Charest's Last Stand?

The Québec premier is being pressured into calling a corruption inquiry. He may or he may not, but either way the issue could cripple his party, ceding control of the province to the sovereigntists for the foreseeable future.

With the opposition piling pressure on Premier Jean Charest to call an inquiry into corruption in the province’s construction industry and a popular online petition calling for his immediate resignation, the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert writes that “all that stands between Premier Jean Charest and forced retirement is the loyalty of his caucus — but for how long?” She draws a comparison between Charest and his political mentor Brian Mulroney, both of whom exercised tight control of their parties in difficult times. Unfortunately, that loyalty to Mulroney ultimately cost the Conservatives big time, and they were crushed in the 1993 election. Charest’s Liberals could be headed for the same fate. If the Liberals suffer huge losses separatists would reap the rewards, Hébert predicts, because with the federal Liberals still suffering from the sponsorship scandal and Harper’s Conservatives a non-factor in francophone Québec, the provincial Liberals are “the country’s first vanguard against sovereignty and increasingly its only real one.” She recommends that Charest call a corruption inquiry to give the Liberals time to regroup and possibly make a smooth transition to a new leader.

The Montreal Gazette’s L. Ian MacDonald disagrees, warning that calling an inquiry could just as easily cripple Charest's party as not calling one. “The only benefit a government ever gets from naming an inquiry is on the first day,” writes MacDonald. “After that, the nature of inquiries being what it is, governments lose control of where they go, how much they cost, when they report and what they say” (Paul Martin and the Gomery Commission come to mind). MacDonald argues that the police are already empowered to arrest people for corruption, so an inquiry has the danger of becoming a gratuitous “circus.” He has a valid point, but in the absence of an inquiry, Charest is allowing the media and the opposition to frame the issue, and it’s already spinning out of control and into circus-like proportions. Charest’s problem is that at this point, an inquiry would at best put a tent over the proceedings, and at worst put him at the centre of the main ring.