Jean Charest tries to repeat history with Conservative leadership bid

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OTTAWA — It’s simply after 9 a.m. on a Friday morning at Wilfrid’s Restaurant within the Chateau Laurier and company are serving to themselves to a breakfast buffet when Jean Charest takes his seat within the nook of the room.

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This iconic lodge down the road from Parliament Hill, the scene of so many political tete-a-tetes and soirees, is about as cliche a gathering place as you may get in official Ottawa. It’s one way or the other fully acceptable.

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Charest, who’s vying to turn into chief of the federal Conservative social gathering in a contest that wraps up Sept. 10, settles down in entrance of the $24 yogurt parfait his press secretary ordered up earlier than his arrival and opens the highest button of his white shirt. Earlier than starting an interview, he chit-chats: The place are you from? Are you bilingual? After the tape recorder is off, selecting on the raspberries: Dwell close by? Any youngsters?

Ever the retail politician, Charest is on a first-name foundation with the waiter and treats him simply as warmly. He’s on a first-name foundation with lots of Canada’s political giants, too, dropping names like “Lucien” into the dialog realizing that there’s no want to elucidate who he’s speaking about. (That’s Lucien Bouchard, a former premier of Quebec and an vital determine in its sovereignty motion.)

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“I’ve needed to reintroduce myself on this marketing campaign,” he says, trying again on his lengthy profession in each federal and provincial politics, earlier than a newer 10-year stint within the personal sector. “I didn’t count on after I began that it might be a 28-year run. I didn’t count on all of the turns, the occasions. I had a whole lot of moments of success and likewise a whole lot of moments the place there have been failures. And moments of elation and moments of disappointment. I’ve had all of them.”

He says he’s no “choir boy” and “you’re not sitting in entrance of a saint.” However he’s right here to make a case that his expertise has greater than ready him to steer, and, in a approach, that historical past can and will repeat itself. It’s removed from his first rodeo.

It’s not even the primary time others have satisfied Charest to run for management of a celebration.

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In 1998, when Charest was chief of the federal Progressive Conservatives, he bowed to mounting strain from different politicians and the general public to take over management of the Quebec Liberal Social gathering, which is separate from the federal Liberal social gathering.

It was 5 years later, in the course of the 2003 provincial election, when Conservative MP Alain Rayes encountered him for the primary time. “I misplaced that election due to Jean Charest,” he says in an interview in French. He ran for the Motion democratique du Quebec and misplaced to a Liberal. He stays satisfied this was “clear proof” of Charest’s political magic.

Charest gained his social gathering a majority authorities and remained premier for 9 years. If he has been reintroducing himself to voters in the course of the federal management marketing campaign, it has been with a cautious effort to not reintroduce them to his baggage.

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Although Charest’s method to Quebec’s fiscal scenario was lauded and the province fared higher than nearly wherever else in the course of the 2008-09 monetary disaster, he was constantly affected by unproven corruption allegations and several other of his ministers needed to step apart due to battle of curiosity allegations. A prolonged investigation into alleged unlawful financing within the provincial Liberal social gathering beneath his management solely wrapped up early this 12 months with out recommending any prices to police. Charest is suing the province over it.

Although he bristles at this time at any accusation he hasn’t been aligned with the federal Conservative social gathering, he wasn’t all the time a pal to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Throughout a tighter marketing campaign within the 2007 provincial election, Harper agreed to extend federal transfers to Quebec, which got here at a political price. However Charest used a few of that cash to make earnings tax cuts, to the consternation of different premiers.

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Requested whether or not it’s doable to attract a straight line from that occasion to Harper’s endorsement of his opponent, Charest mentioned any animosity is on the previous prime minister’s aspect. However he couldn’t resist quipping: “Now, a Conservative disillusioned in lowering earnings taxes is a novelty.”

Marc-Andre Leclerc was the Conservative social gathering’s director of political operations for Quebec throughout Charest’s final couple of years as premier. “We by no means noticed him like an ally,” he says. “After his retirement, we didn’t see him concerned within the social gathering.” In fact, Leclerc concedes, “it’s good politics to combat towards Ottawa,” particularly in Quebec.

Charest left workplace in 2012 on the heels of huge pupil demonstrations that sprang up after his authorities moved to lift tuition charges in Quebec universities, and later launched a invoice that might impose restrictions on protests.

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Requested whether or not he has any regrets, Charest says, “it wouldn’t be sincere for anybody to let you know that, ‘No, I did the whole lot precisely the way in which it ought to’ve been achieved.”‘ For a particular instance, he mentioned he would have differed in his method to labour legal guidelines.

“I believe I modified seven of them in the identical 12 months and actually made the unions my adversaries,” he says. “I’d’ve achieved that in a different way.”

There’s one anecdote that Charest does need to spotlight, saying, “it tells a narrative about me and about this race and who I’m.”

With common help rising in Quebec for a coverage that might goal the sporting of spiritual symbols, Charest created a fee in 2007 led by thinker Charles Taylor and historian Gerard Bouchard that might look into the difficulty of lodging for non secular beliefs.

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The fee really helpful that individuals in sure positions — judges, prosecutors, police and jail guards — shouldn’t put on non secular apparel or symbols. Charest wouldn’t chunk.

“It will’ve been extra common for me to do it than to not do it. I mentioned no as a result of I simply didn’t imagine in it.”

There’s a via line to Charest’s place at this time. He says if he have been prime minister and Quebec’s secularism legislation — Invoice 21, which bans some civil servants in positions of authority from sporting non secular symbols on the job — have been to be at challenge on the Supreme Courtroom, his authorities would intervene and argue towards the restriction of Constitution rights.

Rayes, who thinks Invoice 21’s significance within the Conservative management race is overblown, was the primary to method Charest to come back to the rescue of a flailing federal social gathering early this 12 months. He and others labored “very exhausting” to persuade him, he says, and so they succeeded. He thinks Quebecers will line up behind Charest.

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Not lengthy after decrying how fashionable politicos are all the time chasing after “shiny objects,” a tacit criticism of social media, Charest is on Sparks Road, a few blocks away from the Hill, on the lookout for someplace to purchase a newspaper. Just like the assembly on the lodge, besides maybe for the value of the yogurt, it’s one other second that feels decoupled from time. An individual might need ran into Charest when he was final a member of Parliament and had the identical interplay.

Pollster Philippe Fournier says Charest is a gifted debater and a fearsome campaigner. That a lot has all the time been true.

As a potential prime minister, he could at this time have a “exhausting ceiling” in Quebec, the place some voters gained’t forgive Charest for a few of his strikes as premier and even for his position within the “No” marketing campaign towards separation within the 1995 referendum.

However Fournier says he has “little question” Charest would win the following federal ;election if he have been to eke out a victory now, a outcome he sees as extremely unlikely.

“It will have been an amazing story, when you consider it.”