Former PQ government believed values charter was legally sound: Drainville

QUEBEC – The chief architect of Quebec’s proposed values charter says the former Parti Quebecois government had all the legal opinions necessary to push the project forward.

Bernard Drainville is speaking out today amid allegations he lied to the public about the existence of legal opinions that supported the constitutionality of the charter.

The new Liberal goverment said recently it found no such documents after it took power last month.

There have been calls for Drainville, the former minister in charge of democratic reforms, to resign his seat in the legislature for having allegedly misled Quebecers.

Instead, he’s fighting back.

He tells The Canadian Press that while the charter as a whole wasn’t subject to a formal legal opinion, government jurists did provide a number of written opinions on various elements in the proposed law.

If it had come to fruition, one of its provisions would have forbidden government employees from wearing religious symbols on the job.

Piecing together these various opinions and others, Drainville says the Pauline Marois-led PQ government believed it was on the right track.

Drainville says he does not want the Liberal government to make public any legal documents related to the project.