Fabien Roy, the man who dominated Beauceron politics during the 1970s, died this week at the age of 95.
According to the Roy&Giguère funeral home website, Mr. Roy “passed away peacefully” at the CHSLD in Beauceville. He was then surrounded by his family. The causes of death have not been revealed.
Born in Saint-Prosper, in Beauce, the man devoted his life to Creditism, a right-wing populist doctrine which enjoyed certain vigor in rural Quebec in the 1960s.
Member of a party undermined by internal conflicts in the National Assembly, he became the leader of the federal Social Creditists during their last stand in the elections of 1979 and 1980. In the meantime, he experienced the very short adventure of the Popular National Party that Jérôme Choquette founded following his departure from the Bourassa government in 1975.
The man would be elected three times as a member of parliament in Quebec, once in Ottawa, but he would never be part of a government. But, for him, finding himself on the opposition benches was not a flaw. As he wrote in his autobiography, “any deputy, even alone, outside the ruling party, can be the initiator of change”.
His career began modestly. He worked in a wood cooperative where, he admitted in his autobiography, he put together a file against the “communist workers”, a file which he shamelessly showed to his bosses. He then founded his transport company and founded the credit union in his hometown before working for the establishment credit unions.
A meeting with Social Credit leader Réal Caouette convinced him to become politically active. He even became the chairman of the party’s executive committee for the Dorchester constituency.
Elected three times to the National Assembly
In 1970, he was one of 12 Social Credit candidates to be elected to the National Assembly, allowing himself the luxury of beating Minister Paul Émile-Allard by more than 2,400 votes. He will then be appointed spokesperson for his party on finance before becoming, two years later, parliamentary leader.
Following the resignation of Camil Samson, he ran for leadership of the Social Creditists in the hope, he wrote in his autobiography, of maintaining the unity of the party. He finished third behind Samson and the elected official, the former federal Liberal minister, Yvon Dupuis.
During the 1974 election, it was a massacre for all the opposition parties, including the Social Crediters who only saved two elected officials, including Fabien Roy.
But even two seems too high a number for the Social Democrats. Having become leader again, Camil Samson expels Fabien Roy. In 1975, he supported the former strongman of the Bourassa regime, Jérôme Choquette, in the adventure of the Popular National Party (PNP). The objective, according to the former Social Credit Party, was in particular to be able to discuss “on an equal footing” with the National Union to form a new party. The alliance will be born and will last… a month.
Despite everything, on November 15, 1976, Fabien Roy was easily re-elected in his county, even obtaining more than 50 percent of all the votes that the PNP received throughout the province. The following year, he would be the only opposition MP to vote in favor of Bill 101 on the Charter of the French Language.
Transition to the Federal Social Credit Union
In Ottawa, federal Social Crediters are also crossing the desert. After the departure of Réal Caouette and the accidental death of his successor André-Gilles Fortin, they chose a unilingual anglophone, Lorne Resnowki, who would not last long in the crab basket. The Social Crediters then turn to Fabien Roy who agrees to take up the challenge.
In the 1979 federal elections, the Social Credit Party had only six elected representatives, but held the balance of power. Relations with the minority Conservative government of Joe Clark are not in good shape. Unsurprisingly, during the debate on the budget, Fabien Roy’s small troop abstained from voting, contributing to the fall of the Clark government. Bad is coming to him. In the subsequent elections, all the Social Credit candidates were defeated, even their leader, a first for him. A first that will be repeated during the by-election in Frontenac.
In his memoirs, Mr. Roy recounts having offered Joe Clark’s cabinet the possibility of finding common ground to weigh in particular a controversial tax on gasoline included in the budget, but his appeals “obtained no response.” Retrospectively, he wrote in his memoirs that “being a minority, the government [a] shows great irresponsibility.
However, he is not leaving politics. In the 1980 referendum, even if he denied being “a separatist”, he opted for “yes”, saying he wanted to “curb the centralizing federal ambitions of Pierre Trudeau”.
After his political career, he changed direction and became a stockbroker. And he even launched into the media, becoming, for three years, morning host on Radio-Beauce. And when retirement time came, he sat on the executive of the Association of Former Parliamentarians of the National Assembly.
Fabien Roy will never deny Social Credit. In his autobiography, he wrote that this movement is “the only one which proposes fundamental reforms to improve the living conditions of all”.
His funeral will be celebrated on Saturday, November 18, from 10:30 a.m. at the Saint-Georges church (West sector).