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Quebec Economy and Innovation Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon responds to reporters during a news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic, Tuesday, May 26, 2020 at the legislature in Quebec City.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press

Quebec Premier François Legault has reinstated a key member of his government as economy minister after a three-month exclusion from cabinet linked to conflict-of-interest allegations.

Pierre Fitzgibbon will return to his post immediately and will also run in the provincial election scheduled for next year, Mr. Legault told reporters at a news conference in Quebec City Wednesday. He had been replaced in the interim by Finance Minister Eric Girard.

“We’ve done a lot of work together over the last three years and I’m very happy that we’ll be able to continue that,” Mr. Legault said. The pandemic is accelerating many changes in Quebec’s economy and the government will push further on trying to attract investments in high-tech manufacturing and other sectors, he said.

Mr. Fitzgibbon exited cabinet voluntarily in June after a report by Quebec Ethics Commissioner Ariane Mignolet that concluded he repeatedly neglected to follow conflict-of-interest provisions spelled out in the ethics code for elected members by continuing to own shares in two companies that do business with the government. Ms. Mignolet recommended that Mr. Fitzgibbon be suspended from the legislature until he either sold the shares, in which case he could retain his cabinet post, or placed the stake in a blind trust, in which case he could continue sitting as an elected member of the National Assembly but not as a member of cabinet.

Mr. Fitzgibbon had tried to sell the stakes in the companies, Immervision and White Star Capital Canada Inc., but there was no liquid market and a quick sale would have come at a loss of more than $1-million for the minister, Mr. Legault said in June.

The minister said Wednesday he has since sold those stakes but declined to provide details on how profitable the sales were beyond saying “it wasn’t the best financial transaction I’ve ever done.”

“My motivation was to come back” as minister, Mr. Fitzgibbon told reporters. “I didn’t want to quit my colleagues and leave in the middle of our mandate … there are a lot of things still to do.”

Recruited personally into politics by Mr. Legault, Mr. Fitzgibbon is an accomplished specialist in business development whose résumé includes management and board positions at Atrium Innovations, National Bank of Canada and Walter Capital Partners. He has faced four investigations by the ethics commissioner, and in November he became the first Quebec cabinet minister to be censured by the members of the legislature for ethics violations.

Mr. Legault has stood by Mr. Fitzgibbon and has said that Quebec’s ethics rules need to be modernized in order to account for such situations. The government had tried to resolve the situation by mandating Quebec’s treasury department to handle any files involving Immervision and White Star.

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