The Parti Québécois (PQ) demands a timetable and a process for the disclosure of secret documents on the illegal financing of the No camp in the 1995 sovereignty referendum.
PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon thus sent a letter on Wednesday to the Director General of Elections (DGE), Jean-François Blanchet, to request a follow-up on the motion he had adopted last week by the National Assembly in unanimity.
In this correspondence obtained by The Canadian PressMr. St-Pierre Plamondon asks the CEO to confirm that he will follow up on the motion and to tell him “what will be the deadlines and the process envisaged”.
In an email sent last week to The Canadian PressElections Quebec said it was evaluating the “applicable legal framework”.
It should be remembered that it was the commission chaired by Bernard Grenier which then conducted an investigation and submitted a report in 2007.
No less than 90 witnesses had been heard behind closed doors and 4,500 documents filed as evidence. But everything is struck by an “order relating to the non-disclosure, non-communication and non-dissemination of evidence”, without time limit, issued by Commissioner Bernard Grenier.
The motion asks the Chief Electoral Officer to “disclose the documents of the Grenier commission as soon as possible”.
Remember that the referendum on sovereignty ended with a tight result of 50.58% for the federalist No camp, against 49.42% for the sovereignist Yes camp.
The separatists accused the No camp and the federal government of having circumvented the Quebec law on popular consultations, in particular concerning the funding ceiling for each of the committees.
Bernard Grenier had justified his order by saying that he was “sensitive to the warning expressed by some about the risk of damaging after 11 or 12 years the reputation of people who have worked for the cause of No in good faith “.
He also said that he did not see how he could make the documents accessible at the time: “The damage and injustice that we would have liked to avoid by proceeding behind closed doors would thus be caused. »
The conclusions of the report
Commissioner Grenier concluded that the “controversial funds” came from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
He had also concluded that the Canadian Unity Council (CUC) and Option Canada had spent more than $11 million between 1994 and 1996 to promote the No, therefore in a period that extended well before and after the regulated period. for expenses, namely the 1995 referendum campaign.
The expenditures are “not tainted with irregularities in relation to the requirements of the law”, we read. During the referendum campaign, the No camp had respected the ceiling of nearly 5.1 million.
However, he could not determine who had funded the huge last chance rally for Canada in Montreal at the end of the campaign, called the “love in” of October 27, 1995.
“The evidence presented before me did not make it possible to determine the source of the financing of the rally of October 27 in downtown Montreal, he writes. I am unable to conclude that the subsidies paid to the CUC or to Option Canada were used to defray all or part of the costs of this rally. »