60 Facts About Louis Plamondon

Louis Plamondon has won his seat in twelve consecutive federal elections, winning twice as a Progressive Conservative before becoming a founding member of the Bloc Quebecois in 1990, after which he has been re-elected ten more times.

Louis Plamondon rejoined the Bloc Quebecois caucus on September 17,2018.

Louis Plamondon was born in Saint-Raymond-de-Portneuf, Quebec and is the brother of lyricist Luc Louis Plamondon.

Louis Plamondon was a math teacher and restaurant owner before entering political life.

Louis Plamondon supported the "oui" side in Quebec's 1980 referendum on sovereignty.

The Progressive Conservatives won a landslide majority government in this election under Brian Mulroney's leadership, and Louis Plamondon entered parliament as a government backbencher.

Louis Plamondon was associated with the Quebec nationalist wing of his party and soon became known as a maverick.

Louis Plamondon later criticized industry minister Sinclair Stevens for awarding a multimillion-dollar untendered contract to a shipbuilding company in Quebec City.

Louis Plamondon expressed sympathy with fellow MP Robert Toupin, who left the Progressive Conservatives in May 1986 to sit as an independent.

Louis Plamondon was on the socially liberal wing of the Progressive Conservative Party.

Louis Plamondon voted against a motion to reintroduce capital punishment in 1987 and later opposed efforts to restrict abortion services.

Louis Plamondon strongly supported the Mulroney government's efforts to strengthen official bilingualism and criticized dissident anglophone Tory MPs who tried to weaken the government's reforms.

Louis Plamondon was one of the more pro-labour members of the Tory caucus.

Louis Plamondon was prominent among a group of Quebec Tory MPs who tried to reduce the party's reliance on corporate donations.

Ricardo Lopez, a right-wing Quebec Tory MP, once suggested that Louis Plamondon would be more suited to the social democratic New Democratic Party.

Louis Plamondon was re-elected without difficulty in the 1988 federal election, as the Progressive Conservatives won a second majority government across the country.

Louis Plamondon supported Quebec premier Robert Bourassa's use of the Canadian constitution's notwithstanding clause to prohibit outdoor English-language signs, and expressed regret that the ban was not extended to indoor signs.

Louis Plamondon criticized D'Iberville Fortier, Canada's official languages commissioner, for suggesting that Quebec was acting in an unjust manner toward its anglophone minority.

Consistent with his nationalist views, Louis Plamondon was a vocal supporter of the Mulroney government's proposed Meech Lake Accord on constitutional reform and opposed Jean Charest's efforts to modify the accord in early 1990.

Louis Plamondon was one of a group of Progressive Conservative and Liberal MPs from Quebec who left their parties after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord.

Louis Plamondon was recognized as the Bloc's house leader in 1992.

Louis Plamondon was one of the first Bloquistes to promote the creation of a strong party organization to challenge the Progressive Conservative Party's Quebec machine in the next federal election.

The vision favoured by Louis Plamondon ultimately won out, and the Bloc became a strong political organization throughout Quebec.

Shortly after joining the BQ, Louis Plamondon asked the federal government to apologize to the province of Quebec and provide financial compensation for those who were wrongly arrested under the War Measures Act in the 1970 FLQ Crisis.

Louis Plamondon later spoke against a bid by Izzy Asper to bring his Global Television Network to Montreal, arguing that the market was already saturated.

Louis Plamondon was charged with attempting to hire a prostitute during an undercover sting operation in April 1993.

Louis Plamondon claimed innocence, saying that the charge was the result of a "bad joke between friends which lasted 45 seconds," but nonetheless resigned as his party's house leader pending resolution of the matter.

Louis Plamondon was renominated as the Bloc candidate for Richelieu despite the controversy.

Louis Plamondon was re-elected without difficulty in the 1993 federal election, as the Bloc won fifty-four out of seventy-five seats in Quebec to become the official opposition in the House of Commons.

At his own request, Louis Plamondon was left out of the Bloc's initial shadow cabinet.

Louis Plamondon pleaded guilty to the charge against him in April 1994, maintaining his innocence but adding that he simply wanted to resolve the matter as quickly as possible.

Louis Plamondon received an absolute discharge and does not have a criminal record.

Louis Plamondon co-chaired a funding and membership drive for the Bloc in early 1995.

Louis Plamondon opposed finance minister Paul Martin's austerity budget in the same year, arguing that it placed an unfair financial burden on the provinces to fight the federal deficit.

Louis Plamondon personally opposed the Chretien government's gun registry legislation, which the Bloc supported, and he absented himself from the parliamentary vote that led to its passage.

Louis Plamondon initially favoured Bernard Landry to become the Bloc's new leader, arguing that he was the best positioned of all candidates to unite the party's different factions.

Louis Plamondon supported the Chretien government's choice of Dyane Adam to become Canada's official language commissioner in 1998, saying that she would be "tougher" than her predecessor Victor Goldbloom.

Louis Plamondon endorsed Adam's criticism of the Chretien government in 2000, when she wrote that it was not sufficiently committed to defending official bilingualism.

Louis Plamondon strongly opposed the Clarity Act legislation introduced by intergovernmental affairs minister Stephane Dion in 1999, arguing that it would create confusion in any future referendum on Quebec sovereignty.

Shortly before he was sworn in, Louis Plamondon published a short book entitled Le mythe Paul Martin.

Louis Plamondon argued that Martin would become an ally of United States president George W Bush, neglect the low-income citizens of Canada and Quebec, and favour the interests of English Canada.

Martin's supporters dismissed the work as a negative campaign ploy lacking any progressive vision, and Liberal MP Don Boudria asked the speaker of the House of Commons to investigate whether Louis Plamondon had broken parliamentary rules by using publicly funded research staff to help compile the book.

Louis Plamondon was chosen as BQ caucus chair in the new parliament.

Louis Plamondon said that most Bloc MPs wanted Duceppe to stay in federal politics but would respect his decision one way or the other.

Louis Plamondon was elected to a seventh term in the 2006 federal election, as the Conservative Party won a minority government under the leadership of Stephen Harper.

Widely respected as an electoral strategist, Louis Plamondon later prepared an internal brief examining why the Bloc lost seats in the Quebec City area to the Conservatives.

Louis Plamondon stayed as leader of the Bloc, and Plamondon helped ensure his successful transition back to the federal scene.

Louis Plamondon rejected this, arguing that Bouchard was loyal to Mulroney until resigning in protest against the government's handling of the Meech Lake Accord.

Louis Plamondon criticized Jean Chretien later in the year, when Chretien wrote in his memoirs that he would not have recognized a narrow sovereigntist victory in the 1995 referendum.

Louis Plamondon was re-elected to an eighth term in the 2008 election as the Conservatives won a second consecutive minority government.

Louis Plamondon was again chosen as BQ caucus chair and, as the longest-serving member of the House of Commons, was recognized as Dean of the House.

Louis Plamondon presided over the Commons when it re-elected Peter Milliken as its speaker in October 2008 and acknowledged the irony that an MP from a sovereigntist party would hold this position.

Louis Plamondon was returned by the narrowest margin of his career in the 2011 federal election following a strong challenge from the New Democratic Party.

Louis Plamondon was chosen as the Bloc's acting house leader and, in the absence of a full-time leader, became its main parliamentary spokesperson.

Louis Plamondon remains Dean of the House and presided over the Commons when it chose Andrew Scheer to be Milliken's successor as speaker on June 2,2011; the Harper-led Conservatives had won a majority government at the election.

Louis Plamondon was the Bloc candidate in his riding for the 2015 Canadian federal election, and was the only Bloc MP elected in 2011 to be running under the party banner again.

Louis Plamondon was re-elected to a tenth term in the House of Commons, presiding over the House as it elected Geoff Regan as speaker; the Liberals had won a majority government under the leadership of Justin Trudeau.

Louis Plamondon was reelected to an 11th term in October 2019, to retain his position as Dean of the House and preside over the election of Anthony Rota as speaker.

Louis Plamondon was appointed the Library of Parliament committee and caucus vice-chair in the Bloc Quebecois Shadow Cabinet.

In 2023, Louis Plamondon eclipsed Herb Gray as the longest-serving dean of the House, with 15 years in the role.