L. Ian MacDonald

March 11, 2022

Jean Charest gives centrist Conservatives a strong candidate in a leadership campaign and, beyond that, in a general election; an alternative for “Blue Grits” looking for change.

He also has a record of achievement, in nearly 15 years as a Mulroney-era cabinet minister and Progressive Conservative leader who kept the party on life support after it nearly disappeared in the 1993 election, as an important actor in the 1995 Quebec referendum and later during three terms as Liberal premier of Quebec from 2003-12.

Yes, Pierre Poilievre, he was a Liberal in Quebec, the party in which federalist forces have coalesced against the sovereignty movement in Quebec since the 1960s. There are other provinces, notably British Columbia  where conservatives form governments under another political brand. In Charest’s case, he was leader of a two-member federal PC deputation in October 1995, when he played a critical role in the Quebec referendum on sovereignty, a question of country.

In the famous rally at Montreal’s Place du Canada on October 27, Charest delivered the speech that inspired the crowd of 100,000 people  and set the No forces on their way to winning by the slightest of margins only three days later.

More than a quarter century later, the memory endures, and the numbers tell the story of a perilous predicament for Canada. In a turnout of 95 percent, the No prevailed over the Yes option by 50.58 to 49.42 percent, winning by only 54,288 votes. Stated another way, if only 27,145 votes had gone the other way, the country would have been lost.

Charest played an important part in saving Canada. On the separatist side, Yes leader Jacques Parizeau resigned in disgrace on the morrow for infamously blaming the narrow loss on “money and the ethnic vote,” but even in doing so said his Parti Québécois government would have moved unilaterally to declaring independence had they won.

The referendum left memories of divided families and broken friendships across Quebec. That Quebecers have essentially avoided referenda ever since is due in no small measure to Charest. With the PCs having regained recognized party status in Parliament with 20 seats in the 1997 election, Charest reluctantly accepted a draft to become leader of the Quebec Liberals in 1998. By then, the PQ was led by the charismatic Lucien Bouchard, who promised there would be no referendum absent “winning conditions.”

Charest denied him those winning conditions. Though Bouchard and the PQ won 76 seats to 48 for the Liberals in the National Assembly, Charest’s Liberals won the popular vote, 1.771 million to 1.744 million. Once again, in Charest’s electoral biography, the difference was 27,000 votes. Bouchard never considered another referendum and left politics before the end of his term, fed up with the internal squabbles of what he called “that party”—the PQ.

Subsequently, Charest won the next three provincial elections in 2003, 2007 and 2008. Even in losing to the PQ in 2012, he held them to a bare minority of 54 seats to the Liberals’ 50. Once again, there were no winning conditions. A decade later, in 2022, the PQ is marginalized in the legislature, lacking even party status, in a place where Premier François Legault leads a nationalist but not a separatist government.

For Charest, that era of “sovereignty-negotiation” began at Place du Canada on that October day in 1995 when he looked from the podium across Dominion Square to the statue of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the famous quotation inscribed at the base: “The governing motive of my life has been to harmonize the different elements which compose our country.”

And in terms of his Ottawa resumé, Charest has a record on the environment and climate change beginning with the famous Rio Earth Summit in June 1992, where as Canada’s 33-year-old environment minister, he advocated the adoption of “sustainable development” which has shaped the global dialogue on climate change and biodiversity ever since. In Quebec, his government adopted cap and trade programs on reducing emissions while maintaining growth, including a bilateral deal with California.

And on the economy, from his days as an MP from Sherbrooke campaigning alongside Brian Mulroney in the landmark 1988 free trade election, Charest has always been an advocate of global trade liberalization. In the decade since leaving office and practising commercial law in Montreal, Charest has advocated for the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement and more recently for a Trans-Pacific Partnership. And in terms of running a government, Quebec is the second-largest province in the country, where socially progressive programs from childcare to low university tuition rates have blended for decades with governments—including Charest’s—encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit.

There’s baggage accumulated from Charest’s years in office in Ottawa and Quebec, but there’s also a legacy of achievement, and of understanding the Canadian federation and the sensibilities of the regions of the country.

Looking ahead to the Conservative leadership campaign, the question is whether Charest can rediscover his voice and emerge as a unifying figure the party needs. He understood that, by opening his campaign in Calgary and declaring the importance of winning the West.

And recent events in Ukraine also raise the question of Canada’s role in presenting a united response by the West to the invasion and war crimes of the Putin regime.

Not to put too fine a point on it—it’s a time for grown-ups. Charest fits the description, right down to the ground.

L. Ian MacDonald is editor and publisher of Policy Magazine.