In victory and defeat, Marc Garneau 'was Captain Canada'
OTTAWA — Meili Faille couldn't believe her ears when she heard the news. Marc Garneau, the first Canadian to have visited space, was preparing to run against her in the 2006 election.
A few weeks later, she won. And Garneau never forgot it.
Twenty years ago, the Bloc Québécois MP at the time held sway in Vaudreuil—Soulanges. This riding, located on the west side of the island of Montreal, near the Ontario border, had elected Faille in 2004 following the sponsorship scandal.
In a riding where former NDP Jack Layton grew up, having a separatist represent a bilingual and multicultural community was an odd fit.
'We had an incredible team on the ground. We were dedicated to the community… Honestly, I didn't even count the number of events I attended at the time, it was every single day,' Faille recalled in an interview with National Post.
But then, the race was shaken up by then prime minister Paul Martin.
Garneau, the then-president of the Canadian Space Agency was not launching his shuttle into space, but rather into the political sphere.
'Marc Garneau, I am convinced, will be a star in the parliamentary firmament,' said Martin at the time.
He was not.
Faille easily beat him by more than 9,000 votes in 2006, when the Conservatives took power. Garneau was a neophyte who went so far as to predict that the Bloc would disappear, 'like dinosaur,' when he launched his political career.
'Marc Garneau was Canada, Canada, and simply Canada. It was his image. He was a Canadian figure. I mean, in the midst of the sponsorship scandal, it was a no-win situation for him,' Faille said.
'Basically, he was not able to convince people that he could prioritize Quebec positions over federal positions,' she added. 'He was captain Canada.'
His relationship with Quebec was not always easy. After 14 years in the House of Commons, he resigned in 2023, before his own government passed Bill C-13, an overhaul of the Official Languages Act, which included references to Quebec's Charter of the French Language, known as Bill 96.
He found this inappropriate.
Garneau, a francophone, feared that the rights of Quebec's English-speaking minorities were threatened by a conflicting interpretation of federal and provincial laws. 'I've said this was a hill to die on. It is,' Garneau told the Montreal Gazette at the time.
It took hours for Quebec Premier François Legault to acknowledge Garneau's death at the age of 76.
Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon did not offer his condolences, relaying instead a message from one of his PQ colleagues.
Meanwhile, in Ottawa, former colleagues described Garneau as a 'gentleman,' 'very serious,' 'down to earth,' who's reputation was unlike anybody else.
'He was so serious and took everything so seriously, to get him to loosen up a little bit was very difficult. Rarely did he take time to laugh and smile,' said his former liberal colleague MP Judy Sgro.
Even Faille was shaken. During his first election in 2008, Garneau ran into Faille, who had just defeated another star candidate: former Conservative senator and cabinet minister Michael Fortier.
The two exchanged pleasantries and ended up sitting together in opposition for three years, before Faille lost her seat in 2011.
'He was a good man. Listen, we weren't in the same political family, but we respected each other. Marc was very nice,' said Faille.
In 2007, after then leader Stéphane Dion refused to allow Garneau to run in a byelection in Outremont against the NDP's Thomas Mulcair, Garneau left politics.
He had previously supported Michael Ignatieff in the leadership race that Dion won and many Liberals suggested at the time that the two men weren't necessarily the best of friends.
'By land or in space, through science and democracy, Marc Garneau has moved Canada and France, Canada and Europe, forward in the same direction. His memory will inspire us in our future endeavours,' Dion, who is now Canada's ambassador to France, wrote on Wednesday night.
But the former astronaut ended up running in 2008 in the general election anyway.
He was so serious and took everything so seriously, to get him to loosen up a little bit was very difficult
Marcel Proulx, then Dion's lieutenant in Quebec, met with Garneau to formalize his candidacy and present himself in a Montreal Liberal stronghold.
'It was a big deal that he would consider a run for us in Westmount-Ville-Marie. A huge deal. Let's not forget that the LPC was not exactly popular in Quebec at the time,' Proulx told the Post.
'Westmount was the perfect riding for him. The riding needed a candidate of his caliber, perfectly bilingual and who cared about its needs and aspiration. And it worked,' he added.
The party wanted him to succeed. Marc Roy, a longtime Liberal collaborator from the Chrétien and Martin era, was sent by the party to evaluate the star candidate.
'We needed to help him,' Roy told us. As an astronaut, Garneau gave hundreds of interviews without any problem. In politics, it was different.
'Let's just say he's come a long way, like any politician, but it was a learning curve for him,' said Roy who later went on to become his director of communications and chief of staff while he was minister of Transports.
In 2008, Garneau won the election and spent 14 years on the Hill.
Roy saw firsthand his boss's dedication and why he would never lose another election.
For example, Garneau left Montreal on a Saturday morning by train to visit Marc-Garneau School in Trenton, Ont., and returned home the same day.
He also met with the residents of Lac-Mégantic at a very emotional town hall meeting following the 2013 train derailment that destroyed the town.
'He always took the time, no matter the circumstances, to give that small amount of time to answer a question because he recognized the great privilege he had and the duty to give back and share it,' Roy said.
Garneau, he said, was an eternal student. He never forgot his first loss in Vaudreuil—Soulanges. It was not a regret. It was a noble experience, he thought.
'No matter the outcome, (all those who run in elections) never lose in such circumstances. Democracy is always well served,' Garneau said in his farewell speech on the floor of the House of Commons.
National Post atrepanier@postmedia.com
Marc Garneau, first Canadian in space and former federal minister, dies at 76
In Quebec, opposition mounts against a pipeline project that doesn't exist
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