UNION ‘RAMBO’ LOOKS TO SHAKE UP QUEBEC

MONTREAL• His strong-arm tactics as a construction union boss have seen him convicted in a criminal court and called before a provincial inquiry into corruption, but on his home turf of Quebec’s North Shore, Bernard Gauthier remains a folk hero to many.

On Tuesday, the man nicknamed Rambo announced his intention to enter provincial politics as the leader of a party that is tapping into what he identifies as the discontent of the masses.

He said he had been inspired by last month’s American election.

Railing against rich elites and traditional parties, the brawny Gauthier told a news conference in Quebec City that he would defend the little guy.

“A lot of people have no voice, are not being listened to,” he said. “They live in their little homes, don’t earn much and they’re tired of that. I understand them.”

He said his new party, Citoyens au Pouvoir (Citizens in Power), has to be ready to contest the 2018 Quebec election because time is running out to turn things around.

“There won’t be much left we can do. It’s going to end with a civil war. I’m not paranoid. I want to avoid that,” he said.

“We have a beautiful province. We are in a supposedly democratic place, but it no longer is. Everything is going to the rich and nothing to the poor. That has to stop.”

Gauthier said he does not see himself as a Québécois Donald Trump, but he takes heart in Trump’s victory in the U.S. “It’s a lesson and a warning,” he said.

Like Trump, Gauthier is unloved by mainstream media, but he said Trump showed how social media can be used to sidestep the traditional media filter. “It’s changing the way politics are done,” he said.

Wearing an unbuttoned plaid shirt over a black Tshirt and a shark-tooth necklace, Gauthier made no attempt to filter himself as he addressed the legislature’s press gallery.

His sentences were peppered with profanity. Asked whether his rough-and-tumble past would be a political handicap, he said it would not.

“The only thing I’ve done is to be found guilty of intimidation for having told someone he was full of s--t,” he said.

“There was no punch in the face, no death threat, nothing like that.”

Gauthier received a conditional discharge in 2015 after being convicted of intimidation against a contractor on a construction site in SeptÎles, Que. Gauthier, who is affiliated with the construction wing of the Quebec Federation of Labour, was on the scene during an impromptu work stoppage and got into a shouting match when the supervisor sought to have the men return to work.

In 2014, Gauthier was issued a subpoena to appear before the Charbonneau inquiry into corruption in the construction industry. The commission’s final report found no evidence that organized crime had infiltrated the union on the North Shore, but it heard ample evidence of intimidation tactics used to bully employers. An inquiry investigator testified that Gauthier was “considered a god,” able to dictate who would work and when they would work.

Gauthier denied any wrongdoing.

Yolande James, a former Liberal cabinet minister who now works as a media commentator, told the RDI news network that Gauthier has found a message that resonates in Quebec’s outlying regions.

“It would be a mistake for the political class to underestimate the presence of a Rambo, of Bernard Gauthier, on the political scene,” she said. “The lesson of the American election is you have to listen to what is going on, on the ground.”