Cloak and dagger in PQ history time.Claude Morin was one of the top guns in the Parti Quebecois government until revelations emerged in 1992 that he had met with RCMP undercover agents and been paid to provide them information 15 years ealier. He downplayed what he told them and claimed that he gave the money to charity.
Not enough.
The PQ demanded his resignation immediately and he has barely been heard from since.
How did his secret come out? Well he told a colleague named Loraine Lagace about it and she got it on tape and played it for Levesque.Lagace was so proud of exposing Morin that she wrote a novel about it and earned the nickname "The Mata Hari of the PQ."
On her website just before she died she revealed the supposedly-tantalizing information that Levesque (who died in 1987) had known about Morin meeting with the RCMP even before she told him.
Why was that particular detail important? Well she was about to explain why on her website but then she died of leukemia in January 2013 at age 69 before she could bang out that information.
Morin, at the time, said that he had told Levesque of his meetings with the RCMP. "The story seemed to bore him and at the same time amuse him. He did not really take it seriously and ridiculed the Security Service's suspicions," said Morin in 1991. One year before become a mole Morin wrote a book about politics in which he addressed the very subject of colluding with the enemy. "In fact the real fifth column is in Quebec City itself... it's made up of a few ministers, MPS and high ranking civil servants who are easily impressed by the personnel and methods o the central government and for whom federal political decisions seem infallible. Many people with a deep rooted inferiority complex are found in this group. This group also has ambitious politicians and bureaucrats who hope for eventually hope to have a career in the federal government."
Claude Morin is still alive. He is 86.
I could go on but I don't want you to die of excitement.
In 1986 I was interviewed by a member of CSIS who wanted to know if a client of mine might be connected with selling software to the Soviet Union, a crime at the time. I could not help him but asked him a few questions about his employers, questions he answered quite straightforwardly. The PQ had been the target of RCMP illegal acts in the past and I wanted to know if they were being still being monitored. He smiled and said that making sure that they were not infiltrated by subversive interests was part of CSIS's role. He added that the top people in the PQ knew that and did not mind one bit. "Are they actively helping you?" I asked. "I would rather not answer that..." he said, still grinning.
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