Pierre Bélanger

Bélanger was first elected to the Quebec legislature in a by-election held in the Montreal division of Anjou on January 20, 1992. The seat had previously been held by the Quebec Liberal Party, and Bélanger's election was regarded as demonstrating increased support for Quebec sovereignty.[2]

The Liberal Party held a majority in the legislature during this period; Bélanger served with the official opposition and was his party's justice critic.[3] He promised that the PQ, if elected, would appoint more members of minority communities to Quebec's judiciary.[4]

Bélanger was re-elected by a narrow margin in the 1994 provincial election. The PQ won a majority government in the election, and Bélanger served as a deputy speaker of the assembly for the next two years.[1][5] When Lucien Bouchard became premier of Quebec on January 29, 1996, he promoted Bélanger to government house leader and minister responsible for electoral and parliamentary reform.[6]

In August 1996, Bélanger complained that English/French bilingual signs were proliferating in both the English and French areas of Montreal. (The PQ has historically supported French-only signs as a means of promoting the French language in Quebec.)[7] The following year, he announced that the Bouchard government would appeal a Quebec Superior Court ruling that the province had no jurisdiction over acts committed by people based outside Quebec in the 1995 referendum on sovereignty. This ruling pertained to four persons and groups based in Ontario who transported people to a Canadian federalist rally in Montreal shortly before election day.[8]

Bélanger defended the harsh austerity measures in the Bouchard government's 1997 budget, saying that the government's credibility would be judged by its fiscal management.[9]

Bélanger was promoted to a full cabinet position on August 25, 1997, as minister of public security.[10] Shortly after his appointment, he resolved a labour dispute with Quebec's jail guards by permitting the guards to wear bulletproof vests and carry weapons when transporting prisoners.[11] Later in the year, he criticized other Canadian provinces for not doing enough to combat biker gangs.[12]

In response to the North American ice storm of 1998, Bélanger requested and received permission from the Canadian government for Canadian Forces to act as police officers to prevent looting in Montreal. This was the first time that Canadian soldiers had patrolled the streets of Montreal since the 1970 FLQ crisis, and some journalists noted the irony that this would take place under a sovereigntist government.[13] Bélanger also served on an emergency response committee during the ice storm and later introduced legislation to create auxiliary reserve teams to deal with future natural disasters.[14]

In April 1998, Bélanger outlined a strategy for dealing with Quebec's contraband cigarette trade. The plan included both a crackdown on the illicit trade and negotiated tax collection agreements with the province's indigenous communities.[15]

Bélanger also concluded an agreement with the Kahnawake Mohawk community to permit legal mixed boxing events; the government had previously banned extreme fighting events in Kahnawake on the grounds that the competition was too brutal.[16] In June 1998, he concluded a tripartite policing agreement with the Canadian government and the Listuguj Mi'gmaq First Nation.[17]

One of Bélanger's last actions in cabinet was to approve the appointment of Michel Sarrazin as Montreal's police chief.[18]

Bélanger was defeated in the 1998 provincial election, losing to Liberal candidate Jean-Sébastien Lamoureux by 143 votes. He was the only PQ cabinet minister to be defeated in this election and stood down from cabinet on December 15, 1998.[1][19][20] (Lamoureux would late resign from the legislature in 2001, after a former campaign workers was convicted of bribing people to vote several times in the 1998 election using false names. Lamoureux himself was not implicated in the scandal. Bélanger did not contest the by-election that followed, though at one stage he complained that it was "easier to vote twice in Quebec than to rent a video at a video store without a membership card."[21])

Bélanger voted for the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in the 1988 federal election. In the 1993 election, he campaigned with Bloc Québécois (BQ) candidate Roger Pomerleau.[22]

During the 1997 federal election, Bélanger criticized BQ leader Gilles Duceppe statement's that a vote in favour of Quebec sovereignty would not necessarily finalize Quebec's status as an independent country. He responded to Duceppe's remark by saying, "Once we have a Yes vote on the sovereignty issue in the next referendum, I think the question of Quebec will be settled and that we will be a sovereign state."[23]

Bélanger returned to his legal practice after leaving the legislature and served as president of the Commission des services juridiques from 1999 to 2004.[1] He ran for mayor of the east-end borough of Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve in the 2005 Montreal municipal election as a candidate of the Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay's Montreal Island Citizens Union, but was defeated.[24]