In an interview given to Duty in April 2010, Jean Charest declared: “I would like people to be able to say that I have changed Quebec. When he left in September 2012, he could say mission accomplished. Quebec indeed seemed unrecognizable.
It’s a safe bet that the Mâchurer investigation into the financing of the Liberal Party of Quebec will never succeed, but we will not soon forget the cover of the magazine Maclean’sin September 2010, on which Bonhomme Carnaval was holding a briefcase overflowing with banknotes to illustrate a pithy title: The most corrupt province in Canada. No one in English Canada saw any exaggeration in this. In the eyes of many, this has always been a characteristic of the “distinct society”.
We can understand Dominique Anglade’s discomfort when he was asked to comment on the possible candidacy of his predecessor for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. Whether she praised him or vilified him, she could only lose points.
Veterans in the Liberal caucus, who have a genuine devotion to their former leader, would have liked her to come to his defense, but the last thing she needs seven months from the next election is to be dragged into a debate on the turpitudes of the party she leads.
According to the MP for Anjou, Lise Thériault, the leaders of the other parties, who hastened to recall the heavy past of the former prime minister, would “address to look at each other before throwing stones”.
It is true that the PLQ did not have a monopoly on illegal funding, to which people more or less turned a blind eye, but its funding methods during the Charest years crossed the traditional limits of indecency. Even before the creation of the Charbonneau commission, one of its former presidents and deputy, Robert Benoit, had declared that he had become “a money-gathering machine”.
When he left Ottawa to take over from Daniel Johnson at the head of the PLQ, in 1998, Mr. Charest published an autobiography, under the title I chose Quebecwhich left many perplexed, so much this choice seemed imposed.
He had been made clear to him that his duty as a Canadian dictated that he volunteer to prevent Lucien Bouchard from holding another referendum, which he would have every chance of winning. Taking the road to Quebec was the condition sine qua non of pursuing his political career.
Admittedly, he delivered the goods. Despite the defeat in 1998, the plurality of votes obtained by the QLP robbed Mr. Bouchard of any desire for a rematch.
During the five years he spent in opposition before the Liberal victory in 2003, Mr. Charest also showed remarkable resilience. Calling him a political beast is certainly no exaggeration.
If he decides to launch himself into the race to succeed Erin O’Toole, he will however have to explain why, after having chosen Quebec, he now wants to put himself at the service of Canada, if not to achieve a personal dream.
No prime minister of a Canadian province has succeeded in rising to the head of the country, but it is not for lack of having tried or at least of having considered it. Mr. Charest is however the first former premier of Quebec to aspire to it. Robert Bourassa even found it incongruous to be asked if it might interest him.
The title that the Couillard government gave to its new constitutional policy, in June 2017, applies perfectly to Mr. Charest: being Quebecois has always been simply his way of being Canadian.
The Quebec Conservatives, led by Alain Rayes, see in the former prime minister the person who could best refocus their party and ensure its future in Quebec, while the election of Pierre Poilievre would earn him a stay in the limbo of an indefinite period.
However, one can wonder which of the two would be better able to secure the support of Prime Minister Legault, who has every chance of still being in office during the next federal election.
Whether one or the other becomes leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Mr. Legault risks finding himself in an embarrassing position. To associate with a man as at odds with Quebec values as Mr. Poilievre seems unthinkable, but it would also be uncomfortable to collaborate with the one who is accused of having presided over an unprecedented corruption of morals. Quebec policies.
For any Prime Minister of Canada, relations between Quebec and the rest of the country will remain a delicate subject, but this would be even more true in the case of Mr. Charest. On each side, he would always be suspected of serving the interests of the other.