Media mogul or politician. Not both
Pierre Karl Péladeau is not having a good week. In an important weekend speech to the Parti Québécois national council “he sounded like a student who hadn’t studied for an oral exam,” Don Macpherson reported in Tuesday’s Gazette, “and he was rewarded with only lukewarm applause.” Worse, his oratory does not seem to improving — and it’s tough to envision “winning conditions” for the referendum victory the PQ so covets existing without a pretty good speechmaker at the helm.
It cannot be a good sign, furthermore, that with three months to go until the vote, Mr. Péladeau’s press secretary was forced this week to insist his boss was not — repeat, not — drunk when he showed up at a bar in Rouyn-Noranda last month and began shouting at Montreal pop group Groenland to play a song in English.
Rather, Marc-André De Blois told La Presse, it was just a matter of “someone who had a long day.”
Some people relax with a good book and a glass of shiraz. Others fire up Netflix. When the would-be premier of Quebec is tuckered out, he apparently enjoys heckling musicians. Terrific.
If Mr. Péladeau does manage to navigate his coronation parade off a cliff, it might well be to the party’s benefit. The post-Pauline Marois interregnum has seen the party frantically rededicating itself in principle to sovereignty, and Mr. Péladeau is very much of the same mind. But as other leadership candidates periodically remind party members, it was in large part the sovereignty issue — not least Mr. Péladeau’s
famous fist-pump in Saint-Jérôme — that poisoned the PQ’s campaign last year and handed the Liberals their improbable majority.
More to the point, it would spare the party the indignity of having a leader, a would-be premier, an aspiring founding president of la République Québécoise, who just happens to own Quebec’s largest media company, including its two highest-circulation newspapers and biggest privately held television network. He has many hundreds of journalists in his employ, all of whom profess to feel no pressure from above whatsoever.
Perhaps. But the optics are downright Berlusconian — a “ticking time bomb” for the party, as former leadership candidate Jean-François Lisée aptly put it. If the PQ decides to run another campaign on sovereignty and “values,” its prospects would probably be dim enough — but the party can safely expect to be beaten over the head with the conflict-of-interest issue should Mr. Péladeau win the leadership and eventually head to the hustings.
Mr. Péladeau has pledged to place his shares in a blind trust, should be win the PQ leadership. But he stressed the trustee would not be authorized to sell his shares — so, not really a blind trust. And while he stepped down last year as Quebecor CEO, he confirmed last week that he still essentially controls the company’s board of directors. Nor do even the most basic principles of conflict of interest seem much to perturb him. On at least two occasions he publicly lobbied against cuts to tax credits for television and film, which would obviously affect his business interests.
No matter how pure of heart a media mogul may be, the position does not mix with that of political leader. As we saw in Italy, their intermingling poisons politics and journalism alike. The PQ knows this perfectly well. If party luminaries cannot convince Mr. Péladeau of the need to divest his shares in Quebecor, members will have a very important existential decision to make.
If Péladeau manages to navigate his coronation parade off a cliff, it might well be to the party’s benefit