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Benoît Pelletier, former cabinet minister in the Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest, died on Saturday in Mexico, his family announced. He was 63 years old.
In a statement released Monday morning, Pelletier’s family mourned the passing of a “caring husband, a devoted family man, a funny, generous and attentive listener, and a great lover of Quebec and the French language.”
The renowned professor of law made the leap into active politics in 1998 when he was elected in the riding of Chapleau in the Outaouais region, where he taught at the University of Ottawa, one of his alma maters.
Pelletier was the chair of the Liberal Party’s special committee on Quebec’s political and constitutional future and is considered the father of the Charest government’s constitutional platform.
When the Liberals came to power in 2003, Pelletier was named Quebec’s Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, a portfolio he would hold, along with other ministerial positions, until his retirement from politics in 2008.
Considered a federalist Quebec nationalist, Pelletier was a proponent of asymmetrical federalism and fought against fiscal imbalance and for limits on Ottawa’s spending power.
He also played a key role in the creation of the Council of the Federation, which brought together all the provincial and territorial leaders in their negotiations with Ottawa.
Pelletier is survived by his wife Danièle Goulet and his four children, Florence, Françoise, Jean-Christophe and Mathilde.
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