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Michaud the Grinch spoils yet another Christmas

DON MACPHERSON
The Gazette Saturday, December 21, 2002


It started as a typical family Christmas gathering, with the singing of carols. Then, as happens often on such occasions, the situation rapidly deteriorated.

An argument broke out over a family black sheep. There were insults, bad feelings, strained relations, people leaving unhappy.

And Christmas was still a week away when all this happened at the last caucus meeting of Parti Québécois members of the National Assembly before the winter recess.

Joyeux Noël, PQ MNAs (and just to be non-partisan, all other MNAs, too) - especially to you, Premier Landry, for whom a bad year is ending badly.

Like that of his predecessor, Lucien Bouchard, two years ago, Bernard Landry's Christmas has been spoiled - and by the same person.

That's Yves Michaud, the black sheep in question. For the benefit of Web readers or recent arrivals in these parts, Michaud is a sort of Trent Lott of the PQ, in that he was punished by members of his party for having drawn public attention to the party's exploitation of ethnic divisions.

Two Decembers ago, Michaud, a hard-line sovereignist, singled out Jews for particular criticism among the more than 2.3 million Quebecers who voted against sovereignty in the 1995 referendum. Presuming to read the minds of thousands of individuals, Michaud found the unanimous No vote in some polls in a predominantly Jewish municipality to be proof somehow of those voters' "intolerance."

Michaud, who at the time was seeking a PQ nomination, was hardly the first sovereignist to blame the minorities' rejection of either the PQ or sovereignty as a failing on their part rather than the sovereignists'.

Nevertheless, the PQ MNAs were sufficiently embarrassed by his anti-Semitic remarks and anxious to distance their party from them that they supported a Liberal opposition motion in the Assembly condemning them.

One need not agree with Michaud to believe that the Assembly has no business condemning the opinion of a private citizen that does not affect its privileges or those of its members, no matter how objectionable that opinion might be.

Michaud's fellow hard-liners in the PQ were especially angry at the party's MNAs in general and at Bouchard in particular for selling him out.

Taken aback by their sympathy for Michaud, Bouchard used it as a pretext to quit abruptly as PQ leader and premier shortly afterward.

Now it is his successor's turn to face the wrath of Michaud and the hard-liners. Early this week, Landry assured Michaud, an old friend, that the government would make a statement in the Assembly on Wednesday morning promising never again to do what it had done to him. In effect, the government would admit that it had been wrong to condemn his remarks.

But when Michaud tuned in the Assembly television channel on Wednesday morning to savour his victory, he heard no statement. The evening before, after the caroling at the PQ caucus meeting, the statement had been submitted to the MNAs, and they objected so strongly that Landry was forced to withdraw it. Now, even if it's rewritten to satisfy both the caucus and Michaud, it can't be delivered in the Assembly until the session resumes in March.

In the meantime, Landry will have to contend with Michaud and the hard-liners. It has not been lost on the latter that the most outspoken objectors were cabinet ministers Joseph Facal, François Legault and Sylvain Simard, whose ideological orthodoxy the hard-liners question.

In particular, Facal is reported to have called Michaud a ''little Napoleon with delusions of grandeur," to which Landry snapped back that the remark was insulting.

And Michaud was so angry he even lashed out at his old friend Landry for betraying him and threatened to stir up his fellow hard-liners in time for the PQ's next national council meeting, in early February.

Relations between Landry and the hard-liners have been growing increasingly strained in the last couple of months because of the government's inaction on sovereignty and the noisy departures of hard-liners Paul Bégin from the cabinet and Josée Legault from the premier's staff.

And now, like Marley's ghost, Michaud will haunt the Christmas of another PQ premier.

This column will resume on Jan. 14. Have happy, healthy and safe holidays.

dmacpher@thegazette.southam.ca