G-G's husband blasts separatists

ik - from the G&M. I'm really starting to like this couple a lot. See my emphasis.

By RHÉAL SÉGUIN
Thursday, October 27, 2005

QUEBEC -- Governor-General Michaëlle Jean's husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, lashed out at Quebec separatists yesterday, saying they promoted terror by calling him a "traitor" and a "renegade" after his wife's appointment last summer.

Traditionally, the vice-regal consort keeps a low profile. Yesterday, Mr. Lafond served notice he was breaking from tradition.

During a live, 45-minute radio interview on Radio-Canada, Mr. Lafond didn't mince words. He called his separatist critics "terrorists" and said if he had been subjected to the same type of verbal "terror" in a country like Iran, he would have been killed.

"Faced with the situation, I said to myself -- I saw myself back in Tehran, where I had been a few months earlier -- I said: 'If you were there, you'd be dead.' That's called terror. And that terror, when it is expressed in words, it becomes extremely dangerous," Mr. Lafond said in his first extensive interview since his wife was designated Governor-General in August. She was sworn in last month.

When Ms. Jean accepted the appointment, she and her husband were criticized in some sovereigntist circles.

An article in Le Québécois, a separatist publication, described the couple as supporters of Quebec independence and said Mr. Lafond had betrayed his friends who were leaders of the Front de libération du Québec. The FLQ used violence in its fight for Quebec independence in the 1960s and was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Liberal cabinet minister Pierre Laporte in October, 1970.

Mr. Lafond said an outside observer seeing the attacks would have concluded "there is a civil war going on here somewhere."

"I've been going to Tehran in Iran for six years. I know what these words mean. In Tehran these words mean death," he said.

Despite his friendships with well-known separatists, he denied ever supporting Quebec independence. As a documentary filmmaker, writer and radio commentator, he insisted that he participated in Quebec's "cultural independence" and the fight for its identity. But that was as far as it went.

"I'm sorry. I never believed that I could become a separatist," he said. "I have a great deal of difficulty with nationalism in general."

Mr. Lafond explained that the appointment to Rideau Hall did not diminish the couple's strong attachment to Quebec.

"We are both Quebeckers. We are Quebeckers before being Canadians," he said.

Yet his comments are in marked contrast to those he expressed in a documentary he produced accompanied by a book entitled La manière nègre (The Black Way). In the book, Mr. Lafond says: "So, a sovereign Quebec? An independent Quebec? Yes, and I applaud with both hands and I promise to be at all the St. Jean [Baptiste] parades."

Mr. Lafond said yesterday that his detractors created false rumours about his ties with former FLQ members. For instance, he acknowledged that former FLQ member Jacques Rose, who was part of a cell that murdered Mr. Laporte, had done renovations at the couple's home, but said no secret compartment was built into a bookshelf to store weapons. "It was . . . where I stored my archives," he said.

He suggested that the people who pressed his wife to refuse the appointment were probably the same type of people who persuaded Quebec poet Raymond Lévesque to reject the Governor-General's Performing Arts award. Mr. Levesque, 77, a supporter of Quebec independence, announced this week he would not accept the Governor-General's award partly because Ms. Jean refused to recognize Quebec as a founding nation in her speech after her swearing-in.

"When I am placed in the role of renegade-traitor, I try to imagine what kind of pressure was put on Raymond Lévesque's shoulders," Mr. Lafond said.

Mr. Lafond is a regular guest on the radio show on which he appeared yesterday. Ms. Jean worked with the same network before her appointment as governor-general.