Yves Michaud, who died at the venerable age of 94, was not an easy person. But isn’t this the mark of exceptional men and women who, throughout their lives, give of themselves to their society without ever counting?
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Yves Michaud was a man of principles. His own: righteousness, frankness, justice, family, loyalty, love of his homeland and of humans more fragile than him. Hence his multiple careers.
Politician. Journalist. General Delegate of Quebec in Paris. Robin of the banks. Educated through and through. Lover of a French language which he mastered like a virtuoso and which he defended without flinching.
Refined with a sharp sense of humor. Authentic epicurean. Faithful friend of the greatest, including René Lévesque and Jacques Parizeau. Yves Michaud was above all a man of his century and of all centuries.
Chivalrous and always ready for combat, he looked like he had come straight out of a swashbuckling novel. Knowing him was a privilege.
Such a rich life cannot be summed up in a short chronicle. I know it too well. Just as I know that it cannot be reduced to this “villainous” motion of reprimand of December 14, 2000, as he rightly described it.
However, the seriousness of the event and the immense pain it will have caused him for the rest of his life requires that we talk about it again.
A dark day
On that dark day in December 2000, like a flock of deaf and blind sheep, the elected representatives of the National Assembly, including François Legault, unanimously condemned Yves Michaud for xenophobic and anti-Semitic remarks that he had never made. held.
By cruelly seeking to dishonor Yves Michaud, the Parliament of the Quebec people has dishonored itself. Parliaments, as I have already written, are not courts of citizens’ thoughts. Their role is to be their voice and not the tool of their silence.
Worse still, since then, even if several elected officials have individually admitted their error, a few rare attempts to make amends have all failed.
The National Assembly has never apologized for its own infamy or ensured that such injustice never happens again. Even the current Prime Minister says today that he is “living well” with his vote at the time.
In March 2001, the former leader of the Equality Party, Robert Libman, was clear. Mr. Michaud’s comments, he said, had been “distorted in an incredible way. People accuse him of minimizing the Holocaust, when he never did that.”
The reality is in fact that on the day of this “motion of censure” against Yves Michaud, politics showed its worst face. That of nameless cowardice.
The National Assembly must apologize
On December 14, 2000, the political execution of Yves Michaud, although an honest man, was carried out by the PQ Prime Minister, Lucien Bouchard.
Objective: ruin the reputation of Mr. Michaud, who not only stood up to him on the linguistic front, but wanted to run as a candidate for the PQ nomination in the riding of Mercier.
Too happy to accommodate an operation portraying a notorious sovereignist as a dangerous xenophobe, Jean Charest, leader of the official opposition, also enjoyed playing a leading role in the remote-controlled torpedoing of Mr. Michaud.
The ultimate irony will be that barely a month later, on January 11, 2001, Lucien Bouchard will leave politics. In his final speech, without naming him, he will again attack Yves Michaud whose comments, he even adds, “have damaged Quebec’s reputation abroad.”
Now that Yves Michaud has left this world, the National Assembly must finally mend its ways. It is a question of basic justice. Lucien Bouchard would also be wise to offer his own apologies.
Because through the thick fog of what has been wrongly called the Michaud “affair”, one certainty remains. Yves Michaud was a man of honor and open to the world. It is high time to say it loud and clear.