The daily drip, drip, drip of questionable behaviour is eating away at the Liberal government's credibility. You can't govern the province decisively and effectively when you're spending half your time, or more, trying to patch up holes in your image.
There have been two new mis-steps (so far) this week alone. One involves Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis, who met with a businessman who wanted some well-placed help in overturning the Sûreté du Québec's refusal to give him a gun-carry permit. And then Radio-Canada reported that festival organizers in Montmagny-L'Islet made a $2,000 contribution to Liberal Party coffers, and received government sponsorship money. Worse, Gaétan Caron, a Liberal organizer, was said to have suggested to festival officials that they reimburse themselves the $2,000 out of the sponsorship money.
Add those cases to the long series of other matters, from David Whissell to Tony Tomassi to the construction industry, on which ministers have shown poor judgement. It all looks alarmingly like a party which has been too long in power. Has zeal for reform given way to mere self-preservation, not to mention baser motives?
Premier Jean Charest should be throwing his weight around, demanding that his troops smarten up. Instead, burdened by his own stonewalling of any construction industry inquiry, he is making excuses.
What was Jacques Dupuis thinking? He should have known better than to discuss a gun permit with a man whose request the SQ had turned down. That's the kind of thing that a well-run minister's office responds to with a polite refusal via form letter. Yet there was Dupuis two years ago, meeting with Luigi Corretti, head of a security firm now under bankruptcy protection despite generous support from the partially state-financed Fonds d'intervention économique régional.
Dupuis said all he did was to tell Corretti that he couldn't do anything for him, that as the public security minister he could not intervene. So why meet him?
The Montmagny-L'Islet business looks like just another example of fund-raising techniques gone mad. Quebec has had enough of sponsorship scandals.
At some point, a reputation for this sort of thing becomes a permanent stain on a political party, and the Liberals are ominously close to that point. A sharp change of course has become essential. Bad judgment can be as lethal to a party as unethical behaviour, especially if voters aren't sure which one they're faced with.
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