Péladeau’s Quebecor sets sights on Liberals
• As leader of the opposition Parti Québécois, Pierre Karl Péladeau was considered a dud, failing to improve the party’s election chances before he abruptly quit to be with his children less than a year into the job.
But now that Péladeau has returned to his previous role as president and CEO of Quebecor, the media conglomerate founded by his late father, the governing Liberals are starting to worry he could pose a genuine threat.
The Liberals are showing signs of irritation as a beefed-up Quebecor media presence at the National Assembly press gallery, including a new investigative unit, publishes embarrassing stories suggesting the governing party is tainted by corruption.
Last week, the investigation unit broke the news that former Liberal premier Jean Charest and party fundraiser Marc Bibeau were under investigation by the province’s anti-corruption police, UPAC. Quebecor reporters obtained internal documents from UPAC, including a record of all trips outside the country by Charest and Bibeau.
The investigation was looking for evidence that the pair were part of a scheme to reward Liberal donors with public contracts.
The police investigation has not yielded evidence to take to prosecutors, and Charest last week reiterated his innocence, but the story cast a cloud over the party.
Premier Philippe Couillard has hinted at a concerted effort to damage his party’s reputation. “We can’t be naïve,” he said last week. Without naming Quebecor, he complained that “certain media, certain people in politics” cannot accept that his government is succeeding in advancing Quebec. “It’s a pretty crude attempt to mix up the past and the present,” Couillard said.
This week, Quebecor published another exposé, suggesting that a former party official helped Liberal supporters land government jobs during Charest’s time as premier.
Treasury Board President Pierre Moreau lashed out Wednesday, suggesting the reporting by Quebecor’s Journal de Montréal, Journal de Québec and TVA network is being driven by a political agenda.
“There is a plan that we are starting to see take shape,” Moreau told reporters. He referred to “a combined attack that is almost a political position against the party that represents the government. That’s what I see.”
Moreau said reporters are drawing conclusions from fragments of information and would be better off leaving investigations to the police.
On Thursday, Péladeau’s successor as PQ leader, Jean-François Lisée, said Moreau needs a thicker skin.
“All over the planet, when politicians read the newspaper in the morning or listen to the radio, they’re often in a bad mood, either because something they wanted to keep secret has been revealed or because something has not been presented the way they would have liked,” Lisée said. “It’s an essential part of democracy.”
What is not so common in a democracy is to have a leader, one driven by a desire to achieve Quebec independence, jump from provincial politics to controlling the province’s biggest media empire. That empire now has more than a dozen journalists assigned to the National Assembly, veteran La Presse correspondent Denis Lessard wrote last weekend; traditionally Quebec’s main newspapers each have three reporters covering the legislature.
Antoine Robitaille, head of the Quebecor investigative team at the National Assembly, has defended its reports as rock-solid and accused the Liberals of trying to blame the media for their problems. He told Radio Canada Thursday that Péladeau “has nothing to do with what we do from day to day.”
But his claim of independence was not helped by Péladeau’s visit to the Quebecor news bureau last Thursday, which some interpreted as way of congratulating the team for its Charest scoop. Earlier in the week, the Quebecor CEO had shared the Charest story on Twitter, with the message, “Our investigative unit continues its work. Essential in a healthy democracy.”
Robitaille said Péladeau’s visit was part of an annual tour he does of all company operations. But he acknowledged that it was “ill-timed” on the heels of the Charest scoop.
Even if he never sets foot in the press gallery again, Péladeau’s foray into politics has ensured that his opponents will view Quebecor’s political journalism suspiciously. With an election scheduled next year, the former PQ leader will continue to cast a shadow over the National Assembly.
(I SEE) A COMBINED ATTACK THAT IS ALMOST A POLITICAL POSITION AGAINST THE PARTY.