Quebec Premier Jean Charest, flanked by Treasury Board president Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, left, and Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, responds to media questions following a special cabinet meeting on April 25, 2010.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
Premier Jean Charest has relinquished the $75,000-a-year bonus he receives from the Quebec Liberal Party, a move viewed by critics on Thursday as admitting to the potential for conflict of interest in this unusual arrangement.
With his government under constant criticism in recent months, amid a string of revelations about donors to the party receiving government contracts or favours, Mr. Charest was under pressure to give up his bonus and sever this link to the party's increasingly tainted fundraising.
The move was presented by the government as a way to break a deadlock over a new code of ethics for members of the National Assembly. But the Parti Québécois opposition went further than that Thursday, asserting it may signal that Mr. Charest is on the verge of quitting politics, even though he still has three years left in his mandate.
"He has all the appearance of someone who is at the end of a mandate. And the situation he has created in the National Assembly and in all of Quebec is unbearable," said PQ House Leader Stéphane Bédard.
Others contend the party is grooming Deputy Premier Nathalie Normandeau for the top job noting that she is being prominently featured in the news magazine L'Actualité.
While making the announcement on Thursday, Mr. Charest appeared resigned as he removed the last irritant blocking an all-party consensus needed to adopt a bill defining a new code of ethics.
"If this is an obstacle to adopting a code of ethics I'm ready to not receive that salary even though I always believed it was legitimate," Mr. Charest said as he went into a caucus meeting. "I'm ready to do what I need to do to move this obstacle aside."
In addition to his annual Premier's salary of about $183,000, Mr. Charest was receiving the bonus from his party as part of an arrangement that was struck when he became Quebec Liberal Party Leader in 1998. It was the first time that a leader accepted a financial reward from his party while being Premier.
The financial arrangement remained secret for 10 years until March of 2008 when then-party-president Jean D'Amour inadvertently revealed the information to TVA news.
More recently the Liberal government has faced allegations that party donors received lucrative government contracts to build roads, operate private daycare centres and set up information technology systems.
Even the judicial nomination process has been hit with serious charges of influence-peddling that led to the establishment of a judicial inquiry.
Adoption of the new code of ethics will create an ethics commissioner but the opposition warned that no agreement will slow their campaign for a full public inquiry into allegations of corruption in the construction industry and the awarding of government contracts.
"Before Mr. Charest leaves, he has a responsibility. His government is on the hot seat and his government faces serious allegations of corruption. before leaving … he needs to adopt a code of ethics, he needs to hold a public inquiry," said Québec Solidaire MNA Amir Khadir.