Lisée gives up university salary
Facing criticism, minister plans to give funds to charity
International Relations Minister Jean-François Lisée is giving up a second salary he was being paid by his former university employer.
Under a flurry of criticism, Lisée issued a statement Wednesday on his personal blog saying he will give proceeds of a second salary he has been receiving from the Université de Montréal to a charity that helps dropouts.
The decision follows revelations in the Journal de Montréal that Lisée — even as an MNA on the National Assembly payroll — is still drawing $8,667 a month, or $104,000 a year, from the university.
As a cabinet minister in the Parti Québécois government, Lisée, who is also minister responsible for Montreal and anglophones, is paid $150,924 a year. He is also paid an expense allowance of $15,895 a year.
Lisée, who told the newspaper on Tuesday he was breaking no rules and confirmed the details of the salary, announced the change Wednesday.
He was being roasted in the media and by the opposition parties for taking the salary, at the same time as the Quebec government is cutting back university funding by $124 million.
On his blog, Lisée said he now will donate the amount of the university salary he has been getting since September — when he became a minister — plus a separation allowance that was to go into his pension, which was to start in March, “to those who need it a lot, a lot more than me.”
“I will hand over these sums, on a regular and scheduled basis, to businesses in Rosemont (his home riding) who are making miracles in giving a second and even a third chance to youths who need a helping hand to succeed in their lives,” Lisée said.
Lisée said he consulted the National Assembly ethics commissioner, who told him there was nothing illegal in his salary situation.
But Liberal opposition critic Laurent Lessard said that after all the PQ’s talk of ethics, this revelation is “pathetic.”
Coalition Avenir Québec MNA Gérard Deltell said that only three months in office, the PQ is guilty of “multiple errors in judgment.”
“It’s a festival of reversals,” Deltell said.
Lisée made no mention of whether he will accept a tax receipt for his donation, which could be seen as another perk.
This is the second time in two weeks Lisée has found himself on the hot seat.
Last week, after initially defending the double-dipping on Quebec’s new delegate to New York, André Boisclair, Lisée flip-flopped and said he underestimated the reaction of the public.
In the storm, Boisclair renounced the deputy minister’s post that he had been handed by the government, in addition to the New York job.
Lisée also had to apologize in the National Assembly for saying — in the heat of question period — that Canada’s ambassador to France, Lawrence Cannon, has the status of deputy minister, which means a job for life in the public sector.
Cannon does not.