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The Quebec Liberal Party is dropping a candidate who compared the Parti Québécois to Nazis.
Actor Michel Savard, slated to run in the Montreal electoral district of Gouin in the next election, apologized for the Facebook comments earlier Wednesday. He made them in February, before he became a Liberal candidate.
Earlier, the party told Radio-Canada in a statement they planned to keep Savard on as a candidate.
While the Liberal Party said it in no way endorsed the comments made by Savard in the past, they said he now recognized they were inappropriate and no longer reflected how he wished to contribute to public life.
However, the PLQ announced it had changed its mind in a post to X Wednesday afternoon.
“New past comments made by Michel Savard were brought to our attention over the past hour. After re-evaluating the situation, we have come to the conclusion that maintaining his candidacy was no longer possible,” the Liberals wrote.
The PLQ says it maintains “high standards of respect in public debate and our firm pledge against all forms of verbal violence.”
Savard said the PQ had become a far-right aberration under Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, whom he described as a hateful megalomaniac leading small-time Nazis.
The comment was made under a post by another actor, Pierre-Luc Brillant, the Montreal vice-president of the Union des artistes (UDA). Brillant was the PQ candidate who lost in Rosemont in 2022. His partner is actress Isabelle Blais, a PQ candidate in Maskinongé for the upcoming election.
Radio station 98.5 FM uncovered the matter Wednesday, prompting Savard to offer a sincere apology to the PQ leader, Brillant and Blais. He also apologized to anyone else he may have hurt with his online commentary.
“For several years, I participated in this culture of confrontation that poisons social media,” he wrote on Facebook Wednesday morning, before the party announced it was dropping him as a candidate.
He said he expected more of his comments to be scrutinized as the election nears, before the Liberals ultimately dropped him.
“I sometimes wrote with the intention of provoking and shocking,” he said. “Looking back, I realize that this way of debating too often hurts people. The comment circulating today is an example of that. It is unacceptable, and I take full responsibility for it,” Savard said.
Over the past year, Savard said, he has engaged in “deep reflection” on how he debates. He said the first person he should be questioning is himself.
“I know that an apology does not erase the harm some of my words may have caused. It remains necessary nonetheless,” he wrote.
Along with acting, Savard is an author, teacher, director and owner of a dog training business. The PLQ had announced his candidacy on Friday.
As for the PLQ’s chances of winning Gouin, the poll aggregator Qc125 currently predicts an easy victory for former NDP deputy leader Alexandre Boulerice, who will run this time under the Québec solidaire (QS) banner.
