Let’s say it from the start: this is the kind of original production that we would like to see more often on the Historia channel.. The gangster and the minister focuses on a lesser-known chapter in 20th-century Canadian political historye century, but which certainly had an influence on the political future of the country. In addition to doing useful work, this docufiction looks like a catchy detective thriller. Or almost.
Those under 60 will most likely discover a politician they only know from the federal administrative complex that bears his name in downtown Montreal: Guy Favreau. This brilliant lawyer, who became Minister of Immigration and then Justice in the Pearson government, was expected to become Prime Minister shortly after his election in 1963. A case of a bribe given by one of his close collaborators to a prosecutor in charge of extraditing the most flamboyant and popular Quebec bandit of the time, Lucien Rivard, will derail his career. And will give the chance to a certain Pierre Elliot Trudeau to take the lead, and subsequently power.
The production tells with the help of testimonies from experts in criminal history (including the ex-reporter of the To have to Jean-Pierre Charbonneau) and a witness of the time, the former politician André Ouellet, but also numerous sequences of more or less successful dramatic reconstructions, the (often fabulous) destiny of Favreau and Rivard, and especially the underside of the crisp affair that bound them forever. Honorable mention to Mario Jean and Sébastien Ricard, who play the minister and the gangster with great panache.
To see in video