New PQ leader brings vision, youth
Boisclair very skilled, Ignatieff warns Mistake to write him off, critics say
QUEBEC CITY—
When André Boisclair left Quebec politics last year to go to Harvard’s Kennedy School, he gave the impression that it was to fill in a gap in his education and get away from the pressures of 15 years in public life. But in January, Boisclair took an intensive two- week course on leadership under Ronald Heifetz that the new head of the Parti Québécois has said had a profound influence on him.
“ Ron Heifetz is one of the legends of the Kennedy School,” Boisclair wrote in February on the blog he kept while he was at Harvard.
“ A leader is for him someone who engages a group in a process of adaptation,” Boisclair wrote of Heifetz. “ That is to say someone who goes beyond his authority, his formal power, to help a group to overcome difficulties related to the process of adaptation.”
Heifetz’s course stresses how to acquire authority, get attention, face facts, and get a vision.
Last week, Boisclair swept to a first- ballot victory as Parti Québécois leader after signing up 37,000 new members to the party, building an effective organization, and overcoming controversy from the revelation that he had used cocaine while a PQ minister.
Apparently, Boisclair, who succeeds Bernard Landry as party leader, learned his lessons from Heifetz well. Another Harvard academic, Michael Ignatieff — whose own possible entry into politics in Canada is the subject of much speculation — met Boisclair at the Cambridge, Mass., university.
Ignatieff was impressed with Boisclair’s ability, calling him an “an extremely skilled politician.”
“ Speaking as a committed federalist, this is going to be a very serious opponent,” he said. “ Anybody who underestimates Boisclair does so at their peril . . . You can’t deck this guy by referring to cocaine all the time.”
This was, of course, the immediate reaction of Quebec and federal Liberals — to remind voters of his admitted drug use. More dramatically, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew attacked the PQ, describing it as aparty of losers — stirring up his own controversy in Quebec.
Boisclair has been underestimated before. When he ran for the Parti Québécois riding nomination in 1989, he was 23, and in third year at the Université de Montréal. A group of friends went to his riding nomination meeting, assuming he would lose and intending to take him out for a consolation drink after he lost. To their astonishment, Boisclair won, becoming an improbable representative for the working- class riding of Gouin in east- end Montreal. He grew up in Outremont, the son of a wealthy financier and was a graduate of the elite private school Collège Jean-deBrébeuf. And he was gay, although his sexual orientation was not known when he first ran for office.
While a sovereignist, he did not restrict his circle of friends.
“ Many of the gay friends he had at that time were federalists,” recalled Jean-François Garneau, a friend from that period. “ He had lots of Péquiste gay friends I am sure, but he certainly hung out more with us federalists when it was time to go out to bars.” When he began in politics, Boisclair soon annoyed his party leader Jacques Parizeau by saying the sovereignty movement had to open its doors, denounce hardline interpretations and avoid asphyxiation. But in 1994, when the Parti Québécois came to power under Parizeau, Boisclair’s openness was seen as a virtue. He was given several cabinet positions, including environment and immigration. As a minister, Boisclair proved to be skilful and adept. When he was environment minister, federal officials were pleasantly surprised that he was actively engaged in federal- provincial discussions. He played a key role in building a coalition between the provinces on the Kyoto climate accord.
And, in Quebec, he took on the powerful farmers’ union and imposed a moratorium on the expansion of the massive pig farms that had become a serious threat to areas south and east of Montreal. But he also developed a reputation for arrogance. “He would stand in restaurants after meals, and hold out his arms, waiting for some underling to put his coat on for him,” muttered a PQ member. One Quebec journalist described Boisclair as the most arrogant man he had ever met, with the exception of Parizeau.
“ I was the little wise guy,” Boisclair told Konrad Yakabuski in one of the last extended interviews he gave before winning the leadership, for a profile last spring in L’actualité, when he was at Harvard. “ I had kept a bit of the adolescent’s arrogance,” he said. “ I am now discovering the serenity of an adult.” Now 39, Boisclair is hailed as a breath of fresh air who has offered the party a chance to renew itself.
Boisclair was dogged by the revelation that he had used cocaine as a minister in Lucien Bouchard’s government; many veteran PQ members worried that there might be more skeletons in his closet that the Liberals could produce during an election or a referendum.
Boisclair had difficulty coping with questions about the issue. ( His tense and prickly response to questions from reporters on the subject unnerved political veterans who worried he would have trouble handling future controversies. But Boisclair prevailed, on the basis of a superior organization, telegenic charm, a focus on young people, strong support in public opinion polls, and the belief that he can rejuvenate the party. Last week, when he gave an interview to Radio- Canada’s Le Point, he was visibly relaxed. But while he was clear about wanting to hold a referendum as soon as possible after winning an election, he was maddeningly vague in response to attempts to pin him down on other issues.
Boisclair has the enormous challenge of uniting a divided party and meeting the huge expectations that he can not only become premier, but win a referendum and lead Quebec to independence.