Jean Charest has admitted he regrets naming Marc Bellemare as his justice minister after leading the Liberals back to power in 2003.

Yet the Quebec premier’s decision to slap Bellemare with a $700,000 defamation suit for calling Charest a liar has ensured the accusations are likely to dog Charest for years.

Charest had recruited Bellemare as a candidate for the 2003 election at a time when Mario Dumont’s party, the Action démocratique du Québec, threatened to topple the binary politics that had dominated Quebec for the previous 40 years, with the Liberals and Parti Québécois taking turns in power.

Bellemare, a lawyer whose specialty is taking on the Quebec government institutions running the province’s no-fault car insurance and other indemnity funds, was tapping into the same ADQ populist current, and Charest had agreed to change the Liberal program to accommodate Bellemare’s ideas.

Notably, Bellemare proposed allowing the victims of traffic accidents to sue, a practice abolished in 1977 with the adoption of the PQ’s no-fault insurance plan. Bellemare won his seat in blue-collar Vanier, a Quebec City riding with a strong ADQ base, for Charest’s Liberals and was named justice minister.

But responsibility for changing the no-fault regime was left with the transport minister. And, in the first year of the Charest government, even private insurers, who still insure Quebec drivers for property damage in the hybrid system, opposed the change.

Other changes to administrative tribunals proposed by Bellemare were also spiked. Bellemare resigned, leaving Vanier open for a byelection that the ADQ won handily.

Bellemare was quietly practising law in March, when a rookie reporter for Quebec City’s Le Soleil newspaper phoned to ask him what he thought about allegations that Charest’s Liberals were financed by construction companies. Bellemare told Le Soleil’s Matthieu Boivin that, yes, the Charest government was heavily involved both with construction companies and construction unions.

Subsequently, he said that as a minister he had witnessed the illegal giving of cheques and cash by construction company officials, fuelling Opposition charges that the Quebec Liberals profit from corruption.

And Bellemare did not stop there. He said Liberal bagmen had told him that as justice minister, he should name Liberal contributors to provincial judgeships — which he did.

Bellemare said he had raised his concerns about these practices with Charest on at least five occasions. According to Bellemare, Charest made it known to him that that was the way things were done. End of conversation.

But Charest doesn’t recall it that way. He denies Bellemare’s version. That is why Bellemare publicly called Charest a liar.

Then, after months of stonewalling Op-position demands for a public inquiry into the allegations of corruption and bid-rigging, Charest acted quickly. On one day in April, Charest named Michel Bastarache, a former Supreme Court of Canada judge, to head a narrow public inquiry. Its mandate is to look into Bellemare’s allegations about influence-peddling in the naming of judges. The same day, after Bellemare ignored Charest’s demand that Bellemare withdraw his accusation that Charest was a liar, the premier launched his defamation suit.

The Bastarache commission has an Oct. 15 deadline, and Charest has lifted the confidentiality agreement Bellemare had to sign when he left the cabinet, removing a barrier that Bellemare says prevents him from testifying.

Bellemare has questioned the impartiality of the commission, and also alleges bias against him by the Quebec Bar Association and Quebec’s chief electoral officer, both organizations that are questioning Bellemare’s allegations. Now, there are doubts about Bellemare’s credibility and his motives.

But Charest must tread carefully. The former justice minister could undermine the premier’s credibility. And even if Charest wins his lawsuit, he could lose power before this case is settled. IE