Close X
Friday, November 29, 2024
ADVT 
National

Lucien Bouchard says there's no way to repair friendship with Mulroney

Darpan News Desk Darpan, 20 Aug, 2014 03:06 PM
    MONTREAL - Although they were once close friends, Lucien Bouchard says there's no way to repair his ruptured relationship with Brian Mulroney.
     
    "We run into each other occasionally in Montreal or elsewhere and I think we have an agreement to not embarrass each other," Bouchard said Wednesday.
     
    "We'll shake hands, but to sit down and have a coffee — no. I don't think that's possible. It's not a matter of honour. There are wounds."
     
    Bouchard made the comments after the screening of a new documentary on his political career which will be broadcast Monday evening on the public Tele-Quebec network.
     
    Mulroney, who became prime minister in 1984, named Bouchard as Canada's ambassador to Paris in 1985 and then brought him into his cabinet as environment minister in 1988. They had known each other since law school.
     
    But they fell out in 1990 when Mulroney was trying to salvage the floundering Meech Lake constitutional accord. It was during that time that Bouchard sent a telegram of support to the Parti Quebecois and declared he was a sovereigntist. An outraged Mulroney fired him from cabinet and the two men have never spoken again.
     
    "Friends should not be in politics together when they disagree over principles," Bouchard said Wednesday.
     
    Bouchard went on to found the Bloc Quebecois with a handful of disgruntled Conservative and Liberal Quebec MPs in 1991. He would become leader of the Official Opposition when the Bloc took 54 seats in the 1993 election.
     
    Bouchard said Wednesday he never saw the Bloc as anything more than something to prepare the ground for the 1995 election, seeing it as a "one-shot" deal.
     
    While the Bloc remained a strong political presence for most of its existence, it was crushed in the 2011 federal election by a surging New Democratic Party and now has only three members in Parliament. Bouchard would not comment on his old party's current woes.
     
    Bouchard said he was convinced that his political career was over on the night the sovereigntists narrowly lost the Oct. 30, 1995, referendum.
     
    "When we came home...I was going to finish the session in Ottawa and that was going to be it," he said. "I was going to come back to Montreal and resume practising law."
     
    Instead, he was drafted by the PQ to take over from Jacques Parizeau, who stepped down after the referendum.
     
    Bouchard said he believes the results of the 1995 referendum might have been different if it had been presented to Quebecers in a two-pronged format — one referendum to negotiate Quebec sovereignty from Canada with a political and economic partnership and then another to approve the results of the bargaining.
     
    Bouchard hopes he won't see a third referendum in his lifetime because he says he thinks it will be unsuccessful.
     
    "It's clear. I hope I won't see it because we'll lose a third one. There's no way we can expose ourselves to losing a third one.
     
    "Later on, I don't know."

    MORE National ARTICLES

    Seven Canadian universities on tour to woo Indian students

    Seven Canadian universities on tour to woo Indian students
    With a large number of Indian students going abroad for studies, most notably to the US, a delegation of Canada's top seven universities will tour India...

    Seven Canadian universities on tour to woo Indian students

    'Prince Of Pot' Returns To Welcome By Hundreds Gathered In Vancouver

    'Prince Of Pot' Returns To Welcome By Hundreds Gathered In Vancouver
    VANCOUVER - Hundreds gathered in Vancouver to welcome the return of Marc Emery, Canada's self-styled "Prince of Pot," after he spent more than four years serving a prison sentence in the U.S.

    'Prince Of Pot' Returns To Welcome By Hundreds Gathered In Vancouver

    14-year-old Nova Scotia swimmer makes swim across Northumberland Strait

    14-year-old Nova Scotia swimmer makes swim across Northumberland Strait
    BORDEN-CARLETON, P.E.I. - A 14-year-old Nova Scotia girl has become the youngest to complete an annual swim across the Northumberland Strait from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island.

    14-year-old Nova Scotia swimmer makes swim across Northumberland Strait

    Halifax: Blind Sailors Playing Key Role On Crews Competing At Disabled Sailing Championships

    Halifax: Blind Sailors Playing Key Role On Crews Competing At Disabled Sailing Championships
    HALIFAX - Jim Kerr says he hadn't imagined that sailing would be the way he renewed his career in international athletics after losing his eyesight.

    Halifax: Blind Sailors Playing Key Role On Crews Competing At Disabled Sailing Championships

    Feds Stressed Fatigue, Workload Concerns Just Before Lac-Megantic Disaster

    Feds Stressed Fatigue, Workload Concerns Just Before Lac-Megantic Disaster
    OTTAWA - A train operator's level of fatigue, sleep patterns and "ability to make effective, safe decisions" were among the risk factors singled out in Transport Canada guidelines for single-person train operations — advice that was finalized just months before the Lac-Megantic rail disaster.

    Feds Stressed Fatigue, Workload Concerns Just Before Lac-Megantic Disaster

    Canadian Military Drone Plan Grounded Amid Continuing Debate Over Fleet Needs

    Canadian Military Drone Plan Grounded Amid Continuing Debate Over Fleet Needs
    OTTAWA - The Canadian military's almost decade-long quest to buy unmanned aerial vehicles has been partly hung up by an internal debate about whether the air forces needs one — or two — different fleets of drones.

    Canadian Military Drone Plan Grounded Amid Continuing Debate Over Fleet Needs