Parties & Leaders

Quebec Liberal Party Leader: Jean Charest

Sherbrooke  [ Quebec Liberal Party | Platform ]

(Jacques Boissinot/CP)

After three-and-a-half years as premier, Charest can safely take credit for shaking up Quebec with his attempts to overhaul the province's heavy government apparatus, in the name of reducing spending to deliver tax cuts.

It's clear the Liberals' 2003 platform was lofty and overly ambitious. In this campaign, Charest will be pressed to focus on what his government has been able to accomplish: creating more public day-care spots, a parental leave program, settling pay equity, lowering unemployment and improving Quebec's economic rating. In November 2006, for example, New York City-based Moody's Investors Service increased Quebec's credit rating to double-A-2.

But the ultimate goal of recalibrating the province's ledger and relieving overtaxed Quebecers didn't quite materialize as planned. Charest's efforts to deliver on his election promises fostered animosity and bitterness among the population. The Liberals promised $5 billion in tax cuts over five years, but only managed to delivered $3.1 billion.

"Not as much as we wanted, it's true, but as much as we could," Charest admitted when he unveiled his 2007 election platform.

Has to defend record

Now the 48-year-old faces an election campaign as one of the more unpopular premiers in Quebec history, if recent polls are any indication (the Liberals maintain a slight edge over the PQ in 2007 CROP polls on voters’ intentions, but only slightly more than one-third of respondants want to give Charest’s Liberals a second mandate).

(Canadian Press)

The incumbent premier will be called to defend his government's record, and its efforts to revamp the so-called Quebec model, in which the state has played a central role in the economy.

The Liberals' reform spared no sector of Quebec society. Charest raised the cost of public day care to $7 a day, tried to slash student loans and bursaries, imposed work contracts on public-sector employees, including medical specialists, and privatized sections of Mount Orford, a provincial park in the Eastern Townships.

Even the Liberals party's action on its pet issue, health care, was disappointing to many. A promise to eliminate wait lists in health care, for example, resulted in guaranteed wait times for just three types of surgeries.

The Liberals tough-love prescription ruffled more than a few feathers. Charest weathered open hostility from Quebec's day-care system, public-sector employees, unions, health professionals, and students. His term in office was marked by rolling strikes across Quebec society, which generated negative publicity for his government while fuelling public resentment.

That antipathy forced Charest to back away from some of his government's policies, including cuts to student loans and bursaries and the contract imposed on medical specialists.

In the campaign, Charest will play the unity card, boasting of Quebec's gains within Canada, including Ottawa's benediction for the province's voice at UNESCO and a potentially lucrative environment deal with the federal government that he'll spin as a step towards resolving the fiscal imbalance (the $1.4-billion plan, with $350 million for Quebec, still has to pass the House of Commons once the Conservative budget is tabled this spring.)

(Jaime Puebla/AP)

Charest will have to convince Quebecers a Liberal term was good for them, while selling a new, milder platform hinged on "continuity" and "progress" in school, family, health and environment issues, including modest tax cuts, more money to hire doctors, a pledge to reduce all surgery waiting lists, and tuition deregulation.

A seasoned campaigner

As for his leadership, Charest is a seasoned and scrappy campaigner who is visibly energized on the trail. He's spent more than half his life in politics, and will take no prisoners when attacking his opponents, PQ leader André Boisclair and ADQ leader Mario Dumont, who he describes, respectively, as untrustworthy and unreliable.

Charest's quick wit and sharp tongue will help him in this campaign, in which personal integrity will play prominently. When Boisclair recently said he's ready to fight in an election campaign "with the knife between our teeth," Charest remarked, "Let's hope he doesn't hurt himself."

To form a majority government, Charest will need to woo soft nationalists from the PQ and convince voters right of centre that the Liberals can deliver more fiscal responsibility than the ADQ.

He faces a tough battle from student groups, unions and health-care workers, and won’t be able to take Montreal's west end for granted. Municipal demergers was a key issue in the 2003 election, when Charest promised to give suburbs their cities back.

Today demerged cities are furious about municipal structures that replaced mega-city councils, and many vow to make the Liberals pay. Four demerged mayors (in Senneville, Montreal West, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue and Baie d’Urfé) have already publicly declared their support for the ADQ.

Charest will get a boost late in the campaign when the Conservatives table their budget that will likely hold sweet offerings to Quebec.

(Jacques Boissinot/CP)

Jean Charest was born in Sherbrooke on St-Jean Baptiste day (June 24), 1958. He studied law in his hometown and was called to the Quebec Bar in 1981. Charest launched his political career on the federal scene, winning a seat in Sherbrooke for the Conservatives in 1984 at the tender age of 26.

He lost a bid for the Conservative leadership to Kim Campbell in 1993, but got his just desserts that same year when he survived a Tory cleansing in the federal election. Charest took over as Conservative leader months later and was a pivotal force in efforts to rebuild the shattered party.

The Quebec Liberal party recruited him to lead a fight against the reigning PQ and premier Lucien Bouchard. Charest rallied the Liberals, who won the popular vote but lost the 1998 election. He served at the National Assembly as opposition leader until 2003, when he steered the Liberals to a solid victory in the last election.

If he manages to win his seat in Sherbrooke and secure a majority win for his party in the 2007 election, Charest will deliver back-to-back mandates for the Liberals, a first since Robert Bourassa’s pair of wins in 1985 and 1989.