BOISCLAIR FAILS TO REALIZE COCAINE IS PUBLIC ISSUE

With the nasty turn the Parti Quebecois leadership campaign took
yesterday, whoever is elected leader on Nov. 15 will be left with a
divided party.

Yesterday, Andre Boisclair and his closest supporters went on the
offensive against Pauline Marois. This was his reply to Wednesday's
sortie by four leadership candidates and author Victor-Levy Beaulieu
who demanded Boisclair tell PQ members more details of his past
cocaine use, or quit the race.

Boisclair went on the offensive because he knows this intervention
could hurt him. It does reflect what a growing number of Pequistes
have been whispering.

Marois asked Boisclair "to stop wiping his feet on her." No doubt
this hardball campaign will leave deep scars in the PQ.

Beyond the harsh words, one thing must be underlined: If the cocaine
story refuses to go away, it's because Boisclair chose not to be
transparent about it at the start of the campaign. This is when the
worm entered the apple of his campaign.

At a press conference this week, an exasperated Boisclair asked why
his past use of cocaine should be of public interest. It's as if he
doesn't understand why there's even a controversy at all. What this
says about his values, personal and political, is cause for reflection.

This story is of public interest because it is about someone who
committed a criminal offence while he was a public figure holding an
elected office, and a minister to boot.

It's of public interest because Boisclair is still a public person
and wants to lead a party, win an election and a referendum. And it
is as a public person he failed to volunteer information about his
past when he announced his candidacy, even refusing to answer his
first question about it.

Boisclair wrongfully saw this as a "private matter" and, thus,
refused to choose transparency at the start. Instead, PQ members were
treated to a slow "striptease" - to use Don Macpherson's apt
expression - with Boisclair giving details piecemeal when
circumstances forced him to do so.

This story is also of public interest because Boisclair's answers,
when they come, display a certain penchant for trivialization of the
issue. This trivialization expresses itself in four ways.

First, Boisclair still has trouble seeing that committing this
offence while a minister should be in the public domain.

Second, Boisclair said he didn't purchase cocaine but he refused to
say whether the person who gave it to him had any contact with
organized crime. He replied with an attack on Jean Charest, saying
the premier had once smoked pot, and "did Mr. Charest say who he
bought it from?"

Here, Boisclair trivializes a lot. While pot can be grown in a
backyard garden, cocaine cannot. Whoever gave it to him had to
purchase it illegally in a market controlled by organized crime.

Third, when Boisclair said he stopped seven or eight years ago, but
he wasn't sure exactly when, he added: "I didn't write it down in my
agenda," as if stopping the use of a hard drug isn't a noticeable
event in one's life.

Fourth, he appears to trivialize the issue by stating he was "never addicted."

All of these statements taken together - it's not of public interest,
equating cocaine with pot, not saying exactly when he stopped and
saying one can be on coke without addiction - send disturbing
messages to youngsters told by parents that hard drugs are addictive
and not trivial.

This controversy is of public interest because Boisclair also lacked
transparency with Lucien Bouchard. Bouchard said he knew nothing
about the problem when he was premier and it was his chief of staff
who "took care" of it with Boisclair. This means Boisclair did not
tell his premier about a problem that could have harmed the government.

This lack of transparency, past and present, and the trivialization
are of public interest because they tend to show Boisclair did not,
and still doesn't, realize the potential damage this could cause the
PQ and its option.

Some Liberals are privately saying they relish the idea of facing
Boisclair as PQ leader. This has become a major Damocles's sword no
party should have dangling over its head, especially a party that
faces powerful adversaries, especially in Ottawa, who will play
hardball to prevent or fight another referendum.

There's only one way for Boisclair to overcome this problem: He must
show his values are in fact more solid than his attitude thus far
might lead us to believe. He must recognize that getting and using
cocaine while a minister, and failing to tell his premier, showed a
serious lack of judgment and sense of responsibility to his voters,
his party and parliament.

Revealing when he used cocaine, how often and from whom he got it
would help protect his party and allow members to make an enlightened choice.

Boisclair's failure to see the importance and the public nature of
this issue is troubling at best. He's not a private citizen and a
repeated violation of the drug laws is not a private matter. To
become the leader of a party that faces determined adversaries calls
for transparency. But a solid sense of values and a true respect for
public life call for it even more.

But last night on TVA, he still refused to answer the questions asked
by Claude Charron. It's a sad, sad thing.