The practice is not new. But the new proof that access to CAQ ministers served as bait for party financing will cause lasting harm to the CAQ.
• Read also: $200 for 2 minutes with Guilbault: the CAQ will reimburse the bereaved couple of parents
Until now, it was reasonable to believe that the revelations about CAQ employees or deputies having dangled privileged access to ministers in exchange for a $100 entry fee to a fundraising cocktail would have a limited effect on the CAQ brand.
Of course, there was a feeling of déjà vu.
Under the Quebec Liberal Party, Minister Nathalie Normandeau was solicited from all sides by her fellow MPs who had been given funding objectives for the party.
With her popularity and her ministerial responsibilities, she was the headliner who kept the fund ringing.
Today, it is Pierre Fitzgibbon and Geneviève Guilbault who are the champions of fundraising cocktails.
And now, it is the star of the Legault government who finds himself in embarrassment despite himself.
Pay to raise awareness
Thursday, a couple who lost their daughter in a road accident caused by a drunk driver said they had to pay $200 to meet the Minister of Transport at a fundraising cocktail.
They paid $100 each. For a meeting with the minister of…two minutes.
It’s $100 per minute.
The image is devastating.
The grieving couple, Élizabeth Rivera and Antoine Bittar, had turned to MP Maryline Picard to get the government’s ear, after several public outings remained unanswered, in the hope of lowering the blood alcohol level allowed. 05.
Four months after a meeting with the MP for Soulanges, it was an employee of her office who encouraged the couple to pay for the chance to discuss with the minister.
Mme Rivera told a parliamentary committee Thursday that she reluctantly agreed, and that she and her husband actually benefited from a two-minute audience with Geneviève Guilbault.
There were other people waiting for their turn there, people who had obviously paid too.
Same thing
In the case of CAQ MP Sylvain Lévesque, who is the subject of an investigation by the Ethics Commissioner, it was also an employee who offered a citizen to pay $100 to meet the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, so that she can move a file forward.
These are no longer coincidences.
In an emotional reaction last week, François Legault announced that the CAQ would stop collecting popular donations.
On Thursday, he explained that he had acted in particular because a deputy who had hit the headlines had told him that his son had heard the word “crosseur” to designate his father in the schoolyard.
Quebecers are not going to think that ministers can be convinced to stand on their principles for a $100 paid to the party coffers.
On the other hand, the government must not give the impression that it is unlikely to have the chance to explain a situation to a minister with the power to change things, unless it pays $100 for a pass .
“By renouncing popular funding, we may seem like we’re taking out a bazooka to kill a fly, but we can’t let our image be tarnished, when we know the harm it has caused the liberals,” he explained to me. a government source, less than 24 hours before the media bomb affecting Geneviève Guilbault.
MP Maryline Picard apologized on social networks and acknowledged that there was a “lack of judgment”.
The $200 for two minutes still made an impression.
The CAQ will have to live with the consequences.