Jean Charest asks a judge to force the Attorney General of Quebec to give him within five days the documents he has been waiting for months to support his lawsuit for damages against the Quebec state, learned The Press. His request comes as the parties debate his legacy in the National Assembly, waiting to see if he enters the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Posted at 12:00 a.m.
“It is essential for [M. Charest] to obtain a copy of all documents […] and this, as quickly as possible, ”we read in a notice filed at the Montreal courthouse by the lawyers of the former Prime Minister. The Press obtained a copy of the document, dated last Friday.
Jean Charest filed a lawsuit against the Government of Quebec in October 2020 for violation of his privacy. He says he suffered significant harm due to the leak of confidential investigation documents from the Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit (UPAC) on the financing of the Liberal Party of Quebec, obtained by the Quebecor group and published from April 2017. .
It included information on the travels of the former prime minister and an organization chart showing his photo. The information came from Project Mâchurer, an investigation which is still open, but which has not led to any charges to date.
Frustration and embarrassment
In his lawsuit, Mr. Charest reports the “frustration” and “embarrassment” felt by his family and him after the publication of this confidential information. He has already indicated that he would have been ready to give up his legal action in exchange for a public apology from the government, but that his offer was refused.
Mr. Charest is claiming $1 million in damages.
According to the notice filed in court, Mr. Charest and his lawyers have been waiting since mid-July for certain important documents for his prosecution, which the Attorney General of Quebec had undertaken to provide him.
In September, M.and Michel Déom, one of the lawyers from the Ministry of Justice who represents the Attorney General in this case, had admitted in an email filed in the file that the process was tedious. “We had several difficulties in recovering the documents,” he said.
He mentioned in particular documents kept at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse which would have been “damaged by a water leak” and would have been sent “to a subcontractor in order to be repaired”.
On February 4, two days after the departure of Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, Jean Charest’s lawyers came back to ask the Attorney General of Quebec when the documents on their client would be sent. They say they haven’t heard back, so they’re asking a judge to force state officials to act quickly. The court is due to hear the claim on Thursday. Jean Charest is represented by Jeansonne Avocats, which has handled several defamation cases over the years.
The Quebec Department of Justice said it did not want to comment on the case, “out of respect for the judicial process”.
Unhappy with comments from other parties
February 14th, The Press wrote that Quebec MPs from the Conservative Party of Canada “are ardently courting” Jean Charest to run for the leadership of the party. A victory in court against the Quebec state regarding the damage caused by the leaking of information about him could help him move on.
Again this week, Mr. Charest told the caucus of the Liberal Party of Quebec that he was unhappy to be associated with allegations of corruption by other political parties.
“I spoke to Mr. Charest. The tenor of the conversation was that the comments made by the party leaders are totally unacceptable,” denounced MP Lise Thériault, who was a minister in the Couillard and Charest governments, on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the Coalition avenir Québec, the Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire attacked the legacy of Mr. Charest. The Minister of Cybersecurity, Éric Caire, indicated that Jean Charest was “not a model” of ethics. The leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, said in turn that Jean Charest’s legacy is to have “in a way normalized corruption by trivializing it”. The parliamentary leader of Quebec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, said that Mr. Charest had “weakened” democracy “through corruption”.
The Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, for his part affirmed in the Chamber that “everyone in Quebec knows that there were daycare places, then that the Liberal Party sold that to the private sector in exchange for donations “.
“I was enraged”
The exit greatly displeased Mme Theriault. “I was enraged when I read the comments,” she said. She countered each criticism with her own attacks.
“As far as I know, UPAC had to apologize for Guy Ouellette. Maybe Mr. Gaudreau [le patron de l’UPAC] will also have to apologize for Mr. Charest at some point,” said Ms.me Theriault.
She concluded her tirade by saying that “throwing mud is not an honorable way to do politics”.
For his part, even if he says he has “never been a fan of Jean Charest”, the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, Éric Duhaime, considers that his record as premier is “better” than that of François Legault.
With Tommy Chouinard, The Press
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- Number of years since the opening by the UPAC of the Mâchurer investigation into the financing of the Liberal Party of Quebec at the time of Jean Charest.
source: Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit