Translating the printemps érable

Tommy Chouinard      August 2, 2012

Original French text: http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/elections-quebec-2012/201208/02/01-4561719-jean-charest-se-donne-810-dans-la-lutte-contre-la-corruption.php

His adversaries accuse him of being the leader of a corrupt government, but Jean Charest gives himself 8 out of 10 in the fight against corruption. 

“Go look at the collection of laws and regulations we adopted.  It is hard not to arrive at the conclusion that we did everything we could.  No government has done more to fight corruption and collusion in the construction industry,” he affirmed in a press conference on Thursday.  Journalists pressed him to give himself a score: “We give ourselves a good score, 8 out of 10,” he said.  Earlier, in an interview he gave to a Quebec radio station, he gave himself the same score for the health file.

Jean Charest recalled his creation of a permanent anti-corruption squad, changes to party financing laws and measures to control fraud in the construction industry.

In his opinion, Pauline Marois isn’t one to be giving lessons: “Go look at the financing of her leadership race.  She took money illegally from miners.  The 2006 Moisan report says that, in the government where she worked, she organized illegal fundraising from premier’s office.”

He accuses Pauline Marois and Francois Legault of being “a broken record” on corruption because “they have nothing else to say.”  ”Pauline Marois likes to talk about this more than the economy.  She likes to repeat her talking points more than she likes to talk about her referendum.”  

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Translated from the original French by Translating the printemps érable.

*Translating the printemps érable is a volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media’s extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media that has been published in French into English. These are amateur translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be desired. If you find any important errors in any of these texts, we would be very grateful if you would share them with us at translatingtheprintempsderable@gmail.com. Please read and distribute these texts in the spirit in which they were intended; that of solidarity and the sharing of information.