Superior Court rejects Charest's request for $717K more from Quebec government
Former premier already won suit for invasion of privacy
The Quebec government will not have to pay an additional $717,000 to Jean Charest for abuse of procedure.
Superior Court Judge Gregory Moore this week rejected the former Quebec premier's request, which began after the leak of confidential documents from the Unité permanente anticorruption (UPAC) in 2017.
Charest then sued the province for invasion of privacy and obtained $385,000 in a court judgment rendered in April 2023. Quebec chose not to appeal.
Through his lawyers, Charest then filed another motion to argue the attorney general of Quebec had abused procedure, in that the essence of his defence system was false, manifestly unfounded and dilatory.
In the decision rendered Tuesday, Moore disagreed and rejected the request for a declaration of abuse of process.
“We won't be giving any comment,” Charest's press attaché Laurence Toth said.
Charest claimed more than $200,000 in punitive damages, $512,000 to pay his lawyers' fees, as well as $5,000 in moral damages. The amount thus totalled $717,000.
Charest's lawyers argued in particular that “neither the government nor the minister nor the commissioner had, in a timely manner, put in place the measures required by the (law) to prevent the harm caused to the plaintiff or to prevent its repetition against any other citizen, as they had a duty to do.”
The attorney general replied by asserting that “adequate measures” were in place, a response that was considered an abuse of procedure by Charest's representatives.
The attorney general wrote this response while UPAC had an administrative investigation report revealing flaws in its computer system, the plaintiff noted.
Moore suggested in his decision that the plaintiff should have, among other things, questioned the attorney general to clarify his position and should also have requested a preliminary examination.
The judge summarized that Charest's position is based on the hypothesis that someone from UPAC had access to his information but not the required authorizations, and then transmitted it electronically to a journalist.
“But Mr. Charest has not proved the identity of the author of the leak of the information nor the means used to communicate it to the journalist,” Moore said.
Charest's lawyers further argued that their client “had a constitutional right to protection of information relating to his private life ... and the government, the minister, the commissioner and his staff had a legal obligation ... to take necessary measures to protect confidentiality.”
The defence for its part argued that “for everything relating to criminal investigations, the commissioner for the fight against corruption must be independent of the executive and the government must refrain from intervening in the way in which the commissioner exercises its functions in this regard.”
Charest complained that the attorney general waited until the very end to disclose this argument, according to which UPAC “refuses to be subject to laws that protect personal information.”
The judge disagreed with this thesis and affirmed that it is an “inexact interpretation” of the position of the attorney general.
Finally, the prosecution argued that the attorney general's failure to communicate documents in a timely manner constitutes an abuse of process.
The judge responded that the defence “did not act abusively,” that it responded to requests for documents from Charest's team and that it “did not take an unreasonable amount of time” to do so.
The Charest case stems from UPAC'S Mâchurer investigation, undertaken in April 2014, into sectoral financing carried out by the Quebec Liberal Party when Charest was its leader.
Three years later, in 2017, Le Journal de Montréal published documents held by UPAC. They revealed that Charest was under police surveillance and that UPAC sought to obtain his communications with Marc Bibeau, presented as the big financier of the Liberals under Charest.
UPAC also wanted to know the comings and goings between the two men. In these documents, UPAC said it was investigating corruption and breach of trust, two criminal offences.
Personal information about Charest was also given to Le Journal de Montréal.
In his April 2023 judgment, Moore wrote that this was “gross misconduct” by UPAC.
The attorney general of Quebec confirmed that a member of UPAC was at the origin of the leak and that the information came from a UPAC investigation file.
Charest was not charged in the Mâchurer investigation, in which he was mentioned as a “person of interest,” but he believed the disclosure of information had tarnished his reputation.