The Parizeau Affair (in French ''l'Affaire Parizeau'') was a political controversy that occurred in

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

during the

2003 Quebec general election The 2003 Quebec general election was held on April 14, 2003, to elect members of the National Assembly of Quebec (Canada). The Parti libéral du Québec (PLQ), led by Jean Charest, defeated the incumbent Parti Québécois, led by Premier Bernard ...

campaign.

Description

On the day of the leaders' debate,

Jean Charest John James "Jean" Charest (; born June 24, 1958) is a Canadian lawyer and former politician who served as the 29th premier of Quebec from 2003 to 2012 and the fifth deputy prime minister of Canada in 1993. Charest was elected to the House of ...

, leader of the ''

Parti libéral du Québec The Quebec Liberal Party (QLP; french: Parti libéral du Québec, PLQ) is a provincial political party in Quebec. It has been independent of the federal Liberal Party of Canada since 1955. The QLP has always been associated with the colour red; e ...

'', was presented by his entourage with an article from the website of the

Trois-Rivières Trois-Rivières (, – 'Three Rivers') is a city in the Mauricie administrative region of Quebec, Canada, at the confluence of the Saint-Maurice River, Saint-Maurice and Saint Lawrence River, Saint Lawrence rivers, on the north shore of the Sain ...

newspaper '' Le Nouvelliste''. It spoke of past ''

Parti québécois The Parti Québécois (; ; PQ) is a sovereignist and social democratic provincial political party in Quebec, Canada. The PQ advocates national sovereignty for Quebec involving independence of the province of Quebec from Canada and establishin ...

'' leader

Jacques Parizeau Jacques Parizeau (; August 9, 1930June 1, 2015) was a Canadian politician and Québécois economist who was a noted Quebec sovereigntist and the 26th premier of Quebec from September 26, 1994, to January 29, 1996. Early life and career Pariz ...

reiterating the controversial '' money and the ethnic vote'' statement of his 1995 referendum concession

speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...

. Despite the nebulous aspect of this preliminary web article, Charest surprised

Bernard Landry Bernard Landry (; March 9, 1937 – November 6, 2018) was a Canadian politician who served as the 28th premier of Quebec from 2001 to 2003. A member of the Parti Québécois (PQ), he led the party from 2001 to 2005, also serving as the leader o ...

with it during the leaders' debate on live television. This resulted in a new controversy that ran for some days following the debate, and was said to have hurt Landry's campaign. A strategy of the PQ was to denounce Charest's act as an immoral attack on a person's reputation and dignity (Parizeau), since the conclusion that he had repeated his comments was seen as hasty and ultimately wrong, but the strategy arguably did not work well enough to counter the controversy. Meanwhile, Landry mentioned on several occasions during press conferences that Parizeau's comments in 1995 were unfortunate and that he (Landry) disagreed with them. The Parizeau Affair is thoroughly treated in the documentary

À Hauteur d'homme À, à ( a-grave) is a letter of the Catalan, Emilian-Romagnol, French, Galician, Italian, Maltese, Occitan, Portuguese, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, and Welsh languages consisting of the letter A of the ISO basic Latin alphabet ...

Description

See also