“Private production is possible as René Lévesque wished”: historians refute the words of Pierre Fitzgibbon

“Private production is possible as René Lévesque wished,” said Energy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon yesterday when presenting his Bill 64 reforming the governance of Hydro-Québec. An assertion which startled several historians who believe on the contrary that Lévesque would have opposed such a breach in his “flagship”.

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“I do not remember any written Source or any statement which would allow us to say that Lévesque would have been in favor of a form of privatization of Hydro-Québec,” specifies Martine Tremblay, who was political attaché and chief of staff to René Lévesque since 1978.

In the process of acquiring the nine large private electricity companies that Lévesque orchestrated with Jean Lesage’s Liberals starting in 1963, he made Hydro-Québec the “flagship” of Quebec’s economic development.

“He used this image of the flagship several times, notably in his autobiography,” continues historian Xavier Gélinas, who edited the Political chronicles by René Lévesque with Éric Bédard (Hurtubise 2014, 2017). “This image suggests that a flotilla of small ships is advancing alongside it,” he illustrates. In other words, “Lévesque tolerated private production, but did not want it.”

Lake Saint-Jean in private

Rio Tinto Alcan has been turbinening Lake Saint-Jean for nearly a century (1926) and today has six power stations that power its energy-intensive factories. Is this what Minister Fitzgibbon was referring to? The newspaper asked the question to the minister’s office, which responded in the affirmative. “Alcan, Resolute and there are other examples of the same kind,” said chief of staff Mathieu St-Amand by email.

“Lévesque and the Lesage government saw no problem in leaving part of the electricity production to the private sector for its own needs,” confirms historian Stéphane Savard, of UQAM, who has worked extensively on history. from Hydro-Québec.

From there to saying that Lévesque would have approved of allowing the private sector to sell electricity, there is a step that he does not take. “Lévesque and the Lesage government never wanted this in my opinion.”

Not a monopoly

Martin Landry, author of the podcast Past date and collaborator of Montreal Journal and Quebec Journal, reminds that Hydro-Québec does not have a monopoly on electricity production. “This is what we call a quasi-monopoly in the sense that Hydro-Québec is the prime contractor for production without being the only player,” indicates the historian.

He emphasizes that the state corporation was not born after the election of Lesage in 1963 which made nationalization the question of the ballot box with the famous slogan “Masters at home”. It existed since 1944 and has always worked with private interests.

Professor Savard estimates that 25% of total electricity production in Quebec was private at the end of the nationalization of 1962-1963. Less than 10% of the electricity produced in Quebec comes from the private sector in 2023.

Martine Tremblay, who worked with René Lévesque for several years and published a book on his years in power, understands that we want to keep the memory of this statesman alive, but says she is irritated by the approximate references to him .

This point of view is shared by other historians who did not want to be cited.