory in Quebec of the Progressive Conservative Party, then led by Brian Mulroney.
A fund of 200 million, called the La Prade fund, had been promised by Ottawa to the Quebec government in compensation for its withdrawal from the heavy water plant project on boulevard La Prade, in Bécancour, in 1978.
It was to be used to finance energy and technology projects, but was left to the discretion of Liberal MPs in the region.
Bouthillier exposed the collusion of money and political partisanship, a silent threat from which even the noble project of Quebec independence is not immune. This is perhaps the forbidden, barely conscious thought that haunts and torments our idealist.