Bernard Landry Interview (Part 1)

The introduction can be found here.

Alright, let’s get back on track now. I had left off in the waiting room of Bernard Landry. He had a meeting prior to mine, so I had plenty of time to calm my nerves. When it was finally my turn, I was directed into a small meeting room with a central wooden table. I noticed that the walls were decorated with a series of inspirational poems (in French, of course). There were also some books in one corner that covered topics in economics, as well as one by René Lévesque. Fitting, considering how much of an influence the founder of the Parti Québécois had on Landry, dating back to the beginning of his career.

When Monsieur Landry joined me, he carried a copy of the e-mail I had sent to his assistant, highlighted to remind him of who I was and why I was there. I can only imagine that someone of his public stature must get requests on a daily basis and it would be next to impossible to keep track of them all. He addressed me in French, asking me in which language I preferred to conduct the interview. I explained that, though I was quite sure I could conduct it in French, that the eventual transcription would make it very difficult for me to accurately reproduce his answers. And since I strive for accuracy above all else in my citations, I would be more comfortable in English.

Interestingly, he asked me some questions of his own (still in French), such as where I was from, where I learned French, etc. It was a nice gesture as it helped to break the ice a bit and make me more comfortable. I would have liked to spend more time casually chatting, but I was there to conduct an interview. Best to be professional about it, right?

I wanted to get a better sense of the man and his motivations, so I started with questions about his family and his education. As it turns out, Landry was raised in an atypical family for the Quebec of that time. While most families in his village had a dozen children or more, he was an only child. But it wasn’t long before his parents decided to adopt two little girls. That being said, while a family of 3 children might be considered large today, it was pretty small, especially when you consider that one of his neighbours had a family of 22!

He pursued studies in both law and economics at the university level, but I was curious about how he ended up in politics.

“These studies, law and economics, are highly compatible with politics, of course.” he explained. “My intention was to be a public servant. I went to Quebec City to work as an employee for René Lévesque, who was a Liberal minister at that time, with the Department of Natural Resources. And it’s Lévesque that advised me to study economics because that was a priority of the Liberals of that time and the Quebec of that time.”

Quebec was in the midst of what’s been called the Quiet Revolution (or la Revolution Tranquile en français), which was a modernizing of Quebec from a mainly rural province to a more industrial and production-focused economy. As such, there would be a need for economists. Landry’s studies in Europe affected his outlook on Quebec’s relationship with Canada, so when Lévesque contacted him about running for the Parti Québécois, it seemed like a natural fit.

“When Lévesque founded the Parti Québécois, he called me and said, ‘I would like you to be one of our candidates.’ In my reflections, I was already going directly toward Quebec sovereignty and independence because I studied economics in Europe and I had seen how modern countries can be independent and, at the same time, share the same economic space.” he said. That was also why he participated in the Free Trade debates and supported the NAFTA treaties.

Prior to the formation of the Parti Québécois, Landry was a Quebec Nationalist with strong leanings toward being a sovereignist. This is where it starts to get a bit complicated for those who don’t live in Quebec. It’s not as simple as “Conservative,” “Liberal” and “Socialist” here. Those seem to be almost like flavours of other designations like Nationalists, Federalists and Sovereignists. I asked him to try and clear things up for me a bit and here’s what he told me:

“You have some Quebec Nationalists still today, members of the Liberal Party of Quebec or Canada, wanting to cultivate Quebec’s differences, protect the language and so on, and saying that they prefer to do that within Canada. To me, it’s a paradox, but not according to them.” he said. “To me, if you’re a nationalist, you favour the independence of your nation. But as a consequence of the past, some old nationalists are still not sovereignists. Some Federalists are Quebec Nationalists in the old sense of the term. It’s complicated, but even la Société St-Jean Baptiste in Quebec City and, I think in a northern city, I think it’s Sherbrooke, are traditional Quebec Nationalists, fighting for language and culture and so on and are Federalists at the same time, but they are more and more marginal.”

Okay, so if I understood that correctly, Nationalists, both of the Federalist and Sovereignist varieties, are fighting for the preservation of the French language and culture, but disagree on the best way to accomplish it. One can consider oneself a Federalist without being a Quebec Nationalist, but it’s not really possible to be a Sovereignist without being a Nationalist. This looks like a good place to stop for now, but we’ll pick this up with thoughts on the 1976 election. Til next time…

Continue on to Part 2.