Since Quebecor owner Pierre Karl Péladeau joined the Parti Québécois, critics have been focusing on the fact that as a media baron, he (as well as his party) might get special treatment from his news outlets. It didn't take long for these fears to be substantiated. Quebecor's cable channel, LCN, devoted a full hour of live coverage to the launch of Mr. Péladeau's leadership campaign – a favour that the other contenders in the race didn't receive.
It didn't take much time, either, for Mr. Péladeau to start lobbying for Quebecor from his perch as MNA for Saint-Jérôme. He intervened twice (with Economy Minister Jacques Daoust and Investissement Québec, a public investment fund) to push for the sale to Quebecor of a major film producing company, Vision Globale. The matter was sent to the Ethics Commissioner who produced a lame report that concluded that yes, the code of ethics was broken but that it had been in "good faith" and due to "the lack of experience" of the 53-year-old MNA.
The unusual case of a media baron who is poised to become the Official Opposition Leader and possibly the next premier has landed the National Assembly in a tough spot. The other parties were tempted to pass a motion requiring Mr. Péladeau to relinquish his role as majority shareholder of Quebecor's media to a blind trust – something Mr. Péladeau said he would do, except for the major caveat that his trustees would be forbidden to sell his properties. (This means that everyone at Quebecor will know that the "Grand Patron," the big boss will come back some day to head the corporation after his stint in politics.)
But the governing Liberals were afraid such a move would look like an attempt to silence a future adversary. So they passed the hot potato to an academic think tank whose mandate is to study the relationship between the media and politics. The think tank is still waiting for the PQ's approval before starting to work.
In any case, the real extent of Quebecor's influence on public opinion in the province goes far beyond the ownership of major media outlets. Quebec is a small society and Quebecor's weight in all the key areas of the province's cultural life, from book publishing to the film industry, is absolutely disproportional.
Not only does Quebecor own the two daily newspapers with the biggest circulation, and almost all of the province's magazines (minus L'actualité and Châtelaine, which belong to Rogers), it owns the largest TV channel as well as eight specialized TV channels. It has its own press agency, and the largest cable company in Quebec, Vidéotron. With Vision Globale came its landmark Studios Mel's, the largest film-production company in the province.
Quebecor wields indirect power over most novelists and non-fiction writers, since over the years, Quebecor acquired the most important francophone publishers, including the major publisher of school books. Only a few publishers, such as Boréal, Québec-Amérique and a few very small firms, remain outside Quebecor's book-publishing empire.
Quebecor owns the second-largest chain of bookstores (Archambault) and is the largest distributor of books and magazines. Le Devoir, the only "independent" daily newspaper that lives on a small budget, relies on Quebecor's Messageries Dynamiques for its distribution. On the other hand, Power Corp., the other conglomerate with a head office in Montreal, has comparatively few business interests in the province's cultural life, outside La Presse, Le Soleil, five regional newspapers and one small publishing house.
Lysiane Gagnon