{"id":50020,"date":"2015-05-21T19:57:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T11:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=50020"},"modified":"2015-05-21T19:57:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T11:57:08","slug":"couillard-says-perks-given-to-ex-premiers-are-too-much-and-last-too-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/05\/21\/couillard-says-perks-given-to-ex-premiers-are-too-much-and-last-too-long\/","title":{"rendered":"Couillard says perks given to ex premiers are too much and last too long"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Quebec<\/a>
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard (Patrick Lachance MCE \/ Philippe Couillard’s Facebook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MONTREAL — Jean Charest, nearly $370,000; Pauline Marois, about $130,000; and Bernard Landry, close to $140,000.<\/p>\n

Those are the sums the three ex-premiers have cost the Quebec public since leaving office.<\/p>\n

The numbers were obtained in documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information laws.<\/p>\n

Quebec offers ex-premiers lavish perks for a three-year period after they leave office, including money to hire staff, buy equipment and rent office space — all at taxpayers’ expense.<\/p>\n

Premier Philippe Couillard said Wednesday that premiers who leave office are given too many perks for too long a period.<\/p>\n

He said he is ready to review the privileges afforded to leaders in their post-political life.<\/p>\n

The documents show that Charest, who was premier between 2003 and 2012, charged the province $368,566 between April 2013 and this past February — with about $225,000 on office space and supplies and telecommunications-related costs.<\/p>\n

Charest, who now works as a lawyer with McCarthy Tetreault, also billed the province more than $132,000 to hire five researchers and an administrative assistant.<\/p>\n

And even though he has a government-issued car and driver-bodyguard, Charest submitted travel bills of about $12,000.<\/p>\n

Charest’s successor, Pauline Marois, has charged the government a total of $129,276 since last June. She was premier between September 2012 and April 2014.<\/p>\n

Bernard Landry, who was premier between 2001 and 2003 before leaving politics in 2005, billed Quebec for $138,612 for between April 2007 and June 2008. The numbers for the first two years were not available.<\/p>\n

Couillard was visibly uncomfortable with the news, particularly due to the fact his government has embarked on an ambitious cost-cutting program to balance the budget.<\/p>\n

He said he has a problem with the “duration of the privileges and the associated costs.”<\/p>\n

“We want to bring them (costs) to a more reasonable level,” he said.<\/p>\n

Official Opposition Leader Pierre Karl Peladeau said he was open to reviewing the generous perk system but didn’t elaborate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL — Jean Charest, nearly $370,000; Pauline Marois, about $130,000; and Bernard Landry, close to $140,000. Those are the sums …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":45310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,95,483],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ph","category-politics","mauthors-jocelyne-richer","mauthors-the-canadian-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}