Couillard attacks Marois about disclosing finances
Liberal leader calls for ‘transparency’
VICTORIAVILLE — Quebec Liberal Party Leader Philippe Couillard criticized Pauline Marois Tuesday for refusing to follow his lead in disclosing all her financial assets — as well as those of her husband — in advance of Thursday’s televised debate.
“I think she should have thought about this a little longer,” Couillard said of the Parti Québécois leader’s decision not to make public the extent of her assets as well as those of her husband, businessman Claude Blanchet.
As a new Léger poll released Tuesday suggested that the Liberals might not only defeat the PQ but could win a majority in the April 7 election, Marois stepped up her attacks on the Liberal record on integrity. Seeking the moral high ground, Couillard announced that he would release his 2012 income tax records — along with his wife’s — plus details of their financial holdings “down to the last cent.”
Couillard didn’t mention Marois’s husband by name. But journalists pressed him on whether his announcement was aimed at Blanchet, the former chief executive officer of both the Solidarity Fund of the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec (FTQ), and the Société générale de financement, a governmentowned holding company.
Blanchet’s name had surfaced most recently in a wiretapped conversation played at the Charbonneau Commission, in which then-FTQ president Michel Arsenault said the PQ would not want a public inquiry into construction corruption, because “they will be hit, too,” and be- cause “we have a deal” with Blanchet.
“I’m only showing my standards for transparency and asking them to do the same,” Couillard said, when asked specifically about Blanchet. “They talk a lot about transparency and integrity, a lot of talk. As I said in French, ‘salire pour se faire elire’ (smear to get elected) — that’s their new motto. So let’s see how they follow up on their own talk.”
Couillard explained that he decided to go beyond the request of a Montreal newspaper that all the leaders divulge their 2012 income-tax declarations. Later in the day, he added that he was inspired by federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s decision to make public his financial assets.
While campaigning in Blainville, Marois told journalists she has already submitted to the province’s ethics commissioner her personal financial information as well as her husband’s records, and she accused Couillard of trying to divert attention from the Liberal record on ethics.
Couillard revealed that he owns a house with his wife and has a registered retirement savings account and that he and his wife split their assets equally. He added that he doesn’t hold any assets outside Canada.
As the PQ filed a complaint Tuesday with the Directeur général des élections du Québec alleging fundraising irregularities by the Liberals, Couillard went on the offensive about the PQ’s record. He noted that a report by retired Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean Moisan in 2006 found that the PQ had turned a blind eye to violations of the law on the financing of political parties from 1995 to 2000.
“What I don’t like is this attitude of the PQ to portray themselves as the paragon, the champion of integrity, when we know — everybody knows — that significant problems happened with their party, the way they collected funds … that objectively do not allow them to portray themselves as they are doing now,” he said.
After a Liberal rally in Asbestos Tuesday night, Couillard denounced the “hypocrisy” of the PQ in accusing the Liberals of illegal fundraising when, in fact, provincial investigators met in February with the PQ’s director of finance to discuss the party’s fundraising methods.
“It’s frankly unacceptable,” Couillard said.