Liberals for breakfast: the men who would lead Quebec
By Paul Wells - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - 0 Comments
Pierre Moreau, left, speaks as Philippe Couillard, centre, and Raymond Bachand look on during the first PLQ leaders debate in Montreal, January 13, 2013. (Graham Hughes/CP)
There are so many Liberal leadership races going on across the country that sometimes we miss a few. I woke up in an arctic Montreal this morning eager to check one of the larger contests off my list. The candidates to succeed Jean Charest as leader of the Quebec Liberal Party — the convention will be in Montreal on March 16-17 — were having a kind of sort of debate.
The venue was the Sheraton Centre hotel, where a group called Idée Fédérale wanted to gauge the candidates’ federalist credentials. Idée Fédérale is designed to be a place where Quebecers can talk about Canada in public, as though it were respectable; its most visible figures are La Presse editor André Pratte and international-relations scholar Jocelyn Coulon, who inaugurated a durable tradition when he became the first in a string of federal Liberals to lose to Tom Mulcair in Outremont in 2007.
This morning’s breakfast was resolutely low-key. Pratte sat in a plush chair and interrogated the three candidates, gently gently, in turn. They did not appear together except for a group photo. Let’s take them in the order they appeared. Continue…
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Three ex-cabinet ministers in race to replace Charest
By The Canadian Press - Saturday, December 15, 2012 at 8:13 AM - 0 Comments
QUEBEC – Quebec Liberals will be choosing between three former cabinet ministers when they…
QUEBEC – Quebec Liberals will be choosing between three former cabinet ministers when they meet in March to pick a replacement for Jean Charest.
Former health minister Philippe Couillard, former finance minister Raymond Bachand and former transport minister Pierre Moreau have met the deadline for submitting their candidacy papers for the party leadership.
They will participate in a series of four French and one English debates before the leadership convention on March 16-17.
Couillard, a former doctor who is considered to be the frontrunner, quit politics in 2008 but says he wants to turn the Liberals into a party of ideas.
Charest quit after the Liberals lost the Sept. 4 election to the Parti Quebecois.
Although allegations of corruption swirled around his government before the election, Pauline Marois took power with only a bare minority and has had a rough start to her administration.
The Liberals are now being led on an interim basis by Jean-Marc Fournier.
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Former health minister Philippe Couillard seeks Quebec Liberal leadership
By The Canadian Press - Wednesday, October 3, 2012 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments
MONTREAL – Former health minister Philippe Couillard is the third person to enter the race to succeed Jean Charest as Quebec Liberal leader.
MONTREAL – Former health minister Philippe Couillard is the third person to enter the race to succeed Jean Charest as Quebec Liberal leader.
Couillard is considered the front-runner in a contest that so far also features ex-cabinet ministers Raymond Bachand and Pierre Moreau.
The 55-year-old Couillard, who held the health portfolio between 2003 and 2008, made the announcement at a news conference in Montreal on Wednesday.
He has said he wants the Liberals to better defend Quebecers on key identity issues such as language and the province’s relationship with Ottawa.
”No party has the monopoly on the pride and the promotion of the Quebec identity,” Couillard told the news conference.
”The pride of being a Quebecer is shared by everyone, be they francophone, anglophone or allophone.
Couillard said Quebec must ”open itself to everyone who wants a voice and must listen to points of view other than that of the francophone majority.”
Couillard was criticized in some quarters after his political retirement for negotiating the terms of his private-sector employment while he was still a cabinet minister.
He insists he did nothing wrong and that the controversy won’t hurt him in the leadership campaign.
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The future of Quebec and Canada: all bets are off
By Paul Wells and Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments
Paul Wells and Martin Patriquin take us inside a dramatic campaign with a terrifying finish
Olivier Jean/Reuters
“Qu’est-ce qui arrive?” Pauline Marois asked. “What’s happening?” It is an eternal question in Quebec politics, but for the next premier of Quebec it had particular urgency because she was putting it to two plainclothes Sûreté du Québec officers who were hustling her offstage as she attempted to deliver her election-night victory speech.
The television images that followed were confused and terrifying: a man on the ground behind Montreal’s Metropolis nightclub, as police examined what looked like a firearm nearby. A fire outside the fire-escape staircase, a frightening sight given that if left untended it would have blocked an escape route in a club with a capacity of over 2,000 people. A hooded man being escorted into a police cruiser, shouting “Les anglais se réveillent! Les anglais se réveillent!” (The English are waking up.)
Montreal police reported later that a man had shot two people inside the club, leaving one dead and the other critically wounded.
This was one of the most emotional and difficult political campaigns Quebec has seen since the 1995 secession referendum, but none of this madness was a direct or logical extension of anything the politicians said. When a jubilant Marois began her speech by telling PQ supporters, “Tonight another chapter in her history begins,” she could not have known it would begin in terror.
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Jean Charest: Cut and roll credits
By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, September 6, 2012 at 9:00 PM - 0 Comments
Martin Patriquin explains why losing was the best thing to happen to the Liberal Party of Quebec
As a political narrative, you couldn’t ask for a better ending for Jean Charest. Think about it: longtime and long-unloved Premier goes into an election with the world against him, does much, much better than everyone thought, only to lose his own seat. He signs off as unapologetic as ever, though the tears in his eyes remind people why they liked the guy, just not some of the things he did. Cut and roll credits.
