A QUIET RESOLVE
Cerebral in nature and unfailingly courteous, Philippe Couillard rarely gives vent to his emotions, preferring to win over listeners by the force of his ideas. Part of his convictions are rooted in his family’s past in the French Resistance. ‘I don’t barg
Over the past four years, Philippe Couillard has proved himself an able steward of Quebec’s affairs. What is less clear is to what extent he’s been able to connect with its citizens and convey a vision that fires their imaginations. Will voters see past the cool exterior to his passionate convictions? Marian Scott reports in
I’m against expulsion, and I will say this forever and ever and ever. And the good thing is I believe that the majority of Quebecers also believe this.
It’s Day 17 of the campaign and Philippe Couillard is standing in front of Laval’s Cité de la Santé in his trademark blue suit and an open-necked shirt. Another day, another promise. Today’s is on reduced prices for parking at hospitals across Quebec.
The high cost of visiting a hospital is a sore point, and the Liberal leader is hoping the measure will help his campaign gain traction.
With a roaring economy, low unemployment and a government awash in surpluses, you’d think the incumbent Liberals would be riding high.
But Couillard’s message seems to be falling flat on this crisp early September day, with voters hungry for change after 15 years of Liberal rule, aside from a 19-month interregnum under the Parti Québécois from 2012-14.
Straying from the topic of the day, a TV reporter ventures onto more personal ground.
“You’re taking the afternoon off. Is everything OK with your health, Mr. Couillard? Because you were coughing a bit this week!”
Couillard’s blue eyes glare for a second, then he laughs off the question.
“I think I might have turned over in bed at 3 a.m.!” he retorts.
“Oh, come on! I’m in great shape. I’m in a good mood with my team. I’m having a great campaign. It’s unfolding exactly how I want it to unfold. I can tell you that this 2018 campaign is very pleasant!” he says.
Another day on the campaign trail with the imperturbable Philippe Couillard.
Calm, logical and unfailingly courteous, Quebec’s 31st premier rarely gives vent to his emotions, preferring to win over listeners by the force of ideas.
It’s a quality that must have served him well as a neurosurgeon, in an 18-year career that took him from Hôpital Saint-Luc, where he headed the neurosurgery department, to Saudi Arabia for four years, to the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke. In 2003, he quit medicine to enter politics, serving as health minister under Jean Charest from 2003-2008.
But in a premier, unflappability can read as aloofness.
Over the past four years, the 61-year-old Couillard has proved himself an able steward of Quebec’s affairs. What is less clear is to what extent he’s been able to connect with its citizens and convey a vision that fires their imaginations.
“He’s a good debater. He’s a good campaigner. I think he likes to mingle with people but at the same time he remains distant from citizens. I think that’s his problem. I think that’s why his popularity is so low among francophones,” says Guy Lachapelle, a professor of political science at Concordia University.
The Couillard government’s determination to balance the budget — a task some regard as its defining achievement — resulted in unpopular budget cuts, Lachapelle noted.
“I think what a lot of people will remember is austerity, especially Mr. (Health Minister Gaétan) Barrette’s health reform,” he said.
Stalled at about 30 per cent in the popular vote, the Liberals seem
unable to get liftoff among francophones. Their support has dipped to as low as 17 or 18 per cent, polls suggest. “I think it’s a historic low,” Lachapelle said.
“The Quebec Liberal Party is losing its base, just as the Parti Québécois has done,” he said.
Then again, given the Liberals’ history of performing better on election day than in opinion polls, perhaps Monday ’s vote will justify Couillard’s hopes.
As he likes to say, adapting one of Napoleon’s most famous quotes, “Impossible is not Québécois.”
In an age of populism, Couillard is the essential anti-populist. Educated at Outremont’s Collège Stanislas and the Université de Montréal, he started medical school at age 17, graduated at 22 and qualified as a neurosurgeon at 28.
He reads widely, drawing inspiration from such historic figures as Napoleon to Quebec Liberal premier Adélard Godbout.
Premier for a brief stretch in 1936 and again from 1939 to 1944, Godbout is an often-overlooked parenthesis to the long reign of premier Maurice Duplessis, a right-wing populist whose regime has been dubbed La Grande Noirceur, or great darkness.
Almost forgotten today, Godbout is one of Couillard’s heroes.
In his one full term in office, Godbout gave women the right to vote, founded Hydro- Québec, established free public education up to Grade 7 and adopted a labour code that affirmed workers’ right to unionize.
“He was one of the most modern premiers in the history of Quebec,” Couillard said Monday in an interview with the Montreal Gazette.
A staunch supporter of Canada’s participation in the war, Godbout
was defeated amid false accusations by Duplessis that he had colluded in a plot to bring 100,000 Jewish refugees to the province.
“Why did he lose to Duplessis? Because he said to Quebecers at the time, we have this Nazi monster in Europe and we must do our part,” Couillard said.
“And it was an honourable defeat. I admire him for that,” he said.
In an election that started out as an orgy of promises, the debate over François Legault’s immigration proposals has brought Couillard’s values to the fore.
The Coalition Avenir Québec leader proposes to cut immigration from 52,000 to 40,000 arrivals per year and reject newcomers who fail to pass tests in French and Quebec values.
Couillard has slammed Legault’s proposal as economically unsound given the current labour shortage.
But it was his words on the human impact of Legault’s proposal that made for one of the memorable moments of the campaign.
“You are scaring them,” Couillard said to Legault during the Sept. 13 leaders’ debate. “Don’t open the door to expulsions.”
During the second French debate, he was the only party leader to stand up for the right of a woman who wears a hijab to become a police officer.
“We don’t decide how to treat minorities in a society on the basis of polls,” he told Legault when the CAQ leader attacked him for failing to respect most Quebecers’ view that officers of the law should not be allowed to wear religious symbols.
“I stick to my values. I don’t bargain away my values,” Couillard said Monday.
“When we have divisions in a society, a leader has two choices. He can work as someone who unites people, or as someone who uses
the divisions to pull people apart. Obviously I see myself in the first category.
“But is it easy? No, because you have to swim against the current,” he said.
Couillard credits his parents with instilling those principles in him.
On his father’s side, he is as “pure laine” as it gets: a direct descendant of Guillaume Couillard de Lespinay, who arrived in New France with Samuel de Champlain in 1613 and married the daughter of the colony ’s first farmer, Louis Hébert.
His mother, Hélène Pardé, 86, a native of Grenoble, France, served in the French Resistance during the Second World War.
“Her brother was in the Resistance and he was shot by the SS. Her aunt died at Ravensbrück for acts of resistance. Her brother-inlaw, whom I knew, went to Dachau. He was saved by the Americans when he was almost a skeleton,” Couillard said.
One night, Hélène’s mother woke her up and told her there was something she wanted to show her. “She brought her to a school where there was a schoolyard, and a bunch of kids with yellow stars. She said to her, ‘I don’t want you to ever forget these children,’ ” Couillard said.
His family history has imbued him with a visceral aversion to any policies that target minorities or remove their rights. “I’m so much anchored in values that I don’t accept bargaining values away like bargaining chips,” he said.
That might help explain why the reserved Couillard has shown flashes of emotion over policies like the Parti Québécois’s 2013 proposed Quebec Charter of Values, which sought to ban the wearing of religious symbols like the Muslim hijab or Jewish kippah by public sector workers, from daycare providers to doctors.
“When I hear policies like the Charter, and this horrible expulsion thing, I get angry, and I try to control myself, because I don’t want to become someone who vociferates and shouts. But when I see this, I want to say, ‘Stop that! Where are you taking us?’ And maybe I’m more sensitive to that, because of that part of my heritage, which is still very important to me,” he said.
But Couillard justifies Bill 62. Passed last year, it prohibits public servants or people receiving government services from wearing a face covering like the Muslim niqab or burka. Muslim and human rights organizations slammed the bill, accusing the Liberal government of caving in to identity politics.
Couillard has also come under fire both in the media and within his own caucus over his dumping of longtime MNA François Ouimet for former hockey player Enrico Ciccone in Marquette, and for the Liberals’ crushing byelection defeat in Louis-Hébert, a former stronghold, a year ago.
Legault needled Couillard in the TV debates for lecturing him.
“I’m not a perfect human being. I’ve never pretended that I’m perfect, far from it,” Couillard said.
But “when Mr. Legault says, ‘You’re always giving lessons,’ (my response is), ‘Yes, sir, I’m against this type of policy because of my values.’ I’m against expulsion, and I will say this forever and ever and ever. And the good thing is I believe that the majority of Quebecers also believe this,” he said.
“It’s true that I’m some kind of an intellectual — I cannot deny that,” said Couillard, whose favourite outlet aside from books is fly-fishing on remote rivers.
But his wife, Suzanne Pilote, a graphic artist from the SaguenayLac-St-Jean region, helps keeps him grounded, he says.
The couple live in St-Félicien, a town of 10,000 on Lac-St-Jean, 465 kilometres north of Montreal, where Couillard represents the riding of Roberval.
“My wife, Suzanne, has a tremendously positive influence on me,” he said.
“She tells me, ‘What you’re saying here, nobody can understand.’ “It’s very helpful to me.” Pilote manages the rambling white house overlooking the Ashuapmushuan River, while Couillard focuses on Quebec.
The couple bought the former bed and breakfast in 2008.
Financial statements released this week by the four party leaders show Couillard is poorer than Legault and PQ Leader Jean-François Lisée, with a net worth of $441,919.
Pilote declared a net worth of $1.009 million.
A plain-spoken woman who makes no secret of her dislike for politics, Pilote usually shuns the media. “She doesn’t like the adversarial atmosphere of politics. I think she’s very proud of what I’ve done,” Couillard said.
He denied a media report that Pilote wanted him to lose the election so he could stay home. “She wants me to be happy and she knows that I will be happy if I get a second term because I still have more to do.”