3 top members quit Parti Quebecois

MONTREAL – The Parti Quebecois is experiencing one of the darkest days in its history, with three of the most influential members of the pro-independence party announcing their departures Monday.

The bombshell announcement included: the wife of the party’s most beloved living figure; an actor-turned-politician who is considered the PQ’s most popular current member; and a stalwart ex-cabinet minister who has served the party since 1970.

Lisette Lapointe, Pierre Curzi and Louise Beaudoin all vowed to continue to fight for sovereignty while sitting as independents.

Lapointe is the wife of Jacques Parizeau, who is adored by the party’s militant grassroots and who continues to wield considerable influence with the membership.

All three said the party has become obsessed with gaining power and the situation has become unbearable.

"I no longer feel in my place," Lapointe told a news conference in Quebec City.

"I’m doing this also because I have the troubling impression that we are getting further away from sovereignty and even power that seemed so close."

Just weeks ago, the party appeared to be sailing smoothly.

Leader Pauline Marois notched an approval rating of 93 per cent at a party convention and she was easily expected to win power in an election expected in two years. The party has long been leading in the polls.

A series of sudden storms have darkened that sunny picture.

First, the party’s cousin at the federal level – the Bloc Quebecois – began imploding almost the moment its leader Gilles Duceppe appeared at a PQ convention in support of Marois and of the party’s push for independence.

The Bloc was decimated in the federal election weeks later. That prompted some soul-searching about what had gone so suddenly, terribly wrong for a sovereigntist party that seemed so dominant.

Then there was the Quebec City arena project.

Monday’s three defectors said the final straw was a PQ-sponsored private-member’s bill aimed at blocking any lawsuit against a financial arrangement over Quebec City’s proposed arena.

Judicial experts have ridiculed the effort, calling it legally unjustifiable.

The bill is aimed at blocking any challenge to the deal over naming rights for the proposed arena, struck between Quebec City and the Quebecor media empire.

And the legislation has created a wedge in the party, culminating in three departures Monday.

Lapointe said she’s leaving the party with a lot of sadness, but it’s not the party she’s came into. In an image that will resonate with the party base, she exited the legislature Monday in the company of Parizeau.

"The Parti Quebecois I’m leaving is one of outrageous authority, of a leadership that is obsessed with power," Lapointe said before leaving. "The atmosphere has become intolerable."

Monday’s departures were reminiscent, albeit on a smaller scale, of the departure of numerous hardline sovereigntists who temporarily quit the party in 1984.

The PQ was in power at the time and, back then, the departed members included cabinet ministers. One of them was Parizeau. His departure was the beginning of the end of the leadership of party founder and icon Rene Levesque.

Parizeau later returned, became the PQ’s leader and premier, and was the mastermind behind the 1995 sovereignty referendum.

Lapointe said that she’d long been uncomfortable with the way things were being done within the party – pointing to the arena bill as an example. She heard about the bill on the radio.

All three defectors say they didn’t appreciate that the party imposed the legislation on them, forcing them to support it without consulting them about first.

Ottawa washed its hands of the arena project before the federal election, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper announcing that any infrastructure funding for the provincial capital would not include cash for the arena.

The city hopes to build an arena to lure back an NHL team – although the NHL has made no promises that it would get a team, even with an arena.

Beaudoin said her departure has more to do with the way politics is being conducted within the party in general.

The arena bill was a good example of that – voting on a bill to grant legal immunity for a contract that, she said, hasn’t even been written up.

"The deeper reason for my quitting concerns precisely a certain way of doing politics, one that I have known and have long adhered to," Beaudoin said.

Beaudoin said a five-year political break before returning in 2008 has allowed her to see things differently and she now understands why the public is so cynical about politics.

She says a change is necessary.

"I know that some of my fellow PQ members will bring this change from within the party, but I choose to do it from the outside," Beaudoin said.