Former premier LaNdry dies at 81
PQ leader known for passion, competence
QUEBEC • When it comes to his political legacy, history will likely show Bernard Landry was a better co-pilot than pilot.
Yet, in the last years of his life, Landry would often express regret at having resigned the leadership of the Parti Québécois in 2005 after a low confidence vote from the party rank-and-file.
“I should have reflected at least one night before resigning,” Landry told an interviewer in 2015. “I loved that job. I am heartsick. It was hard.”
It was the way he felt, but it did not change what was an otherwise full and robust political career devoted to what he liked to call the “Quebec cause.” He titled his own biography just that: La cause du Québec.
Landry died at home at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday of pulmonary fibrosis. He was 81.
He spent the last months of his life confined to his home in Verchères and using an oxygen tank. His wife, the singer Chantal Renaud, was with him.
He is also survived by three children from a previous marriage and grandchildren.
Quebec’s 28th premier, he governed from 2001 to 2003 after the surprise resignation of premier Lucien Bouchard in January 2001.
Landry’s term as premier ended when he lost to Liberal Leader Jean Charest, an event that weakened his leadership permanently in the eyes of many péquistes.
For much of his life, Landry regularly argued the greater cause of the Quebec nation (la patrie or homeland, he would say) was more important than any one person’s career, including his own.
And while he lacked the charisma of personalities like Bouchard (but shared the same short fuse when challenged), Landry played other key roles for the PQ. As some observers noted, Landry, the master technocrat, oozed competency, often carrying several portfolios at the same time.
As Bouchard’s finance minister, Landry became the first minister in almost four decades to balance Quebec’s books and cut taxes. As premier, one of his biggest accomplishments was negotiating a development agreement with the Cree nation known commonly as the “Paix des Braves” or Peace of the Brave.
Born March 9, 1937, Landry grew up in SaintJacques-de-Montcalm in the Joliette region. He was given a classical education at the Séminaire de Joliette, where he also founded its first student council.
In the late 1950s, Landry left the Séminaire to study law at the Université de Montréal. Again he gravitated into the student movement. In December 1962, he ran for student council president. His slogan reflected his real ambitions: “In the service of the students and the nation.”
His belief in state interventionism was clear in those early days when he pushed the council into “nationalizing” campus vending machines.
Landry graduated in 1963 and married Lorraine Laporte, who later became a prominent Quebec judge. She died in 1999.
Admitted to the bar in 1965, Landry practised law until 1976. That year he was elected in the PQ sweep and became a minister in René Léveque’s separatist government.
Faithful to the leader, Landry would be one of the few to stick with Lévesque when party hardliners, including Jacques Parizeau, quit over the so-called “beau risque” era.
That was when Lévesque, crippled by the 1980 referendum defeat, tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a reform of Canadian federalism with the federal government.
When the PQ regained power in 1994 under Parizeau, Landry won a seat in the riding of Verchères and became deputy premier.
Parizeau, who always said he was not interested in governing Quebec as a province, was focused on winning the 1995 sovereignty referendum even if there were plenty of indicators the party was headed for another failure.
Landry took the loss badly but he stayed on after Parizeau resigned and was replaced by Bouchard.
In 2001, Landry moved quickly to succeed Bouchard, out-flanking potential opponents with military precision.
It was at a news conference in January 2001 that the rest of Canada became familiar with his abrasive style.
Landry blasted Ottawa for insisting an offer of $18 million in renovation funding for a Quebec City zoo was conditional on the inclusion of English signs and the Canadian flag. Quebec declined the handout.
“We’re not for sale,” Landry told reporters at a PQ caucus meeting. “We have no intention of selling ourselves on the street for bits of red rag or any other reason.”
He later sought out reporters to tell them he was merely using colourful imagery to compare federalist offences to matadors’ practice of using red cloth to provoke bulls.
“Bilingualism is provocation — hence the red cloth in front of the bull,” Landry said. “When I spoke of the red rag, I was not speaking of the Canadian flag. I meant the red cloth used in front of a bull to make it charge.”
In November 2001, Landry again shocked Canadians when he linked the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to Quebec sovereignty.
“The freedom of peoples and nations and their character is an indispensable condition for global equilibrium,” he told delegates to a Parti Québécois convention. “Otherwise we will go from dominant imperialism and disappointment to deep bitterness.
“Since the events of Sept. 11, if there is one conclusion to draw in relation to the project of Quebec sovereignty and the sovereignty and liberty of all people, that is it.”
After leaving politics, Landry returned to teaching and political commentary, as well a working as a strategic counsellor for a law firm.