Pierre Paradis (born 16 July 1950) is a politician in the Canadian province of Quebec. He represented Brome-Missisquoi in the National Assembly of Quebec from 1980 to 2018. A member of the Liberal Party, he served as a cabinet minister in the governments of Robert Bourassa, Daniel Johnson Jr. and Philippe Couillard.
Paradis's brother, Denis Paradis, is a federal politician who served in the governments of Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau. The Paradis brothers are political allies.
Paradis was born in Bedford in Quebec's Eastern Townships. He earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Ottawa (1973) and later took graduate studies in bills of exchange and business law at the same institution. He was called to the Quebec Bar in 1975 and worked as a lawyer before entering politics, specializing in constitutional and administrative cases. At age twenty-seven, he won a case before the Supreme Court of Canada against proposed limits on egg marketing.
Before joining the Liberal Party, Paradis was a member of the Union Nationale. He was a riding association president in the 1976 provincial election and later served on the party's provincial executive. He left when he learned that Union Nationale leader Rodrigue Biron was planning to support the "Oui" side in Quebec's 1980 referendum on sovereignty.
Paradis was elected to the National Assembly in a by-election held shortly after the 1980 referendum. He was re-elected in the 1981 general election. The Parti Québécois was in government during this period, and Paradis sat as a member of the official opposition.
Paradis was appointed as his party's labour critic in October 1982. He increased his profile in early 1983 by asking rigorous questions of Parti Québécois members during a televised hearing into the role played by Quebec Premier René Lévesque's office in approving a contentious out-of-court settlement.
There were rumours that Paradis would run for the Progressive Conservative Party in the 1984 Canadian federal election, although these ultimately came to nothing.
Claude Ryan resigned as Liberal leader after his party's loss in the 1981 provincial election. A leadership convention was scheduled for 1983. Despite having a low public profile, Paradis declared himself a candidate.
Paradis centred his campaign around three principles: "respect for individual rights and freedoms", "the leading role of private enterprise in our economy", and "a firm commitment to [Canadian] federalism." He also called for the Liberal Party to change its image and identify more with the province's regions. He favoured the sale of some crown corporations and was considered the most right-wing of the leadership candidates. This notwithstanding, he also supported Quebec's universal medicare policy; one newspaper article described him as ideologically closer to Brian Mulroney, the leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives, than he was to Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States.
Several reports from the campaign described Paradis as a natural politician with effective organizational skills. One article referred to him as being "from the meat-cleaver school of oratory" with "no shadings of ambiguity."
Robert Bourassa won the 1983 Quebec Liberal Party leadership election with seventy-five per cent of delegate support at the convention. Paradis finished a distant second, narrowly ahead of third-place candidate Daniel Johnson Jr. Despite his loss, Paradis won the respect of other Liberals and improved his public standing through the campaign. In November 1983, Bourassa appointed him as the party's social affairs critic.
Minister of Labour, Manpower and Income Security
The Liberals won a majority government in the 1985 provincial election, and Bourassa became premier of Quebec for a second time. There were early rumours that he would appoint Paradis as Minister of Agriculture, but this idea was opposed by the Union des producteurs agricoles. Instead, Bourassa appointed Paradis as Minister of Labour and Minister of Manpower and Income Security on 12 December 1985.
Paradis revived a dormant government policy of sending inspectors to the homes of people receiving social assistance in 1986. He said this would reduce the number of erroneous files and likely save the province sixty-eight million dollars in one year. Critics charged that the inspections would lead to invasions of privacy and intimidation. The Ligue des droits et libertés and the Quebec Human Rights Commission strongly opposed the practice, and the Quebec Legal Services Commission argued that mandatory visits were unconstitutional. Paradis responded that the Justice Ministry had determined the visits were legal and that a provincial code of ethics would prevent abuses. Following extensive criticism, the city of Montreal quietly stopped the inspections in January 1988.
Paradis also announced in 1986 that social assistance recipients who owned cottages, boats, second cars, snowmobiles, or houses with more than $50,000 equity would have their rates reduced. While acknowledging that out-of-work adults who had exhausted their unemployment insurance had the right to keep some of their possessions, he added that the government had to set limits on luxury items and that this reform would allow greater payments to the "truly needy."
In late 1987, Paradis introduced further reforms that increased payments for those unfit to work, provided financial assistance to low-paid parents of young children, introduced a tax credit allowing welfare recipients to take minor jobs without jeopardizing their payments, and ended a policy of paying older recipients more than younger recipients. The reforms also required that able-bodied recipients take training, do community work, or accept minor, low-paid jobs; failure to do any of these would result in payment cuts. Paradis argued that the new policy would allow more recipients to enter the workforce; critics argued it would provide a supply of cheap labour for Quebec businesses. A The Globe and Mail summary noted that the bill had both progressive and conservative elements.
Paradis introduced legislation in 1986 to create the Commission de la construction du Québec (CCQ) to oversee Quebec's construction sector. The commission was overseen by representatives from labour, management, and the government and was mandated to issue certificates based on competency. Access to the construction trade had previously been determined by work experience, and Paradis said the new system would provide opportunities for younger workers.
Paradis initiated a back-to-work order in March 1986 that ended a strike of 4,200 blue-collar workers in Montreal. The strike affected garbage collection and road repair, and Paradis argued it had created a safety concern; he also charged that the union neglected its responsibility to provide essential services. In June of the same year, he introduced emergency legislation to end a one-day strike of 100,000 construction workers across the province. In 1987, Paradis led cabinet in suspending the right to strike of maintenance workers in Montreal Transit.