PQ defends Boisclair after testimony at corruption inquiry

QUEBEC – The Parti Quebecois government has brushed off a demand for the suspension of Andre Boisclair, a former party leader who now holds a diplomatic post.

The request came from the Coalition party, which wants Boisclair removed from his job as Quebec’s representative in New York.

It came after Boisclair’s name surfaced at the provincial corruption inquiry.

A controversial former construction boss testified this week that Boisclair personally intervened to make sure he got a contract just four days before the PQ lost the 2003 election. The company that won the contract, LM Sauve, had ties to the Hells Angels.

That has prompted the Coalition’s Jacques Duchesneau, a crusading anti-corruption investigator and police chief before he entered politics, to draw links between the criminal organization and the fact that Boisclair was known to have used cocaine in the past.

Duchesneau wondered whether Boisclair might have put himself in a situation where he felt forced to hand out that $2.5 million contract just before an election.

The PQ is fuming over what it describes as a defamatory smear job.

Boisclair’s boss says he has spoken with him and has been reassured that the contract was awarded properly, and he says Boisclair is willing to testify at the Charbonneau inquiry.

But what has especially angered Jean-Francois Lisee, the international-relations minister, were the links Duchesneau drew between that contract and drug use.

He noted that Duchesneau has been described as Quebec’s Eliot Ness. Lisee says he’s acting more like Quebec’s Joseph McCarthy, the anti-communist demagogue.

“He made crazy statements, without any proof, about a former member of this assembly,” Lisee said of Duchesneau.

“He dishonours himself and undermines his own credibility.”

Boisclair was a cabinet minister until the PQ lost the 2003 election, then became the party leader, left politics after losing the 2007 election, and was appointed to his diplomatic post last year.

Duchesneau was working for the government anti-collusion unit under the Charest Liberals and he admits he leaked a devastating report to the media that pressured the government to call the Charbonneau inquiry.