Former Prime Minister Jean Charest will be paid $385,000 in damages after winning his court case for the illegal disclosure of his personal information.
The Superior Court of Quebec has ruled: in a judgment made public Tuesday afternoon, we learn that it condemns the Quebec State to compensate the former elected official for having leaked private information concerning him in full investigation. illegal of the Liberal Party of Quebec. Mr. Charest will receive $350,000 in punitive damages and $35,000 in compensatory damages.
In his decision, Judge Gregory Moore also authorizes the former prime minister to add an allegation of abuse of process in his lawsuit against Quebec. It will therefore continue to analyze the file.
In 2020, Mr. Charest “reluctantly” filed an instituting motion ordering the Quebec government to pay him one million dollars in damages for having invaded his privacy and harmed his image. The origin of the saga: the publication by the Montreal Journal of information describing the former Prime Minister as a subject of interest in the Mâchurer investigation having been the subject of police surveillance.
In 2021, Mr. Charest doubled the amount of his lawsuit after Geneviève Guilbault, the Minister of Public Security at the time – Minister of Transport today – had waved in the room an image of the book PLQ Inc., a work signed by the Quebecor Investigation Bureau, which is interested in the Mâchurer investigation.
In his decision handed down on Tuesday, Justice Moore concludes that the Anti-Corruption Commissioner “failed in his obligation to protect the personal information of Mr. Charest”, who felt “humiliated” and “anguished” by the leaked content. “The personal information disseminated is not trivial,” he writes, while recalling that the senior management of UPAC, itself, was suspected of having revealed this information to the media.
“The Commissioner’s failure to comply with several laws that protect personal information and information kept in investigation files constitutes gross negligence,” adds the magistrate.
Triggered in 2014, Mâchurer has never concluded any embezzlement. A year ago, the UPAC put the key in the door of the investigation, eight years after its start, and this, without laying a single charge. “This investigation has weighed heavily on my personal life, on the life of my family, my colleagues in my political life and my current colleagues,” said Mr. Charest in a written statement sent to the media. The continuation of this investigation had become senseless. »
Mr. Charest had not reacted publicly to Judge Moore’s decision when these lines were written on Tuesday evening. The government of François Legault, either.