The law firm McCarthy Tétrault flatly refused to reveal to the Journal the list of former clients of Jean Charest Thursday a few hours before his first meeting in Quebec.
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“Our firm has a legal obligation to protect the confidentiality of the identity and mandates of its current and former clients. We are required not to provide any information about them,” argued Marie-France Lettre, communications manager for McCarthy Tétrault, Thursday.
Last week, Le Journal noted that the candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (PCC) was reluctant to reveal all of his private activities, like Denis Coderre.
“If for an aspiring mayor, it posed a very serious strategic problem, we can think that for an aspiring Prime Minister of Canada, it will become an important issue,” noted Philippe Dubois, member of the Political Communication Research Group. at Laval University.
“You could say that the informal standards of ethics and integrity should lead Mr. Charest to be more transparent. But these standards are not mandatory, everyone interprets them according to their will,” noted Denis Saint-Martin, full professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Montreal.
In recent days, Le Journal had recalled certain past business relationships of Jean Charest, such as that of consultant for the controversial Chinese giant Huawei in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with China.
The Journal also reported that Jean Charest had chaired Windiga Energy, a Quebec firm of green energy in Africa, whose name appears in the Paradise Papers, as the site Droit.Inc had first revealed.
“Leave of absence”
Asked about his business activities before his return to politics, Jean Charest’s attaché, Laurence Tôth, replied that “it is McCarthy Tétrault’s responsibility to answer these questions”.
However, on Thursday, Le Journal had an end of inadmissibility from the law firm.
“Since the beginning of his campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, Mr. Charest has been on leave of absence from our cabinet. During this period, he will not be involved in the work of the firm or with clients,” we were assured.
-With the collaboration of Olivier Bourque
- A week ago, The newspaper reported that a future Charest government would ban the Chinese multinational Huawei from the Canadian 5G network.