On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, much has been said about the legacy of René Lévesque, but we have somewhat forgotten that his reforms transformed Quebec democracy. It may be because it is difficult to remember the system that existed before.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
There was really nothing good in the way political parties financed themselves before the reforms of the first Parti Québécois (PQ) government. Lévesque had long had a real allergy to “hidden electoral funds”, which he denounced from the founding of the PQ, and he had made their abolition a central commitment of his party’s program.
At the time, anyone could contribute to the coffers of a party while maintaining their anonymity and without any limit. Which meant that you could never be sure that a decision was made for the common good and not to thank a generous donor.
As soon as he came to power, immediately after Bill 1 on language (which became Bill 101 after a bad procedural sleight of hand), Lévesque passed Bill 2 on the funding of political parties.
It was the first time that the principle was established in Canada that only voters can contribute to political financing. Contributions were subject to a ceiling set by law and had to be made public. Companies and legal persons were completely excluded from party financing.
Of course, as we have seen in recent years, the system was not perfect and parties found a way around it. With the result that the state is now the main funder of political parties, and one can certainly wonder what René Lévesque would think of this today. The fact remains that, in its time, it was a major democratic reform, and it still has effects today.
It was also Mr. Lévesque who had adopted an exemplary law on referendums which guaranteed that the Yes camp and the No camp would be on equal terms during the referendum campaign, including in terms of airtime or expenses incurred.
This law is still in force and has been used three times with success… even if the federal government has not always respected it, especially during the first referendum in 1980.
Another foundation of democracy, for René Lévesque, was respect for fundamental rights and, in particular, those of minorities.
Recently, there has been much use of a quotation from Mr. Lévesque—always the same, moreover—denouncing the “government of judges” after the patriation of the Constitution and the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in 1982.
But that is to forget that Mr. Lévesque’s main objection was that the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms — adopted in 1975, under the government of Robert Bourassa — was far superior to the Canadian Charter, among other things because not only did it apply to the state’s relations with citizens, but it also prohibited discrimination in the private sector.
The Quebec Charter could be invoked, for example, in the case of discrimination in housing, whereas the federal Charter applied only if a government agency was involved.
It was also Mr. Lévesque’s government that extended the scope of the Quebec Charter to apply to laws that had been adopted before the Charter, at the request of its Minister of Justice, Marc-André Bédard. To claim today that he was viscerally against the charters of rights and freedoms is simply inaccurate.
Its other great contribution to democratic life is the Parti Québécois itself. A party entirely different from the others at its foundation. First by the popular financing that it imposed on itself before making it a law.
This was very demanding, but it forced the PQ to hold fundraising campaigns every year, which meant, among other things, having a militant base mobilized at all times and not just during election campaigns. And which made the members feel that the party belonged to them.
Similarly, in the PQ, candidates had to be chosen by party members in each constituency and direct nominations by the leader were rare exceptions rather than the rule as in the “old parties”.
The program was adopted by the members during congresses and not concocted in secret by any “political commission” and revealed on the eve of the elections. Of course, it happened that the debates at the PQ congresses made the leader damn the leader, including the 1982 congress whose decisions were overturned by the infamous “Renerendum”, a direct consultation of all the members.
But, in general, the PQ was well ahead of its time in terms of transparency and internal democracy. As Quebec was — and, to a certain extent, still is — thanks to René Lévesque.