René Lévesque
Journalist and former Premier of QuebecWikipedia
35
MENTIONS
27
EPISODES
18
PODCASTS
Search complete. 35 mentions across 27 episodes found for "René Lévesque".
Sep 21, 2026
Paul GottPANELIST
Well, I mean, I don't know.
Paul GottPANELIST
It's kind of true in a way, but I mean, who cares? I mean, the PQ hasn't been René Lévesque's PQ pretty much since René Lévesque gave up the party.
Paul GottPANELIST
You know, you don't have to go back.
Paul GottPANELIST
You don't have to go to PSPP.
Paul GottPANELIST
Pauline Marois and many leaders before that were all very... very much to the right as opposed to the René Lévesque left-wing party.
Paul GottPANELIST
And that's why we have Quebec Solidaire.
Paul GottPANELIST
They split off from the PQ because they were the left wing of the party.
Ian BoothbyHOST
I was like, oh, I used to draw your cartoons when I was like seven.
Ian BoothbyHOST
And one of my little tricks that I would do that would impress adults was, do you want to see a drawing of René Lévesque? And then I would draw a picture of René Lévesque.
Ian BoothbyHOST
And a six-year-old drawing René Lévesque is kind of cool.
Ian BoothbyHOST
And so I drew it in front of him.
Ian BoothbyHOST
And he was
Ian BoothbyHOST
And I was like, this was a long time coming, this compliment.
Ian BoothbyHOST
Something you hear 53 years later is pretty good.
Ian BoothbyHOST
In fact, I got a print from him that was one of his favorite or one of his most beloved cartoons, which is René Lévesque saying, okay, everybody take a Valium.
Robert LibmanGUEST
Without mentioning Richard Laroche, yeah.
Aaron RandHOST
And he mentioned Jacques Carizon, of course, he mentioned René Levesque.
Aaron RandHOST
That's great governments.
Aaron RandHOST
And I thought to myself, were they great governments? And if you go back to the referendum in the 80s, when René Levesque was prime minister, premier here, how many people left Quebec?
Robert LibmanGUEST
Well, Anglophones, but there's a lot of affection in the legend of René Lévesque, so invoking René Lévesque's name only works to his benefit, I think.
Robert LibmanGUEST
He also mentioned Jacques Parizeau.
Freeway FrankHOST
Carney thinking that having a, let's call it a sovereignty association.
Freeway FrankHOST
Remember when Quebec wanted that? Remember when René Lévesque back in the day suggested that once Quebec would be independent, would still have a sovereignty association with Canada meaning Quebec would still be independent and sovereign but an association meaning still use probably Canadian money and still be not part of Canada independent but an association which is exactly what I'm describing this relationship as this is a sovereignty because we're still a sovereign country association with the European Union that's my guess as to what the heck associate member would even mean.
Freeway FrankHOST
I looked that up.
Freeway FrankHOST
It didn't even make any sense to me because what it sounds like to me, we would be a member of the EU.
Gary MarGUEST
Um, and you know, I, I, I engage with people that, you know, advocate for a separation, and I ask them, uh, "Who was the minister of economic development for the province of Ontario in the 1990s?" And they say, "Well, I have no idea." And I say, "Well, you actually do.
Gary MarGUEST
It's, it was René Lévesque." Hundreds of companies left the province of Quebec and the city of Montreal.
Gary MarGUEST
They never came back, and, uh, and that remains true today.
Gary MarGUEST
And so merely asking the question as to whether or not, uh, the province should separate will have an impact on capital, which always looks for certainty.
Ainslie MacLellanHOST
Now, unfortunately for the Democratic Alliance, they did not win any seats in that election.
Ainslie MacLellanHOST
René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois, of course, defeated Robert Bourassa and the Liberals.
Ainslie MacLellanHOST
The Democratic Alliance pretty much disappeared after that.
Ainslie MacLellanHOST
In more recent years as well, we have seen with the CAQ's Bill 21, with Bill 96, as you mentioned, the use of the Notwithstanding Clause.
speaker_1NARRATOR
having a spectacular one wherever you are and welcome to The Big Five on the Elias Mack
Elias MakosHOST
From our studios on the corner of Papineau and René Lévesque, let's get to it.
Elias MakosHOST
Here's what we've got in store for you today.
Elias MakosHOST
No knockout punches in a boisterous debate, plus residents in St. Henry fight on the streets over supervised drug use sites.
Steve PaikinHOST
Uh, you'll re- well remember, uh, Pierre Trudeau leading the effort in the early 1980s to repatriate our Constitution from the United Kingdom with an accompanying Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that charter has been one of the most, uh, I guess, admired aspects of what it means to be a Canadian, uh, for, uh, 44 years now.
Steve PaikinHOST
So my question is, given that Quebec didn't sign the Constitution, René Lévesque did not sign it, should Trudeau have gone ahead and done it anyway?
Carol OffGUEST
anyway?Well, he did, didn't he? He went ahead with it anyway.
Steve PaikinHOST
But should he have?
Carol OffGUEST
Uh, well, I think given th- th- uh, this hindsight is, is useless here because it was just so many things going on.
Carol OffGUEST
Uh, as he stated, and it was true, that there was, uh, if you're going to patriate the Constitution at that particular p- m- moment, there's no way Quebec would have signed on to anything that was short of, of, well, they- practically independence.
Carol OffGUEST
And so René Lévesque was not a, a team player in that sense.
Carol OffGUEST
And so w- if he wanted to do it at that particular time, he had to do it without, uh, René Lévesque's signature.
Matthew RankinGUEST
Um, 'cause I was really interested in how... [lip smacks] You know, all these great events of Quebec history in the 1970s are so interesting, right? Like the rise of the Parti Québécois, the referendum, the repatriation.
Matthew RankinGUEST
We have always, these have always been implotted in film and, and I don't know, even in the way we write history as a, as a confrontation between Pierre Elliott and, uh, René Lévesque, you know? And, and-
Jeff BulmerHOST
Mm-hmm
Matthew RankinGUEST
...
Ian BoothbyHOST
So I tried to find as many cats as possible.
Ian BoothbyHOST
And then I would... copy the drawings of René Levesque and Pierre Trudeau and what have you as best I could.
Ian BoothbyHOST
But I loved finding the cats and I want to know who the editorial cartoonist is who used to hide cats in their work.
Ian BoothbyHOST
I'm going to write that down so I'll look that up.
17 more episodes mention René Lévesque.
Create an account to see the whole feed, search across every transcript, and follow the entities you care about.