Pact with the devil

Hard-liners and former terrorists now feel welcome in Landry's PQ

DON MACPHERSON - The Gazette Saturday, December 08, 2001


Here's a gift suggestion for anyone on your list who's interested in Quebec politics: journalist Graham Fraser's very readable book René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois in Power.

It's simply the best book on Quebec politics I've ever read, well written, fair and nonpartisan but far from bland or soft, always a pleasure to reread. It's an indispensable reference for Quebec political journalists, a book of interest to regular readers of this column, the one book I always recommend to anyone who wants a crash course in Quebec politics.

Originally published in 1984 and long out of print, the book is available once again in a second edition with a new preface, published by the McGill-Queen's University Press. Get yours while you can.

Though mainly a history of the first PQ government, elected 25 years ago, Fraser's book remains current because it shows how the PQ as we now know it has changed from Lévesque's party - how little it has changed in some ways, how much in others.

For instance, Fraser reminds us Lévesque and all his successors have had to contend with tension between moderates and radicals in the PQ. Lévesque didn't want the radicals to join in the first place, and strove to protect his party's reputation from association with them and especially with violence.

Fraser describes Lévesque's reaction to the standing ovation given former terrorist Jacques Rose, who had been involved in the 1970 kidnapping and murder of Lévesque's former Liberal cabinet colleague Pierre Laporte, at the party's chaotic 1981 convention:

"Lévesque was appalled. It was his worst nightmare about the Parti Québécois come true. He had wept that night in 1970 when he heard that Pierre Laporte's body had been found; he had absolutely no sympathy for the sentimental ovation for those convicted for his kidnapping and murder."

Coincidentally, Fraser's book was published the same week one of Lévesque's successors shared the speaker's platform with well-known anglophobes at a PQ meeting attended by a convicted 1960s terrorist killer who is once again associated with political violence. Jacques Rose hasn't been seen at a major PQ meeting since that 1981 convention, but if he wants to come back to the party, he's welcome.

Raymond Villeneuve is. He's the convicted terrorist, currently back before the courts on charges of uttering threats of violence, who attended a PQ rally last Sunday to which all sovereignists were invited and at which Premier Bernard Landry was the keynote speaker.

Landry says he doesn't know Villeneuve, wasn't aware he was at the meeting and is opposed to violence, and there's no reason to doubt his word. I saw Villeneuve at the meeting, but I didn't see him approach Landry or speak to him.

But the story isn't, as a Liberal opposition member said mistakenly, that Landry shared the speaker's platform with Villeneuve; he didn't, since Villeneuve did not address the meeting.

The real story here is that in recent weeks, Landry has created an atmosphere in which people like Villeneuve now feel welcome to attend PQ meetings important enough to be addressed by the party leader. It's as if Ernst Zundel showed up at a federal Liberal rally in Toronto at which Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was the featured speaker.

Landry has created such an atmosphere by making several symbolic overtures to the more radical sovereignists estranged from the PQ under his predecessor's leadership.

He has repeatedly plugged Normand Lester's anti-English hate book. He became the first premier in 40 years to attend the annual November ceremony commemorating the Patriote rebels (previous premiers stayed away precisely because they did not want to be associated with some of the modern-day "patriotes" who show up).

He agreed to be included in a speaker's list for last Sunday's meeting along with the likes of film-maker Pierre Falardeau, who has often declared his outright hatred for anyone who opposes Quebec independence.

Landry is doing this because he feels the PQ needs the active support of all sovereignists if it is to win the next election, and he can't afford to be choosy in whom he allows to support him. But Fraser's book reminds us he is making a pact with the kind of people his party's founder treated as the devil.