{"id":73493,"date":"2016-04-03T09:30:33","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T13:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=73493"},"modified":"2016-04-03T09:30:33","modified_gmt":"2016-04-03T13:30:33","slug":"quebec-treasury-board-president-sam-hamad-temporarily-steps-cabinet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/04\/03\/quebec-treasury-board-president-sam-hamad-temporarily-steps-cabinet\/","title":{"rendered":"Quebec treasury board president Sam Hamad temporarily steps down from cabinet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hamad<\/a>
Hamad (in photo) says he has done nothing wrong and requested the ethics investigation himself.
(Twitter photo<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MONTREAL\u2014Quebec treasury board president Sam Hamad says he is temporarily leaving his duties as a cabinet minister while he is being investigated by the province’s ethics commissioner.<\/p>\n

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard told reporters Saturday afternoon that Hamad will retain his postion, but his status will be similar to that of a minister on sick leave.<\/p>\n

Couillard says he has confidence in Hamad.<\/p>\n

The ethics commissioner launched an investigation into Hamad Friday after Radio-Canada claimed he may have passed strategic information to help advance the business interests of a horticultural firm that was looking to obtain a government grant in 2012.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Hamad says he was only doing his job as a minister by \u201cworking to support a Quebec company with the goal of creating jobs and contributing to the economic development of a region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamad says he has done nothing wrong and requested the ethics investigation himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, out of respect for the public office I hold, out of respect for our institutions and to avoid all distractions to the pursuit of the government’s mandate, I offered to the premier to no longer assume my duties during the commissioner’s verification,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n

Radio-Canada’s investigative program \u201cEnquete\u201d published a series of emails this week that it says show that Hamad passed information to former Liberal cabinet minister Marc-Yvan Cote to help obtain a government grant for Premier Tech, a horticultural company based in Riviere-du-Loup, on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence river.<\/p>\n

Cote was a member of the board of directors at Premier Tech from 1994 until his arrest by the province’s anti-corruption unit on fraud and corruption charges last month.<\/p>\n

Cote hasn’t commented publicly on the charges and is due to appear in court this month on the allegations.<\/p>\n

Couillard said Hamad \u201cis not guilty of anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked at the case of this company and the financial aid it received and frankly, there’s not a government that wouldn’t have proceeded to give that help,\u201d he said outside the Montreal funeral of Claire Kirkland-Casgrain, the first woman elected to the Quebec legislature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL\u2014Quebec treasury board president Sam Hamad says he is temporarily leaving his duties as a cabinet minister while he is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":73494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16,483],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","category-politics","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73493","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\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}