The former Prime Minister of Quebec Philippe Couillard has been very discreet since he put an end to his political career in 2018. “I do not want to be one of those who cling to it and who want to stay in the eye of the public,” he said.
However, he granted a long interview to host Marie-Louise Arsenault on the program Political passion On the first one. I told myself that one day, in the future, it would be good to have some written or oral traces of what I really thought.
Q : I would like to understand who you are speaking where you come from. What kind of childhood did you have?
An intellectual childhood, I would say. I still played hockey, baseball, like all my friends and people of my generation. But I was raised in the love of knowledge and books. And I am immensely grateful.
One of my first memories was to have watched the Congress on the Leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada on TV where Pierre Elliott Trudeau was elected. I remember that: I had been fascinated by the character.
After the 1980 referendum, I perceived that I did not believe that the separation of Quebec or the independence of Quebec was a truly realistic path of the future for us, Quebecers. And that, I assumed it fully.
It was almost abnormal not to be a piquist, sovereignist or independence in those years, but I assured it.
Q : You get a doctorate in medicine in 1979 at the age of 22 years. You choose the specialty of neurosurgery, which you complete in 1985. in 1992, you leave Quebec to co -found the Dharam neurosurgery service, Saudi Arabia. How do we work in a country that does not respect human rights?
First, we go there temporarily. Second, we go for people. The people I met there were not monsters. They were people like you and me, but it is a very different context.
But they were people who were sincere, who were full of good intentions for their country.
Then we don’t stay there all his life. I went there to live this experience and I lived it fully. I think that for me, it was one of the most formative periods of my life.
Q : After leaving your duties as Minister of Health, in 2008, you announce, on 3 October 2012, want to return to politics. Have you been caressing the dream of returning to politics for all this time?
I didn’t have it at all at all. But I came back because I thought I could make an additional contribution to Quebec.
At that time, we were in financial dead ends [graves] which, moreover, are back. But in addition to the state of the economy and public finances, there was also what was called at the time the Charter of values
Proposed by the Parti Québécois, which I could not find very pretty.
The Quebec minister responsible for democratic institutions and citizen participation, Bernard Drainville, when unveiling the “Charter of Quebec values” in the National Assembly on September 10, 2013.
Photo: Canadian press
I thought we were practicing exclusion and that we did not reach the goal that was pursued at all. Besides, this is still a bit the case now. If we say that we must absolutely dismiss women who carry the scarf, if it is necessary to prohibit them from certain functions, if it is harmful for our children, why do we allow people to wear it in everyday life?
And inevitably, it is a measure which was mainly aimed at women, which incurred me.
It is not because voters mainly believe something that they must be listened to, especially on the question of the rights of minorities. The worst judge of the rights of a minority is the majority.
Q : One of your first decisions as Prime Minister consisted in restricting government spending. Why did you prioritize it?
Budget balance is not an aesthetic luxury. It is not to have two columns of equal figures at the bottom. It is to have room for maneuver.
We updated the plan to combat poverty with very important measures, we did an ambitious cultural policy and well supported financially, we have done an international policy. For what? Because we had the means.
Me, those who say that they do things, but that they do not have the means or that they pretend to have them, I am a little allergic to that. So, at the start of the mandate, we thought we were going to restore finances [de l’État] To restore oxygen and that then we were going to do things.
This is how you have to manage public finances. It is not romantic. It’s not always pretty.
The former leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Philippe Couillard, at the time of greeting the crowd with his wife, Suzanne Pilote, after her victory in the provincial elections on April 7, 2014 in Saint-Félicien.
Photo: Canadian press / Jacques Boissinot
Look at the consequences today of not having done it. Look where we are now. We find ourselves in a more important financial hole than that we had found when we arrived.
I regret it very much, because it is the citizens, in the end, who pay for that.
Q : More than six years have passed since your defeat of 2018. Did you take a long time to recover from this defeat?
Ah yes, I think we could compare that with a big pain of love. It’s long, it’s long to recover.
We always have the impression that the efforts we have made and the results we have obtained, even imperfect, are not recognized at their true value. Of course, we wanted to continue.
The program [politique] For 2018 was a bit weak, I realize it today. We could have made a better program, more concrete, more imagined. I blame myself, because I was the last to give approval to the documents of the electoral campaign.
But I never have many regrets in life.
We had chosen mobility. That was our big project. We found that that was what to do on the environmental level, economically and in terms of quality of life for people.
I have never done something to be re -elected. Or I never did something to be re -elected.
