Pelletier was what a politician should be
Just about everyone agrees he was honest, pleasant and respectful
Among the many things said since the death of Benoît Pelletier last week at the age of 64 was that he was a gentleman and a good, generous person. Not something we currently have an unmanageable surplus of. It's a shame his ideas about federalism are being abused by politicians panicked about their re-election prospects.
Pelletier was from Quebec City and studied law where I did, and his jam, like mine, was constitutional law. Let's just say he was more successful than yours truly at parlaying this nerdy obsession into a well-paying career. I don't begrudge him that one bit.
He moved to the Ottawa area in the 1980s and worked for the federal government. He started teaching law at the University of Ottawa after completing a masters and two doctorates. His students liked him. His colleagues, too. When he made the jump into politics in 1998 and became the Liberal Member of the National Assembly for the Outaouais riding of Chapleau, he was also known for his collegiality and sense of fairness. After his time in politics, he kept contributing to the public discourse on important issues such as the legal framework surrounding medical assistance in dying. He fought for the rights of francophones everywhere. He was still writing and publishing articles regularly and was scheduled to speak at an event at the Université du Québec en Outaouais on secularism within the state this past Tuesday.
Just about everyone who knew him agrees he was honest, pleasant and respectful. I think the worst thing he ever did as a public person was worry everyone that time he got lost in Gatineau Park.
When the party of Jean Charest won the Quebec election in April 2003, he was appointed minister of intergovernmental affairs and that's where he found his political groove. The Council of the Federation, which formalized meetings between provincial and territorial premiers, was his idea and so was popularizing the concept of asymmetrical federalism, which recognizes that provinces or territories can have their own unique agreements with the feds.
Pelletier was also calling himself an “autonomiste” long before Mario Dumont
(of the defunct Action démocratique du Québec) and current Premier François Legault ever did.
It's essentially the idea that Quebec is its own nation and that it requires the powers necessary to occupy its own space and to protect its distinct culture — without being constitutionally separated from the rest of Canada. He was also one of the people behind Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper's 2006 motion that the Québécois form a nation within Canada. I confess to not having liked most of his ideas at the time. I didn't think asymmetrical federalism would work, and I also thought autonomistes were fence-sitters who should pick a side and mean it.
Maybe history proved me wrong or maybe I was wrong from the get-go but as it turns out, Quebec is doing quite well being its autonomiste self. And somehow the country has yet to implode.
In a way, it's not surprising that an institutional kludge like asymmetrical federalism would come out of the Ottawa area because we're so used to making unworkable situations last with constitutional duct tape and parliamentary Jig-a-loo. But really, these days politicians are taking this way too far.
The feds are throwing money every which way in areas that are completely within the purview of provinces and territories, such as municipal zoning, renters' rights, dental care and school food programs. Meanwhile, areas of federal jurisdiction keep getting ignored to the point where we don't know whether our military can fight, if we'll have enough judges to hear cases or whether people hoping to immigrate will have their applications processed before their children die of old age.
That's hardly Benoît Pelletier's fault. He had a lot of ideas, some better than others, and he defended them with intelligence, honesty and civility. I wish we had more politicians like him today. Requiescat in pace.