Ghislain Lebel (born February 17, 1946 in

Lévis, Quebec Lévis () is a city in eastern Quebec, Canada, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, opposite Quebec City. A ferry links Old Quebec with Old Lévis, and two bridges, the Quebec and the Pierre-Laporte, connect western Lévis wit ...

) is a

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 ...

politician and

notary A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems. A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...

Background

Ghislain Lebel has been an activist in the

Quebec independence movement The Quebec sovereignty movement (french: Mouvement souverainiste du Québec) is a political movement whose objective is to achieve the sovereignty of Quebec, a province of Canada since 1867, including in all matters related to any provision of ...

since his teenage years, having been part of the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale, the

Mouvement souveraineté-association The Mouvement Souveraineté-Association (MSA, ''English: Movement for Sovereignty-Association'') was a separatist movement formed on November 19, 1967 by René Lévesque to promote the concept of sovereignty-association between Quebec and the res ...

and the

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 ...

since its early days.

Member of Parliament

Lebel ran as a Bloc Québécois candidate in the district of Chambly in the 1993 election and won. He was re-elected in the

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

and

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

elections. On August 20, 2002, he

crossed the floor Crossed may refer to: * ''Crossed'' (comics), a 2008 comic book series by Garth Ennis * ''Crossed'' (novel), a 2010 young adult novel by Ally Condie * "Crossed" (''The Walking Dead''), an episode of the television series ''The Walking Dead'' S ...

and sat as an

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

, because of his sharp criticism of the Approche commune, an agreement with the

Innu people The Innu / Ilnu ("man", "person") or Innut / Innuat / Ilnuatsh ("people"), formerly called Montagnais from the French colonial period ( French for "mountain people", English pronunciation: ), are the Indigenous inhabitants of territory in the ...

signed by the Government of Quebec, then led by

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 ...

and the Bloc's brother sovereigntist party, the

. Lebel did not run for re-election in the 2004 election.

Parti Québécois leadership

He entered the Parti Québécois leadership campaign in 2005, in which he defended a more traditional form of nationalism and ideas relatively less to the left than the other social democratic candidates. He won 458 votes, 0.4% of all ballots cast.

Action démocratique du Québec

Lebel voted for the Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) in protest in the 2007 Quebec election. He also considered running as a candidate of that party in the district of Chambly, but his offer was declined by party leader Mario Dumont.

Parti indépendantiste

On April 22, 2008, Lebel joined the newly formed

Parti indépendantiste Parti may refer to: *Parti (surname), a Hungarian surname, and a list of people with the name * ''Parti'' (architecture), the organizing concepts behind an architect's design * *, a lake in Russia See also *Partie (disambiguation) *Party (disambi ...

. A week later, he announced his intention to run in a provincial election as the party's candidate. He came last of six candidates in the riding with less than 2% of the popular vote.Ghislain Lebel sera candidat du Parti indépendantiste, Antoine Robitaille, Le Devoir, May 3, 2008
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Footnotes

External links

* (origina
here
* 1946 births Bloc Québécois MPs Living people Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Quebec People from Lévis, Quebec Canadian notaries 21st-century Canadian politicians {{BlocQuébécois-MP-stub