LOON

Meet Thomas Mulcair: the new NDP federal leader with a “divisive personality”

If you’re already cringing at the prospect of the NDP’s chosen successor to Jack Layton going “toe-to-toe” with those Olympic-class trash-talkers in the Harper Government©, read no further.

Almost immediately after the New Democrats had tallied the leadership ballots in Toronto on the weekend, declaring Thomas Mulcair as the chosen successor to Jack Layton, the Conservative Party’s official mouthpiece, Fred Delorey had already issued a caustic media statement:

 ”Thomas Mulcair is an opportunist whose high-tax agenda, blind ambition and divisive personality would put Canadian families and their jobs at risk.”

Not ones to squander their rhetoric, the Tories’ acidic missive contained the obvious negative buzzwords—“high-tax” and putting the “jobs at risk” of “Canadian families”.  But what of the other phrases in the sparse, dare we suggest, even nuanced statement?

“Blind ambition”—a no-brainer.  Merely an unconscious reference to the post-Watergate memoirs of disgraced White House counsel John Dean.  Betrays the Party’s obsession with its imminent demise at the hands of the Robocalls scourge.

But what about “divisive personality”? Where does that curious quasi-epithet come from?

Here’s the guy he accused of “influence-peddling” who sued him for defamation and won

Well, since you asked.  Here’s where.

It happened in a matter of seconds or minutes nearly ten years ago on May 21, 2002, in a cramped TQS television studio in Québec City.

The MNA for Chomedey, Thomas Mulcair, had been invited onto the talk show hosted by former Québec Liberal MP, Jean Lapierre, to comment on allegations in La Presse that a former  PQ cabinet minister Yves Duhaime had engaged in improper lobbying of his friend and former cabinet colleague, then PQ finance minister (later Premier) Bernard Landry.

Though Duhaime was himself present in the studio, he and Mulcair were seated in separate locations.  During the interview, Mulcair reiterated the same loose remarks he’d made earlier the same day in the National Assembly–namely, that as a former friend of Finance Minister Landry, Duhaime appeared to have engaged in “influence-peddling” when he was hired to represent a group of Quebec grocery stores opposed to the sale of the Metro supermarket chain with which they were affiliated.

Mulcair, himself a graduate of McGill law school and a Québec lawyer bilingual enough to have been charged with translating Manitoba statutes into French earlier in his legal career, then quoted verbatim from the section of the Criminal Code dealing with bribery of a public official.

Since, Mulcair opined self-righteously during the live broadcast–albeit without personally researching the La Presse story from which he drew his “facts,” and with scant or no experience in criminal litigation—Minister Landry had bragged publicly about “enriching his friends,” how could his erstwhile crony Duhaime’s unseemly dalliance with the grocery store owners be anything but “influence peddling” of the most sordid variety?

Giving it 110% and then some…

After the interview ended, bystanders in the cramped studio included the buoyant members of the 110% nightly sports talk show, some studio techs along with host Lapierre, his producers, and, of course, the two “guests of honour.” By later accounts, as Mulcair was about to exit the studio, he and Duhaime had occasion to speak to each other face-to-face, though which man approached the other first was disputed.

What ensued was not so much a dialogue as an échange libre.  Duhaime asking with more than a trace of vitriol if the Criminal Code-touting MNA was “un vrai avocat” (a real lawyer) and Mulcair retorting “oui,” but adding the barb that as a real lawyer, he did not bill $180,000 for $10,000 worth of legal services. At some point further on, Mulcair then said to the older Duhaime:

“J’ai hâte de te voir en prison vieille guidoune péquiste! (I look forward to seeing you in jail, you old PQ whore!”)

In August 2002, Mr. Duhaime hired a “real lawyer” or three of his own and initiated an action for defamation against Mulcair, claiming that the comments made in the TQS studio had damaged his reputation.  Duhaime sought damages from Mulcair to the tune of $250,000.

Mulcair to the Judge: “I lost my composure.”

Not-so-fast forward to a civil court in February 2005 before Québec Superior Court Justice André Denis.  According to press accounts of Mulcair’s testimony,  he admitted to making the “whore” remark and “regretted it profoundly” and had, he said, “apologized publicly” for it.  “I lost my composure,” Mulcair explained.

In his defence during the contested defamation trial, Mulcair advanced the following grounds:

1. That as a member of the Québec National Assembly, he enjoyed an absolute privilege and had not done any wrong;
2. As a subsidiary argument, that his allegedly defamatory comments about Duhaime were an exercise of his right to free expression under s. 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
3. That if no absolute privilege attached to the statements, he enjoyed at least a qualified privilege protecting his right to make such remarks;
4. That his remarks amounted to “fair comment”;
5. That he was provoked into making the comments;
6. That he was sorry he made the comments;

Mulcair said he had made the “Péquiste whore” remark while leaving the studio when Duhaime allegedly told him: “You’re a lawyer, you’ll see what will happen to you.”  And, according to Mulcair’s version of the incident, the older Duhaime used the familiar “tu” rather than “vous,” which, according to Mulcair, made him feel “threatened” in (his) standing as a lawyer.”

Mulcair also told the Court that at the time of the incident, he had merely been “doing his job to criticize the government in calling for an inquiry, based on the La Presse story” concerning Duhaime’s purported “influence-peddling.”  He called evidence to support the assertion that other MNAs in the Liberal caucus had discussed the Criminal Code sections and “agreed to bring it up” during question period in the Assembly.

For his part, Mulcair recalled in his court testimony that he had said that the $187,500 in legal fees that Duhaime received from the grocery store owners “was more than a lawyer’s or lobbyist’s fee,” that is, somehow self-evidently disproportionate or inappropriate.

Mulcair further testified that his own review of the media reports about the “influence-peddling” by Duhaime led him to actually say to news reporters that because Duhaime “boasts openly of connections, of friendships, of entrées and results, I believe we’re into a field other than lobbying.”  He further admitted under oath that he had also stated that a public inquiry was the only way to find out if Duhaime had been retained because of his “influence” with Landry, with whom he had served in the PQ cabinet as a colleague in the 1970s and 1980s.

Despite having to admit that he read verbatim from the Criminal Code section on bribery of public officials  during the Lapierre broadcast, Mulcair told Justice Denis that he “did not accuse Mr. Duhaime of having broken the law.

The Judge did not agree….

Unfortunately for the future head of the federal New Democratic Party, the judge, to quote an old Beatles nonsense ditty, “did not agree and he told him so.”  In ordering Mulcair to pay $95,000 in damages to Mr. Duhaime, Justice Denis’s judgment was scathing:

Mr. Mulcair has defamed Mr Duhaime….He has not verified the facts reported in La Presse and has made doubtful parallels, has added and simplified facts  and has drawn conclusions that he could not draw. The evidence heard in court shows that the allegations of Mr. Mulcair were false, unjust, defamatory and prejudicial….One can ask oneself from where came this sudden acrimony of Mr. Mulcair towards Mr. Duhaime, whom he did not know.  One has the impression that Mr. Duhaime became a civilian casualty of the war that the deputy leader of the opposition served up to the head of the government.  Why claim to be in the presence of influence-peddling, of fraud, deny the right to honestly earned fees, speak of another chapter in the book of the Premier enriching his friends?  Why falsely quote Mr. Duhaime on his entrées, on the guaranteed outcomes, on the things he did for Mr. Landry?  Why put in doubt the word of the Heenan, Blaikie law firm?  Why falsely quote Mr. Duhame; “Give me $180,000 and I promise you results”? Why wish to see him in prison? Why state that Mr. Duhaime prostitutes himself “vieille plotte” or “vieille guidone” or both? Why deny that these things were said? Why the recurring reference to the Criminal Code?…It was in vain that the court looked for ‘the public interest, good faith, absence of malice,’ truth in the facts of Mr. Mulcair’s words. [Note: this excerpt is an unofficial English translation from the official French-language decision.]

Them’s Fightin’ Words

In the aftermath of the judgment against him, Mulcair was seemingly recalcitrant.  About two weeks after the Court found his statements about Duhaime “malevolent and abusive”, the MNA from Chomedey remained insistent that the Assembly, meaning, the Québec taxpayers, should foot the bill for this legal fees to the tune of  about $200,000.

“If you think about it, what are the occasions where a member of the National Assembly is likely to face a lawsuit?” he said.

“The obvious one is an event like the one that I was involved in, where you are using your role to raise important public issues.”

By August 2005, better judgment appears to have taken hold when Mulcair and the Québec Liberal Party announced that the Party and not the provincial coffers would be the well from which the legal costs and $95,000 in damages would be drawn.

All of which is simply to conclude that the NDP national membership might have done their homework a tad more diligently before choosing Mr. Mulcair as the successor to his polar opposite, the unfailingly civil Jack Layton.  Not only will Mulcair now be forced to look over his shoulder at his not-so-distant past, but these less than flattering echoes of his imprudent (and costly) assault on the PQ while a Charest cabinet minister may jeopardize his supposed cachet with the NDP’s new “Québec base”.