Quebec – There is chaos in the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital Technology, so much so that the CAQ government had to make a partisan appointment, a close friend of François Legault, Stéphane Le Bouyonnec.

This was denounced by the leader of the official opposition, Marc Tanguay, on Thursday. According to him, the appointment of Mr Le Bouyonnec as deputy minister reflects the government’s despair at the bungling of Minister Éric Caire.

“This is the ministry where at one point there were more than 1,100 vacancies, while (…) in one year four (deputy ministers) left. “So it’s a revolving door,” Mr Tanguay said.

Under these circumstances, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) decided to deploy “a CAQ soldier,” he said. He believes that Stéphane Le Bouyonnec, a former president of the CAQ, was given the mandate to “be there and then stay there.”

“I imagine there are so few people who want to work with Éric Caire, so they asked a good caquist to go and help Éric Caire. He’ll probably go out less,” Mr. Tanguay joked.

The Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital Affairs has been tested not only by numerous departures, but also by the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec’s SAAQclic system fiasco.

Stéphane Le Bouyonnec was a CAQ MP in La Prairie from 2012 to 2014. After his defeat in 2014, he ran again in 2018, but withdrew before the vote after it was revealed that he was the head of a company that made loans at extremely high interest rates, a legal activity in Canada except for Quebec, where one such practice qualifies as loan sharking.

“So I don’t know what expertise he has, but obviously it’s someone close to the CAQ who is being rewarded with a party political appointment for the second time,” reacted PQ MP Pascal Bérubé.

In 2020, Mr. Le Bouyonnec was promoted to deputy secretary-general in the Ministry of the Executive Council, an appointment widely described at the time as “partisan.”

On Thursday, Mr Bérubé tabled a motion at Salon Bleu alongside independent MPs Frédéric Beauchemin and Marie-Claude Nichols, stressing that the CAQ had ultimately never presented a bill on party political appointments.

The Legault government refused to debate the motion.

“(The bill) was never presented. And what good does that do? Today a former MP and president of the CAQ is appointed to a position because he is a former MP and president of the CAQ,” said Mr Bérubé.

Caroline Plante, The Canadian Press