In victory and defeat, Marc Garneau 'was Captain Canada'
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A few weeks later, she won. And Garneau never forgot it.
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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.
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In a riding where former NDP Jack Layton grew up, having a separatist represent a bilingual and multicultural community was an odd fit.
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'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.
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Garneau, the then-president of the Canadian Space Agency was not launching his shuttle into space, but rather into the political sphere.
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'Marc Garneau, I am convinced, will be a star in the parliamentary firmament,' said Martin at the time.
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He was not.
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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.
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'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.
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'Basically, he was not able to convince people that he could prioritize Quebec positions over federal positions,' she added. 'He was captain Canada.'
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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.
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