The so-called Michaud Affair couldn't have happened at a worse time -- just a few days before the Christmas holiday, when people were in the mood for love and reconciliation. Instead, the ugly topic of anti-Semitism was an unwelcome guest at many family dinners, giving way to tense debates and gloomy reflections.
For the Parti Québécois, though, the holiday period was a welcome respite. The anti-Jewish diatribes of Yves Michaud, one of its most prominent activists, triggered a political crisis that at one time seemed to threaten not only party unity but even Premier Lucien Bouchard's career. The Premier stated clearly that he would consider resigning if his party allowed an unrepentant Yves Michaud to run as a candidate in the by-election slated for the Montreal riding of Mercier.
The crisis is probably half-resolved by now. After having been condemned by a unanimous vote of the National Assembly and strongly denounced by Premier Bouchard -- as well as the flood of public protest -- Mr. Michaud will probably back off from the confrontation. If he doesn't, he will undergo another humiliation, because the executive committee of the PQ has the power to block a candidacy.
The unfortunate comments of Yves Michaud had an impact equal to his background. A former journalist and MNA who quit the Quebec Liberal party in 1969 to protest against the party's handling of the language issue, Mr. Michaud was named agent-general in Paris under the government of René Lévesque, a close personal friend.
When the PQ lost power, Mr. Michaud made a successful career as a wine importer, then launched into a retirement project that became a full-time occupation, as the champion of small bank shareholders.
Despite his reputation as a loose canon, Mr. Michaud has countless friends in Quebec's economic and cultural circles. These past few years, he has been championing hard-line positions on language. He intended to run in Mercier (one of the PQ's safest ridings) so that he could contest the government's language policy (too soft, he says) from the National Assembly's back bench. His plan crumbled in less than a week.
His sudden attacks against the Jewish community came out of the blue. Over several days, he lashed out against the anti-sovereignty "ethnic vote," referring to Jewish voters as "immigrants" even though the Jewish community has lived in Montreal for more than a century. He accused Jews of being insensitive to the plight of Quebeckers, saying he was "fed up" hearing them talk as if "they had been the only ones to suffer."
In his recently published collection of essays, the section on politics has 12 chapters; four contain irritated references to Jews.
The B'nai Brith is the organization that Mr. Michaud loves to hate. He accuses its members of being not only "anti-sovereigntist" but "anti-Quebec." B'nai Brith, he says, represents "international Zionism" and "extreme-right phalangists" who are "plotting" against the Quebec people and the French language, and it goes on.
After the National Assembly resorted to the extraordinary measure of condemning a private citizen (a gesture that some saw as rather like using a hammer to kill a fly) Mr. Michaud won some sympathy from the PQ's rank and file, especially hard-line militants who were already angry at Premier Bouchard's soft stand on language and sovereignty. But most Péquistes were deeply embarrassed by the incident, and my guess is that the Affaire Michaud will soon be a thing of the past. Lysiane Gagnon is a political columnist at La Presse.
Lysiane Gagnon