OTTAWA – Fifteen years ago, Jean-Paul Marchand worked for and shared a townhouse with then-Liberal agriculture minister Eugene Whelan.
He remembers it as a period when a young academic learned about the real world of politics and government from a master teacher.
“Eugene Whelan was a very sincere man who did his best and taught me a lot,” recalls the 49-year-old Marchand. “But I also learned about the low priority agriculture played in the Liberal government.”
Whelan, too, remembers him fondly: “I liked him. He worked hard, had a good mind.”
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Now, Marchand is a politician who is dedicating the next few years of his life to promoting the separation of Quebec from Canada, a goal that is the antithesis of Whelan’s Canadian nationalism.
“I honestly believe it will be the best for Quebec and in the longer term for Canada,” he said.
Next week, Marchand assumes a spot on the national stage when he takes a seat in the House of Commons as the agriculture spokesperson for the Bloc QuŽbecois.
As the second largest party in the Commons, the BQ will be the Official Opposition and Marchand says he will use his role to raise issues of concern to farmers across Canada.
Already, he has been contacted by various Canadian farm lobby groups and recently met the presidents of the three prairie pools, who were in Ottawa to lobby members of the new Parliament.
“My first preoccupation is to promote sovereignty,” says the Quebec City university professor who describes himself as a philosopher who is playing at politics for a few years.
“But if I can do things to help farmers in P.E.I., Alberta or Manitoba, I will be happy to do it. I think it will help build good relations, better bridges. It will reduce anxiety.”
Questions to raise
So Marchand will be raising questions about prairie grain, maritime potatoes and Canadian livestock issues, as well as problems more peculiar to Quebec farmers.
The native of the Georgian Bay-area town of Penetanguishene, Ont., has lived in Winnipeg, Ottawa and Quebec. As an aide to Whelan, he travelled the country.
The Ontario francophone says he has been a Quebec sovereigntist since his student days. He has a PhD from a New York City university, taught 25 years ago at the University of Manitoba and has made his living as a university professor. Though the son of a dairy owner, he has had little agricultural connection in his professional life.
He is an urban Quebec City MP in a caucus rich in rural representation, yet leader Lucien Bouchard named him agriculture critic, perhaps because of his ability to speak English and what he learned about Agriculture Canada while working for Whelan.
“But I must say I was very surprised by the appointment,” he confessed. “I expected something else. But I am the agriculture critic and I look forward to it. There are a lot of things to say and do.”
Whelan, for one, expects Marchand to do a good job, even if he doesn’t agree with his aims.
“He’ll be good in the House,” said the former agriculture minister who served 22 years in the Commons. “He is a hard worker, has lots of ideas and likes to get things done.”
For his part, Marchand has a philosopher’s view of the political life he has chosen to live for the next few years.
“There is a general danger of corruption in politics and there is a need to develop more complete democracy so politicians don’t have so much power, but politics is inevitable,” he said. “It is a necessary evil if you want to get anything done. So you deal with it and hopefully then get out of it.”
