Former Quebec minister Benoit Pelletier dies

Former Quebec minister Benoît Pelletier, considered a leading constitutionalist under Jean Charest’s Liberal (PLQ) government, died on Saturday in Mexico, his family announced.

He was 64 years old.

In a statement released Monday morning, Pelletier’s family mourned the passing of a “caring husband, a devoted family man, a funny, generous and attentive listener, and a great lover of Quebec and the French language.”

The renowned professor of law made the leap into “active politics” in 1998, representing Chapleau in the Outaouais region, where he taught at the University of Ottawa, one of his alma maters.

Pelletier was the chair of the Liberal Party’s special committee on Quebec’s political and constitutional future and is considered the father of the Charest government’s constitutional platform.

When the Liberals came into power in 2003, he was named minister of Canadian intergovernmental affairs, a portfolio he would hold, along with other dossiers, until his retirement from politics in 2008.

Considered a “federalist Quebec nationalist” with “autonomist” tendencies, Pelletier was a proponent of “asymmetrical federalism,” fighting against fiscal imbalances and limiting Ottawa’s spending power.

He was also the father of the Council of the Federation, a grouping of the provinces against Ottawa’s central power.

— This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on April 1, 2024.