Michaud's mouth

The Gazette Saturday 16 December 2000

In politics, precedents not only serve as guides for subsequent action, they also provide standards against which that action will be compared and judged.

The National Assembly might have created such a precedent on Thursday, when it unanimously passed a motion denouncing opinions expressed by a private citizen.

The citizen is Yves Michaud, who has declared his candidacy for a Parti Quebecois nomination. The motion denounced "the unacceptable remarks concerning ethnic communities and in particular the Jewish community made by Yves Michaud" the day before at hearings of the Larose commission on language.

In the haste of the Liberal opposition to denounce a member of the PQ, and of the PQ government to distance itself from him, nobody spelled out in the motion exactly what his "unacceptable remarks" were.

But in his appearance before the commission, Michaud had singled out residents of Cote St. Luc, a suburb with a large Jewish population, for criticism because they had voted against sovereignty in the 1995 referendum. He also said immigrants vote against sovereignty because they don't understand French.

This might be the first time the Assembly has condemned an individual by name for a statement other than one it considered an attack upon either its own privileges or the reputation of one of its members.

Not even Jacques Parizeau's 1995 referendum-night remarks about "money and ethnic votes," which embarrassed and offended most Quebecers, were ever the subject of a motion of censure in the Assembly.

Thanks to the exceptional action it took this week, however, the Assembly will henceforth be expected to pronounce itself on other expressions of opinion by private citizens that someone considers as offensive as the anti-Semitic, xenophobic remarks made this week by Michaud.

In particular, nationalists might feel that the Assembly now owes them one, and the game of tit-for-tat will be on. It will be interesting to see where the Assembly eventually redraws the line it apparently crossed this week.

It will also be interesting to see what Michaud and the PQ do now about the former's candidacy for the party's nomination in the Mercier by-election to be held sometime next spring.

It is to the credit of Premier Lucien Bouchard and the other PQ members of the Assembly that they unhesitatingly and unequivocally joined the Liberals in denouncing Michaud's remarks this week.

But Bouchard resisted calls to come out and say Michaud will not be a candidate for his party. Instead, he implied that is a decision only the PQ executive can take. And the PQ says the executive can't do anything until Michaud formally files his candidacy papers.

In fact, Bouchard has the power to act unilaterally. The Election Act requires a candidate for a party to produce a letter signed by the party leader saying that the candidate does, indeed, represent the party. Bouchard could prevent Michaud from running for the PQ simply by withholding the letter.

But it would send a stronger message if it were not just Bouchard who rejected Michaud's candidacy, but the party executive as well. Then it would be the party that is speaking, and not just Bouchard. This might also help Bouchard avoid a split between himself and Michaud's fellow hard-liners on sovereignty and language.

For the moment, it's not clear how much support Michaud has in the party. The president of the Mercier riding association is sticking by him, but the president of the PQ's Montreal-Centre region, which includes Mercier, has yet to be heard from on the question.

Bouchard and the executive could put the onus on Michaud by demanding that he publicly recant his remarks and unequivocally apologize for them if he wants to represent the party. And they wouldn't have to wait for him to file his candidacy officially.

So far, however, Michaud remains defiant and unrepentant. Not only did he ignore a signal from Bouchard to "clarify" remarks he initially made in a radio interview, he embellished upon them at the Larose commission.