Today’s a day on which it’s definitely worth checking out Québec newspapers.
For example, Le Devoir is reporting that Conservative Ministers Gordon O'Connor and Peter MacKay knew in 2006 that prisoners in Afghanistan were at risk of torture. Rick Hillier says in a interview with reporter Alec Castonguay that Amnesty International wrote to O'Connor in 2006 to warn him that this would be in contravention of the Geneva Convention: "He consulted me before replying to the letter. We spoke about it often, in every briefing," Hillier said, adding that the situation worsened in 2007, which led to a halt in transfers for several months. "It was only in the autumn of 2007 that we concluded that we would have to change the way we did things."
Also in Le Devoir, we read a couple of reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision on Québec’s language law that may come as a surprise to English-only ears.
Who would have known that Justin Trudeau supports Québec’s objective of franco-ising immigrants, and thinks the only problem with the PQ government’s law was that it was not sufficiently subtle? He also tells reporter Helene Buzzetti: "Immigrants to Québec should learn French first and foremost" — a sentiment that we did not often hear from his father, who tended to put the accent on the bi when it came to lingualism. I’m also betting that my neighbours and I won’t hear many B.C. New Democrats hewing to deputy leader Tom Mulcair’s line on the Court decision:
"The Supreme Court talks a good talk about Québec’s right to protect French, but it says the measures are excessive. So what can the government do?" Repatriation of the Constitution without Québec’s agreement "caused the problem."
But the big story splashed across Québec front pages this morning — and the one that’s most dangerous for the Charest government — relates to municipal corruption.
While Le Devoir reports that the sleazy practices have been going on for years, La Presse turns up the real doozie: wiretap evidence pointing to the operation of a 3 per cent kickback scheme to Mayor Gerard Tremblay’s party on all municipal contracts. And, buried in one of the reports, we learn that Mr. Tremblay, a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister, has refused to meet with the paper’s editorial board unless it promises not to ask him about the wiretap evidence.
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Update I see in this report by Daniel Leblanc that Benoit Corbeil told the judge at his sentencing hearing that he did not benefit personally from kickbacks. Rather, the money went to the Liberal Party and to assist Jean Chrétien in his battle with Paul Martin.
Before then, in the Mulroney days, MP Michel Gravel pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from contractors — to cite only one example.
The latest revelations in Québec, it would appear, are simply business as usual. Is it any wonder that Premier Jean Charest is resisting calling a public inquiry?
