Gaston Deschenes, L'Affaire Michaud : Chronique d'une execution parlementaire.

• Author: Roy, Marc-Andre
• Position: Book review

Gaston Deschenes, L'Affaire Michaud : Chronique d'une execution parlementaire, Septentrion, Quebec 2010.

Ten years after the incident occurred, Gaston Deschenes, a former research director at the Quebec National Assembly, recounts what is now known as the Michaud Affair. On December 14, 2000, in a move that many people later described as impulsive, the National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion denouncing Yves Michaud for making "unacceptable statements toward ethnic communities and, in particular, the Jewish community" in a speech at the Estates General on the French language in Montreal. The motion, unprecedented in a Westminster-style legislature, sparked a flurry of media coverage and ignited a debate that continues to this day over the legitimacy of the National Assembly's actions. The author leads us through the years that followed the incident, a period in which Mr. Michaud constantly sought reparation for what he considered to be a grave injustice against him.

Deschenes begins by recounting the events which unfolded on December 14, 2000. In response to a question from Jean Charest, then Leader of the Opposition, Premier Lucien Bouchard stood in the National Assembly and condemned comments made by a candidate for the Parti Quebecois nomination in the riding of Mercier, Yves Michaud, and announced that all government members would be voting

for a motion of censure put forward by a Liberal member and seconded by a PQ member. Later that day, the National Assembly gave the unanimous consent needed to debate the issue without prior notice, and without due consideration, the motion was put to a vote and immediately adopted. No one raised an eyebrow, but the author expresses the view that the motion [TRANSLATION] "would not have survived 24 hours of consideration, which is the normal procedure for a substantive motion in the National Assembly" (30).

But what exactly are these "unacceptable statements'? After giving a brief biography of Yves Michaud--a fervent advocate of sovereignty and formerly a member of the National Assembly and Quebec's delegate-general in Paris--Deschenes endeavours to locate the "anti-Semitic" comments he allegedly made. It quickly becomes clear that no parliamentarian appears to have heard Mr. Michaud's speech and that the official transcript made no mention of anti-Semitic remarks. The author traces the paths taken by Michaud's political enemies and tries to understand how Michaud's message could have been...