There was something fundamentally hypocritical in the unanimity with which the Assembly adopted a motion paying tribute to Yves Michaud, when it has refused for more than twenty years to apologize for having dragged him through the mud of equally unanimous manner.
Everyone has known for a long time that Mr. Michaud never made the anti-Semitic remarks that he was accused of and that the 109 deputies who condemned him on December 14, 2000, without even giving him the chance to explain himself, had no idea of the comments he had made in his testimony to the Estates General on language.
The former leader of the Equality Party Robert Libman, who had in the meantime become president of the Quebec section of the Jewish organization B’nai Brith and who had no reason to come to its defense, other than out of concern for justice, immediately declared that they had been distorted “incredibly”.
Nothing happened. Over the years, the various attempts to get the National Assembly to make amends have failed one after the other, even though almost all of the PQ deputies who had voted for the motion of censure presented them with apologies as staff.
Of the two who still sit, François Legault remains the only unrepentant one. Jean-François Simard (Montmorency) apologized in 2011, but the Prime Minister said “live well” with his vote of December 2000. Since he was in office, he has accustomed us to beating our guilt at everything, but he seems to have a psychological blockage in the case of Mr. Michaud.
Mr. Legault himself demonstrated last week that he had not voted knowingly. He said he had heard comments on the radio that displeased him, but which had nothing to do with the content of the motion. It is undoubtedly mortifying to admit having condemned an innocent person, either through culpable negligence or for fear of displeasing one’s boss, but it is better to fall on one’s pride than on one’s honor.
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In his intervention on the motion which was presented Tuesday by the PQ, the Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, was full of praise for the deceased, this “great builder” with an “exceptional career” , who “will have greatly contributed to the advancement of the Quebec state, particularly with regard to the French language”. Not to mention his tireless defense of small shareholders.
These praises only underline the injustice of the stigma that was inflicted on him, on which Mr. Roberge remained eloquently silent. If there was any doubt in her mind, Mercier’s supportive MP, Ruba Ghazal, certainly understood that she would not get the meeting she had requested to try to find a way to repair it.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was not mistaken. It will be a few years before justice is done to Mr. Michaud and it is far from being done. Even the departure of Mr. Legault and the advent of a PQ government would not constitute a guarantee. In recent days, all attention has been focused on the Prime Minister’s stubbornness, but there is nothing to suggest that the PLQ could stop opposing any form of apology.
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At the time, Lucien Bouchard took advantage of the opportunity to get rid of an intractable “hardliner”, who would have become a real nightmare if he had been the MP for Mercier, as seemed inevitable.
The Liberals had rather wanted to blacken the PQ and the entire independence movement by associating it with the alleged anti-Semitism of Mr. Michaud. As the PQ rises from its ashes and promises another referendum, it seems doubtful that a belated concern for justice will push them to rehabilitate the pariah of the year 2000.
Seized of the case, Judge Jean-Louis Baudoin, of the Court of Appeal, who had had to bow to the privileges that the law guaranteed to parliamentarians, had underlined the “strange paradox” of which Mr. Michaud was the victim.
At a time when charters guarantee respect for individual rights and the free expression of ideas, whether politically correct or not, the National Assembly used its prerogatives to condemn a man and execute him in the public square, without having heard him and without the reasons for his conviction having been clearly explained to his judges, in this case the parliamentarians.
Judge Baudoin quoted Cicero: Summum jus, summa injuria ! Which could be translated as follows: “Stricter application of the law leads to greater injustice. » If this was already condemnable under the Roman Republic, it should be downright intolerable in the Quebec of the 21ste century.