It was almost surreal to see Lucien Bouchard and Jean Charest gathered Thursday evening on the same television sets to talk about the man who had played such a big role in the history of the country and in their own lives. We had the impression of attending a private interview between two friends who had not seen each other for some time, the complicity was so great. It was as if the resentment and rivalry that had characterized their relationship for so long had melted away under the bright lights of the TVA and Radio-Canada studios where they had taken their seats, both eager to recount their bittersweet memories. of their lost companion.
The death of Brian Mulroney reminds us how the 18e Prime Minister of Canada — and proud son of Quebec — made the country vibrate during a pivotal era in its political history. MM. Bouchard and Charest, both members of his Council of Ministers at the end of the 1980s, know something about this. Initially comrades in arms regarding the Meech Lake constitutional accord, they saw their relationship turn sour after Mr. Charest chaired a House of Commons committee which proposed revisions to the agreement in order to gain the support of recalcitrant provinces. Outraged, Mr. Bouchard slammed the door of the government, at the same time ending a 30-year-old friendship with Mr. Mulroney.
The breach seemed irreparable. Meech’s failure had sowed bitterness between the two men and Mr. Bouchard, by creating the Bloc Québécois, had effectively signed the death warrant of the Progressive Conservative Party in Quebec. However, we learned Thursday evening from Mr. Bouchard’s own mouth, the two men had reconciled during the last months of Mr. Mulroney’s life. The news brought tears to the eyes of many viewers. No one could remain indifferent to Mr. Bouchard’s testimony.
“We became real friends again,” he confided to Céline Galipeau at TV news from Radio-Canada. My sadness, I think, is coupled with a lot of nostalgia for the years that were taken from us. It was not others who took the years away from us, it was us who took them away from us through political differences. Not minor disagreements, they were very important, they were deep convictions on both sides, but all the more painful because they attacked a friendship that dates back to our youth. »
What would have happened if the two men had been able to resolve their differences in 1990 instead of becoming political enemies? If, in the midst of the Meech ratification crisis, Lucien Bouchard had not decided to write a telegram, sent and read at the meeting of the National Council of the Parti Québécois in May 1990, which made him reconnect with sovereignism even before the agreement would have been buried? Quebecers would undoubtedly have preferred that the two men get along. But their breakup deprived Mr. Mulroney of the political legacy he would have most desired to leave as prime minister.
“If Quebec is weakened, Canada is weakened,” declared Brian Mulroney in the middle of the electoral campaign, in 1984, in the famous Sept-Îles speech that Mr. Bouchard himself had written. We will, hopefully and in good faith, convince the National Assembly of Quebec to give its assent to a new constitution with honor and enthusiasm. »
Six years later, the day after Meech’s death, Mr. Mulroney addressed Canadians to express his sadness. “I want to tell my fellow citizens of Quebec how sorry I am that Quebec was not able, this time, to reintegrate the constitutional family with honor and enthusiasm. But I would rather have failed in trying to advance the cause of Canadian unity than not having taken the risk, having done nothing and having criticized the efforts of others. »
This last remark was above all an arrow fired at Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who had mobilized the federalists of English Canada opposed to the recognition of Quebec as a “distinct society” in the Constitution. But also to Mr. Bouchard.
Thursday evening, Mr. Bouchard called Meech “something extraordinary,” as if he, too, would have preferred the agreement to succeed. “I was for the Meech Lake agreement. I thought that these were great gains for Quebec, that it meant that we could feel part of the Canadian family, since we were making a place there that was configured in such a way as to respect our identity… Unfortunately, the fact that it failed, it caused the opposite. And since then, things have fallen apart a lot. »
Irony if there ever was one. Brian Mulroney will have given everything to fulfill his promise made almost 40 years ago in Sept-Îles. Whatever happens, Quebecers owe him their gratitude.