Michaud won't go gentle

DON MACPHERSON

The Gazette Wednesday 13 June 2001

"No-good" and "rotten" were some of the others, and Chevrette also told Gobe, "va donc chier"- f --- you. But it was the ethnic slur that drew most of the attention.

The next day in the Assembly, Liberal house leader Pierre Paradis singled out that remark as unacceptable. Liberal leader Jean Charest went further, calling it "racist." Premier Bernard Landry conceded that his minister's remark was part of what he hoped was a "completely obsolete vocabulary."

But Speaker Jean-Pierre Charbonneau ruled that, while the remark was "not especially glorious," it did not violate either Gobe's privileges or those of the Assembly.

And that was that. Nobody questioned that Chevrette had made the remark, but he was not made to apologize or withdraw it.

No Motion

Above all, there was no motion like the one the same legislature adopted without debate only last December.

That was the celebrated motion to "denounce, unequivocally, clearly and unanimously, the unacceptable comments regarding ethnic communities and, in particular, regarding the Jewish community, made by Yves Michaud on the occasion of the hearings of the estates general on French held in Montreal on Dec. 13, 2000."

Like Chevrette, Michaud did not threaten anybody and made his remarks outside the Assembly. Unlike Chevrette, he was a private citizen, and there was no suggestion that his remarks violated the privileges of the Assembly or any of its members.

But apparently, the Assembly has higher standards for private citizens than for its own. Apparently, it considers Michaud's blaming immigrants and Jews for the sovereignist defeat in the 1995 referendum worse than a minister's calling an immigrant who is also one of its members a "damned Frenchman."

Maybe it has already forgotten that it now has established a standard against which such remarks are to be measured. Or maybe it would simply like that to be forgotten.

Trouble is, Yves Michaud won't let it. On Saturday, he told me yesterday in a brief interview, he will be a delegate to the next regular meeting of the Parti Quebecois national council. He will be there to support a resolution, presented by the party's youth committee, containing his proposal to change the Assembly rules so that it can never again adopt a motion like the one condemning his remarks. "Three or four" riding associations have offered to make him a delegate, he said, and he hasn't decided which offer to accept. Obviously, there is sympathy for him in the PQ, even if most of its legislative wing, including his old friend Landry, no doubt wishes he would catch a diplomatic cold before Saturday.

Centre of Attention

Because if Michaud does show up at the meeting, he will be the centre of attention, and whatever else happens, Landry cannot be looking forward to it. Either his old friend will be humiliated or his party will be split, and at least part of it will be seen as hailing someone widely condemned for making xenophobic and anti-Semitic remarks (which, incidentally, the PQ has never formally condemned).

But even if one disapproves of Michaud's remarks, it is nevertheless possible to feel a certain admiration for the stubbornness and courage he has shown.

His friends in the PQ, including Landry, advised him to apologize for his remarks in order to salvage his candidacy for the party's nomination in the recent Mercier by-election. Had he heeded that advice, he might well be an MNA today (and Lucien Bouchard would have had to find another pretext for quitting).