# Michaud Affair

The Michaud Affair (in French l'Affaire Michaud) was a political controversy in Quebec that began in 2000. It revolved around the comments of Parti Québécois supporter Yves Michaud, those of the Quebec Jewish community (through the B'nai B'rith organization) and the subsequent censure motion from the National Assembly of Quebec members of parliament.

## The Affair
### CKAC Interview

What has been called the "Michaud Affair" started on December 5, 2000, in an interview on the Montreal radio station CKAC. Talk show host Paul Arcand asked: "Don't you feel that there is a lack of interest of a good part of the population on the question of sovereignty and the national question, people who have had enough, for whom it is all over, (who say) let's move on to something else?".
To which Yves Michaud replied: "Well, I will tell you an anecdote. I was... I went to get my hair cut about a month ago. There was a Liberal senator who I will not name who doesn't speak [French]... even though he represents a French-speaking riding and who asked me: 'Are you still a separatist, Yves?' I said 'Yes, yes I am separatist just as you are Jewish. It took 2000 years for your people to have its homeland in Israel.' I said: 'Me, whether it takes 10, 50, or 100 more years it can wait.' So he told me: 'It's not the same.'"
"It's never the same for them. So I said: it is not the same? The Armenians did not suffer, the Palestinians did not suffer, the Rwandans did not suffer. It's always (just) you. You are the only people who suffered in the history of humanity."
The Senator mentioned was Leo Kolber, Michaud later revealed.

### Estates-General

On December 12, 2000, the director of B'nai B'rith's Quebec chapter, Robert Libman, sent a memo to then Premier Lucien Bouchard requesting that he stop Michaud from being the PQ's candidate in the Mercier riding.

### Condemnation by the National Assembly

On December 13, 2000, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, Jean Charest, presented to the National Assembly of Quebec a motion condemning references to "an ethnic vote against the sovereignty of the people of Quebec" and speaking of B'nai Brith as "an extremist group against quebecers and against sovereignty", as expressed by Yves Michaud at the Estates-General.
The Premier at the time, Lucien Bouchard, affirmed that he had been aware of similar remarks made by Michaud three (sic) days earlier and that he had asked Michaud to tone down his remarks in the Estates-General. Since Michaud did not do so and even added fuel to the fire, Bouchard therefore condemned the remarks in the name of his party and the government. The motion was adopted unanimously by the National Assembly.

## Aftermath

On December 19, 2000, former Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau and around 150 signed an open letter condemning the hasty resolution and supporting Michaud's. The letter was published in several newspapers, including Le Devoir.
The same day, Jacques Brassard, the parliamentary leader of the government at the time, answered also in an open letter to the newspapers, that the motion was not against Yves Michaud himself, but on his comments made as a public person seeking office in the government. He said that the National Assembly had the right to condemn unacceptable propositions made in a political context. He also stated that freedom of speech was not a one-way proposition.
The event, is said to have been a reason for Lucien Bouchard's resignation on January 11, 2001. During an interview for Voir magazine for the week of March 1, 2001, Robert Libman stated that he did not think Yves Michaud was an anti-semite and that his remarks had been distorted.
Michaud later unsuccessfully tried to file a defamation charge against a professor who described him as an anti-semite.