Tributes are flowing for a former federal cabinet minister turned a popular broadcaster Jean Lapierre who was killed in a plane crash in his native Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence Tuesday along with his wife and three siblings.
Lapierre, 59, a political pundit and former transport minister in the government of Prime Minister Paul Martin, was heading for his father’s funeral to the remote archipelago, about 1,300 kilometres northeast of Montreal.
All seven people on board, including Lapierre’s wife Nicole, his sister and two brothers, as well as two pilots, were killed when the small turboprop crashed in bad weather about 5 kilometres short of the runway.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that he was “shaken” by Lapierre’s death.
Trudeau said Lapierre’s sudden death will leave a void in the political and media community – in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
Our country will remember Jean Lapierre as a skilled politician who was well known and loved by all. https://t.co/MyrvE0JQHW
— CanadianPM (@CanadianPM) March 30, 2016
Speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Martin fought back tears, saying he saw Lapierre only two weeks ago.
“He was a good, good friend. Someone with immense integrity and vision,” Martin said. “He loved Canadians. He loved Quebecers. … As a minister, as a journalist, I think that every one of us learned from him. And now he’s gone.”
The plane crashed as it approached an airfield near Havre-aux-Maisons around 11:40 am AT, authorities said.
Quebec provincial police said seven people were aboard the privately owned aircraft.
According to Transport Canada, the Mitsubishi Model MU-2B-60 turboprop plane, built in 1982, left the Saint Hubert airport south of Montreal on Tuesday morning.
Provincial police said the weather was windy and snowing heavily at the time of the crash. Police are investigating the cause of the crash.
Political operative
Lapierre, became one of the youngest members of Parliament in Canadian history in 1979, when he was elected at the age of 23 to represent the Liberals in the Quebec riding of Shefford.
A passionate Quebec nationalist, Lapierre was frustrated by the failure of the Meech Lake accord, a series of constitutional amendments designed to bring Quebec, which did not sign the Canadian Constitution in 1982, back into the constitutional fold.
Lapierre stunned many of his Liberal colleagues when he joined Lucien Bouchard and dozens of other disaffected Progressive Conservative and Liberal MPs to form the sovereignist Bloc Québecois federal party.
That bold move helped launch a sea-change in federal politics, as the Bloc would spend the better part of the next 20 years as the dominant Quebec party.
He stepped away from politics in 1992, becoming a media commentator.
Return to politics
But Lapierre returned to the Liberals to help rescue the party amid the sponsorship scandal, a federal program championed by Lapierre’s arch-foe former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien to counter separatist propaganda by highlighting Ottawa’s contributions in Quebec.
Lapierre helped Paul Martin hold on to enough seats to form a minority government in 2004. His political acumen was rewarded by a cabinet seat, when Martin named him federal transport minister and his lieutenant in Quebec.
Nevertheless, Martin’s short-lived minority government lost power in the 2006 election and even though Lapierre held on to his own parliament seat, he eventually resigned to return to broadcasting as a sought-after political pundit on the French-language TVA network.
With files from CBC News
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