Quebec will not have to pay former Prime Minister Jean Charest the $700,000 he demanded as part of his prosecution for the leaks of information to the Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit (UPAC) of which he was the victim.
In a decision handed down last Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Gregory Moore rejected the former politician’s request for an abuse of process declaration.
This request, filed by Jean Charest’s lawyers last May, followed another judgment rendered a few weeks earlier. The magistrate then ordered Quebec to pay him the sum of $385,000 in damages for having illegally disclosed his personal information.
Jean Charest was then authorized to continue his actions against the government which, according to him, would have unnecessarily complicated the holding of his trial.
“The Prosecutor abused the procedure in that the essence of his defense system was false, manifestly ill-founded and dilatory,” we could read in the request instituting proceedings filed at the beginning of May.
The author of the leak remains unknown
Mr. Charest claimed more than $200,000 in punitive damages, another sum of $512,000 to pay his lawyers’ fees, as well as $5,000 in moral damages. The total amount was $717,000.
However, Judge Moore ruled that the Attorney General of Quebec was not guilty of abuse of procedure, contrary to what Jean Charest’s lawyers argued.
They asserted in particular that if the UPAC computer system “complied with government standards, it would have been impossible for an ill-intentioned person to have unauthorized access to their personal information or to share it externally.”
But it is not possible to say that any measures would have prevented the leak of this information, argues Judge Moore, since even to this day, the identity of its author remains unknown.
The criminal investigation which has been underway on this subject since 2018 “is still seeking the answers to these questions”, recalls the magistrate.
“Significant” damage
All these procedures follow the Prime Minister’s decision to sue Quebec in October 2020 for violation of his privacy. Jean Charest said he had suffered significant damage due to the leak of confidential investigation documents from the UPAC Mâchurer project on the financing of the Liberal Party of Quebec, obtained by the Quebecor group and published from April 2017.
It included information on the former prime minister’s travels and an organization chart where his photo appeared. The information came from the Mâchurer project which was officially shut down last February without leading to any charges to date.
At his trial, the former Liberal leader expressed the “shock” experienced by his revelations, the humiliation “by inference” that he is a criminal and the frustration that followed, for which he demanded compensatory damages.