Marois’s mudslinging looks like desperation

Pauline Marois’s response to finding herself down in the polls was to start slinging mud, hoping desperately that some would stick to Philippe Couillard.

Following this week’s release of the latest election campaign poll, one showing the Parti Québécois fallen behind Couillard’s Liberals in voter support, Marois stooped to smear tactics in attacking Couillard for his previous association with disgraced former MUHC head Arthur Porter.

It is an old story that Couillard’s opponents have raised time and again, even though nothing even resembling proof of any wrongdoing has ever been offered, much less any charges been laid against him by any judicial author- ity. It revolves around a business partnership Couillard formed with Porter back in 2010 with the intent of setting up a consulting services firm.

The worst that has been alleged about the venture itself is that Porter neglected to seek permission from the local health and social services agency, as required for a serving hospital director, which Porter was at the time.

But while the firm was registered, federal corporate records show it was never active and did no business, and was dissolved two years later. By the time they entered into the arrangement, Couillard was well out of politics, having resigned as health minister in the Charest government two years before.

Throughout the period of their association, Porter stood tall in everyone’s eyes as the driving force behind the new MUHC superhospital. As Couillard has often explained, he was not alone in having wool pulled over his eyes by Porter, who now languishes in a Panamanian jail fighting extradition to Canada to face charges of fraud and money laundering in connection with the superhospital contract.

At the same time as Couillard entered into the business arrangement with Porter, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Porter to head the Security and Intelligence Review Committee, the watchdog body that oversees Canada’s spy agency.

In resorting to the smear, Marois should be wary of focusing attention back on herself, in the wake of Charbonneau Commission testimony about an alleged deal between her husband Claude Blanchet and the FTQ Fonds de solidarité, a body that was linked by commission testimony to assorted dubious dealings.

She has repeatedly and indignantly main- tained there was no wrongdoing on either her or her husband’s part in the matter and cited the absence of any proof to the contrary. Yet, Marois indulges in suggesting guilt by association in Couillard’s case, while understandably decrying it in hers.

Couillard was quite rightly furious about having the Porter association dredged up again at this crucial time of the campaign, just before Thursday’s televised leaders’ debate. When asked if he plans to respond in kind, he said he would prefer to keep to the high road and talk about public finances, education, jobs, health care and the benefits of being part of Canada.

And well he should, for these are the things that are in Quebecers’ best interests.

Still, if pressed, he might well point out Marois’s double standard when it comes to mudslinging.