Deputy Premier Bernard Landry, the man touted to be Quebec's next premier, apologized yesterday for angering Canadians with comments that he said were misinterpreted as a denigration of Canada's flag.
On Tuesday, Mr. Landry said Quebec would never prostitute itself and fly the flag in return for federal funding. "We are not for sale. Quebec has no intention of streetwalking for a piece of red rag or anything else," he said in French, provoking an immediate outcry from federal politicians.
Mr. Landry said yesterday that he never meant to insult Canadians and insisted that his remarks were misconstrued. He acknowledged that he made a poor choice of words and that the French word chiffon translates to English as "rag," a term that does not have the same negative connotation in French.
"I'm really sorry that some people could think that," Mr. Landry said during a news conference before the weekly cabinet meeting. "Because I did use a French word, the word chiffon, which is associated in the dictionary to the old expression agiter le chiffon, which means to provoke. It is not at all pejorative in that sense. Chiffon cannot be translated in that sense as 'rag.' . . . I'm sorry and I apologize for the effect of that choice of words."
His political opponents refused to accept Mr. Landry's explanations. Quebec Liberal Party Leader Jean Charest said there is no doubt that Mr. Landry was taking direct aim at the Canadian flag.
"He has an obsession about the Canadian flag," Mr. Charest said. "It seems that one flag is too many for him, since he believes that it's a rag."
Mr. Landry's remarks on Tuesday were about the conditions Ottawa placed on a federal grant of $18-million to renovate the Quebec City zoo and aquarium. To get the funds, Quebec would have to accept official bilingualism at the sites and fly the Maple Leaf for the next 40 years.
He called the obligation to fly the flag propaganda. Shortly afterward, he made his "red rag" remark.
Realizing that he had perhaps gone too far, Mr. Landry made a first attempt at damage control on Tuesday evening by insisting that he was not referring to the Canadian flag but to the red cloth bullfighters use to provoke bulls.
Yesterday, after newspapers reported the comments in screaming headlines, Mr. Landry said he understands why people would think that his remarks were a reference to the Maple Leaf, but that it is the price of being in politics.
"Everybody does things that they don't necessarily like the next day," he Landry said. "And when it happened to me before, you remember what I did? I apologized. It has happened to me many times in my career even when it was done in good faith. So I do it again today."
At no time yesterday did Mr. Landry express any deep sense of remorse, nor did he back away from attacking the federal government. In fact, he warned Ottawa to get used to the climate of confrontation.
"I will try to be polite, moderate and have a better choice of words than I had yesterday. But I will tell them [the federal government]bluntly what I think about what they are doing," Mr. Landry said.
When discussions were under way last September involving a federal contribution to the $4-billion Mosel Vitellic microchip manufacturing project proposed for Montreal, Mr. Landry had no qualms about flying the Canadian flag.
"For a $4-billion investment, I would tolerate a bunch of red flags," he said at the time.
Rhéal Séguin