Denis de Belleval

De Belleval was born in Quebec City, Quebec. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy (1960) and a master's degree in the social sciences with a focus in public administration (1965), both from the Université Laval. He met future prime minister Brian Mulroney while attending university and remained friends with Mulroney for many years thereafter.^[1] In 1964, De Belleval was a co-founder of the Union générale des étudiants du Québec (UGEQ).^[2]

De Belleval took doctoral studies in political science at the London School of Economics from 1965 to 1967. After returning to Quebec, he served as executive assistant to the deputy minister of education from 1967 to 1969. He held other government positions related to development and planning from 1970 to 1974 and was the assistant deputy minister of transport from 1974 to 1976.^[3]

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

De Belleval was elected to the Quebec legislature in the 1976 provincial election, defeating Liberal incumbent André Harvey in the Charlesbourg division in the Quebec City area. The Parti Québécois won a historic majority government in this election, and de Belleval was appointed to René Lévesque's first cabinet on November 26, 1976, as minister of the public service and vice-president of the treasury board.^[3] The Lévesque cabinet included representatives from different sides of the political spectrum, and de Belleval was regarded as one of its more conservative members.^[4]

On March 2, 1978, Lévesque shifted the vice-presidency of the treasury board from de Belleval to Jacques Léonard. He said that the change would allow de Belleval to better focus on upcoming negotiations with civil servants, nurses, and teachers.^[5] De Belleval took part in difficult wage negotiations with the Syndicat des Fonctionnaires Provinciaux du Québec in mid-1979; at one stage, the civil servants took part in rotating walkouts, and de Belleval threatened to lock out entire government departments.^[6]

De Belleval argued in April 1978 that Quebec's hiring laws should be modified to facilitate the entry of more anglophones into the civil service. He added that the anglophone community would need to be more active in engaging with the civil service than before.^[7] In the winter of 1979–80, he said that the Quebec government would not object to civil servants taking part in the upcoming referendum campaign on sovereignty.^[8]

Separate from his duties as the public service minister, de Belleval also proposed a reciprocity formula that allowed English Canadians moving to Quebec from other provinces to enroll their children in English-language schools in return for the other provinces making similar arrangements for their own minority language communities. The provincial cabinet had previously been divided on the issue of English-language education, and Lévesque agreed to de Belleval's formula as a compromise.^[9]

De Belleval was named as transport minister after a cabinet shuffle on September 21, 1979.^[3] In December of the same year, he issued a five-year transit plan for Montreal valued at just under one billion dollars. The plan called for expanded subway lines, the integration of commuter lines between Montreal and its suburbs, and a new electric train system on existing lines.^[10] After some delays, the project was re-launched with assistance from the federal government in February 1981.^[11] In the same period, de Belleval oversaw grants for three traffic projects in the Quebec City area and pledged $8.5 million to complete an expressway interchange for the city.^[12]

In September 1980, de Belleval announced that the Quebec government had purchased an eleven per cent stake in the Nordair airline and was supporting efforts from a group led by Quebecair president Alfred Hamel to purchase Nordair from Air Canada.^[13] The Canadian federal government questioned the legality of this purchase and subsequently announced an indefinite delay of the airline's sale.^[14] De Belleval later issued an alternate proposal that Nordair purchase Quebecair in a "reverse takeover" that would lead to a merger.^[15] The plans were ultimately unsuccessful, and the airlines were not merged.

De Belleval was re-elected without difficulty in the 1981 provincial election as the Parti Québécois won a second majority government across the province. He was dropped from cabinet on April 30, 1981, and afterwards served as a government backbencher; the journalist Graham Fraser has suggested that his demotion was prompted by an intense argument with Lévesque at a cabinet meeting in late 1980.^[16] It was rumoured that he might return to cabinet in 1982 after he submitted a twenty-page policy paper proposing a "solitary fund" for development to be administered jointly by business, labour, and the state. He was not promoted, however, and he resigned his seat in the legislature on December 7, 1982, to accept a job in the private sector.^[3]