Stench in Quebec

One of the tightest little political machines in North America is the Liberal Government of Canada's Province of Quebec, which has had an uninterrupted, 39-year run of power. Head man since 1920 has been wily, wiry Premier Hon. Louis Alexandre Taschereau, now 69, born to an aristocratic French family, accustomed to lead Quebec's backward, French-speaking farmers. His father was a Canadian Supreme Court Justice, his mother's father a Quebec Lieutenant Governor. His family gave the Catholic Church a cardinal, and Premier Taschereau, like France's great 17th Century Cardinal Richelieu, has prodigious habits of work, a suave and barbed wit, a lean, aristocratic grey face, an iron will. Nevertheless, last week he paid a stiff price for the fatty degeneration 39 years of power had brought to Quebec Liberals.

Last November his party won the elections by the unprecedently narrow margin of a majority of six in the Quebec Legislature. Allied with the Conservative opposition was the new reform Liberal party, Action Liberale Nationale, of Paul Gouin, son of Taschereau's predecessor as Premier. Since then Conservative Maurice Duplessis, Opposition leader, has pried into the Liberal's solidified habits of graft, got the Legislature to start a Public Accounts Committee investigation. The committee was heavily packed with old-guard Liberals but Representative Duplessis was far too smart for them. At last week's committee meeting he began reading into the record the august name of Taschereau.

The Premier's brother Antoine, it developed, had long ago adopted without a tremor the "customary" practice of paying himself interest on Government funds that he, as the Legislature's accountant, had the job of depositing. By dealing with his son, branch manager of the Banque Canadienne Nationale, he was able to get a special interest rate that not only paid him his 3% but let the Government have 1 1/2% too. Last week M. Duplessis read a letter from Father Antoine to his son complaining of the annual "annoyance" given him by Government bank inspectors who did not at once understand this arrangement. If this nagging did not stop, said Father Antoine, he might switch his account to another bank. To these revelations, Antoine Taschereau last week replied that he was "not ashamed" of so commonplace a procedure. He formally wrote the Government a check for its back interest but asked a superior court judge for a decision as to whether the Government ought not tear up his check.

Nevertheless, even before M. Duplessis began reading the letters, Committee Chairman Leon Casgrain, at the instigation of the Premier, forehandedly announced that Antoine Taschereau had already resigned his job as legislative accountant. Next day, again beating M. Duplessis to the headlines, Premier Taschereau accepted the resignation of doddering, 71-year-old Deputy Attorney General Charles Lanctot.

Said Duplessis: "We are going after the big shots who have been living the life of a king at the Government's expense for the last 30 years." He promised scandals about Government sales of poachers' confiscated furs, about unauthorized colonization projects, about "every department of the Government."

Even for the French-Canadian farmers who look up worshipfully to Premier Taschereau, this raised too penetrating a stench. Premier Taschereau kept up an undismayed front, replied, when a newshawk asked him what a Cabinet meeting had been about, "We named a few justices of the peace, but you are not among them." Suddenly, however, he handed his Government's resignation to Lieutenant Governor Patenaude, asked for a dissolution of the Legislature. This had the effect of keeping out of power either Conservative Duplessis or the Action Liberate Nationale, at least until the elections next August for a new Legislature. Instead Lieutenant Governor Patenaude named Premier an old-guard Liberal who is popular among farmers--Taschereau's Minister of Agriculture Joseph Adelard Godbout, young (43), pink-faced graduate of Amherst College whose job will be to coax the reform Liberals back into the Party fold with promises of repentance and a better life.

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