CAN PELADEAU EVADE POLITICS?
Quebecor CEO slams Liberals, backs Catalonia
• Officially, former Parti Québécois leader Pierre Karl Péladeau has left politics and is back running Quebecor Inc., the media and telecom empire founded by his father.
But from his star turn at a PQ policy meeting last month to his trip to Barcelona last weekend to cheer on separatists in the Catalan referendum, there are growing signs that the Quebecor CEO just can’t shake the political bug.
And on Monday Péladeau for the first time clearly blamed his ex-wife, TV celebrity Julie Snyder, for forcing him to abandon the leadership and his dream of leading Quebec to independence.
“This project and this dream that I held dear will not have been able to be taken further because of the machinations of Julie Snyder concerning the custody of our children,” Péladeau wrote on Facebook.
He was responding to Snyder’s Sunday appearance on the Radio-Canada talk show Tout le monde en parle, during which she said she was surprised when Péladeau quit as PQ leader in May 2016. The resignation came the day after Snyder’s previous Tout le monde en parle interview, in which she had lamented their breakup and spoke of the strain politics put on their family life.
“I was surprised because I never asked for or wished for Pierre Karl’s resignation,” Snyder said Sunday. “I always supported him, regardless of our personal life, and if I had not believed in him, I would not have followed him and given up my career to support him.”
She said during her time with Péladeau she saw how hard politics could be and suggested his resignation — two years after he was elected to the Quebec legislature — was not the first time he had considered quitting.
“It is really the art of compromise,” Snyder said of politics. “When we were together and there were questions at home for him to stay or leave politics, I always encouraged him to persevere in spite of it all.”
In a post to his Facebook page Monday evening, Péladeau said he would have preferred not to publicly comment on the breakup. “My first preoccupation, as a father, has always been to protect my children despite this difficult situation. … However, following certain recent statements by Ms. Snyder, I wish to clarify the following,” he wrote.
He went on to say that he had felt privileged to be elected to the National Assembly and chosen PQ leader and that he had planned “to defend the interests of Quebecers and make Quebec a country.” But Snyder’s actions regarding custody of their two children forced him to step down.
“To feign surprise or claim otherwise with the goal of changing the facts that triggered my resignation is misleading,” he wrote.
The public foray does nothing to clarify the fuzzy line between Péladeau’s roles as corporate chief and separatist statesman. In September, he made an unannounced appearance at the PQ’s policy convention in Montreal. With his new girlfriend, the actor Lucie Laurier, at his side, he was mobbed by star-struck PQ members as he made his way to the stage to greet his successor as leader, Jean-François Lisée.
Asked whether he planned a return to politics, Péladeau replied, “God only knows.” He specified that such a return would not be in the short term, because “the reasons that led me to leave remain today.”
Last weekend, Péladeau was tweeting from Barcelona, throwing his support behind the Yes side in the Catalonian independence referendum. He posted selfies, photos of people lining up to vote and one picture of a girl sleeping in her mother’s arms with the message, “To this young girl, I wish her a country.”
Before flying to Spain, he posted to his Facebook page a video shot outside Quebecor’s head office in Montreal. Identified as the company’s president and CEO, he criticizes Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government for refusing to tax Netflix.
“If the federal government persists in not wanting to tax Netflix, we will find ourselves in the same place the (Stephen) Harper government left us,” he said. “It’s ironic to note that we subsidize companies like Netflix, whose market capitalization is more than $80-billion, when it is Quebec businesses that invest massively in our cultural industry.”
The argument can certainly be seen as defending the interests of Quebecor, which through its Groupe TVA subsidiary spends heavily on cultural productions. But when the man making the argument is the once and perhaps future separatist leader, the economic argument sounds a lot more political.
THE REASONS THAT LED ME TO LEAVE (POLITICS) REMAIN TODAY.