Montreal Liberal MP and former Canadian foreign minister Marc Garneau announced on Wednesday during a meeting of the party’s caucus in Quebec that he is leaving politics.

“I want to speak to my caucus first. I’ll have something to say in the House of Representatives this afternoon,” the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount MP said simply as he entered the Ottawa meeting of all elected Liberals.

However, some of his colleagues confirmed that Marc Garneau had just announced his resignation at the Quebec Liberal Group meeting.

“Mr Garneau has given a lot to our society, now he wants to focus a little more on his family and I completely understand him,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said.

Others of his liberal peers have paid tribute to the former Canadian astronaut and federal lawmaker since 2008.

“Marc Garneau is a man who gave his life for his country. […] He’s a friend, a person I respect very much and I’m genuinely sad to see him go,” Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said.

Born in Quebec and trained as an engineer, Marc Garneau was a Captain in the Canadian Navy before becoming an astronaut. He has accumulated 677 flight hours in space. In the Liberal Party of Canada, he was leader of the House of Opposition from 2011 to 2012, then became Minister for Transport when his party won the 2015 election. He was Secretary of State during 2021.

argument about the language

One of Marc Garneau’s last political battles was his defense of Quebec’s English-speaking minority during his study of Bill C-13, his government’s promised reform of the official language law.

Mr. Garneau was among the MPs who conveyed to Ottawa the concerns of the English-speaking community about the alleged injustices of the French language’s Quebec Charter. A parliamentary committee heard him call for removing any reference to that charter, recently amended by Quebec’s Bill 96, in the federal law seeking “substantial equality between the official languages ​​of Canada.”

“It would be a huge mistake for us as federal lawmakers on a federal committee examining federal laws to leave Quebec open-ended about what it wants to do about the language in Quebec,” Marc Garneau said in December.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then had to mend the broken pots by assuring that his caucus was “united”. The platform of the Liberal Party of Canada officially proposed in the last election to protect the French not only outside of Quebec but also in Quebec.

On the contrary, Justice Minister and LaSalle-Émard-Verdun MP David Lametti believes that Marc Garneau “has shown leadership in Québec on language issues.” Mr Garneau, who was elected to his neighboring state, found himself, in his opinion, “between the two” language communities, French and English.

Ever since that affair, Marc Garneau has avoided answering questions from the parliamentary press. However, he is scheduled to speak to the media on Wednesday afternoon.

With Marie Vastel

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