This year, the PQ, the Bloc and the RRQ were members of a coalition against the Charest government’s proposed language legislation. PQ leader Pauline Marois and Bloc MP Pierre Paquette participated in a coalition news conference at which the RRQ was represented.Imagine that you open an envelope mailed to you at your home and find a letter resembling a communiqué of the terrorist Front de libération du Québec.
Like the FLQ communiqués, the letter (snipurl.com/1lxcc9) is on paper bearing a drawing of a marching, rifle-bearing Patriote of the 1837 Rebellion.
It informs you that your name and address have been posted on a website identifying you as someone who last year contributed the legal maximum of $3,000 to the Quebec Liberal Party.
It declares you “a target” for anybody who wants the Charest government either to hold a public inquiry into the construction industry and political financing or resign.
It is only when the government has done so that the website will be closed and “you will find peace again.” Maybe you recognize the name of Patrick Bourgeois of the Réseau de résistance du Québécois at the bottom of the letter.
And maybe you recall that only last year, a 250th-anniversary re-enactment of the battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City had to be cancelled after Bourgeois and the RRQ threatened violent disruptions.
Or maybe you visit the RRQ’s own website, where past violence in the name of Quebec independence is justified and those who resorted to it, such as 1960s goon-squad leader Reggie Chartrand, are glorified (snipurl.com/1lxsxe).
Also on the site, there’s a communiqué announcing that Liberal contributors such as you have been “targeted” by the RRQ.
Wouldn’t you feel threatened? Wouldn’t you fear that your property might be vandalized and that you and your family might be harassed, even attacked physically, by RRQ sympathizers?
And maybe this is Bourgeois’s real objective: Wouldn’t you hesitate before making another contribution to the Liberal Party? Once the letter became public knowledge, wouldn’t anybody?
Bourgeois obtained the names and addresses of the contributors from the party’s annual financial report to the chief electoral officer.
The report must contain the name and mailing address of every contributor of more than $200, and it is a public document.
Last year, 12,060 contributors gave the Liberals more than $200 each, accounting for 87 per cent of the party’s fundraising take.
The Liberals raked in $7.2 million in contributions, more than all the other parties combined, and twice as much as the RRQ’s ally, the Parti Québécois.
To my knowledge, the only mainstream parties in Canada willing to associate with extremists such as the RRQ are the PQ and its federal ally, the Bloc Québécois.
The PQ and the Bloc provide moral and even material support to the RRQ.
Earlier this year, the PQ, the Bloc and the RRQ were members of a coalition against the Charest government’s proposed language legislation. PQ leader Pauline Marois and Bloc MP Pierre Paquette participated in a coalition news conference at which the RRQ was represented.
And last year, Marois and Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe participated with Bourgeois in a reading of nationalist texts, an event for which their parties provided financial and technical support.
Now Bourgeois is returning the favour.
The PQ has tried unsuccessfully through parliamentary means to eliminate the Liberals’ financial advantage by lowering the legal limit on individual contributions.
Now its ally is using “extraparliamentary” means that would achieve the same objective by intimidating Liberal contributors.
The PQ might not condone Bourgeois’s extreme tactics, though as of yesterday afternoon, it hadn’t condemned them, either. But it stands to benefit from them.
dmacpherson GaJ montrealgazette.com