Early career Fortier ran in the
1998 Progressive Conservative leadership election but came in last with 4% of the vote. Fortier was a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Montreal-area riding of
Laval West during the
2000 federal election placing fourth. In 2003, he was co-chair of Harper's campaign to lead the new Conservative Party. Fortier and veteran MP
John Reynolds were the co-chairs of the Conservative campaign in the 2006 election.
Cabinet minister Fortier was appointed to Cabinet as
Minister of Public Works on 6 February 2006, the day
Stephen Harper's
minority government took office. In a cabinet reshuffle in June 2008, he shifted to the International Trade portfolio. A financier and lawyer from
Montreal, he had not been elected as a member of the
House of Commons at the time he was appointed, nor was he a member of the Senate. Harper announced that Fortier would be appointed to the Senate, but would be expected to step down and run for a seat in the House of Commons at the
next election. On February 27, 2006, Fortier was formally summoned to the Senate. This practice is unusual in modern Canada, but there is precedent for such a practice: in 1979, former Prime Minister
Joe Clark appointed Quebec Senator
Jacques Flynn as
Minister of Justice because of his lack of representation in that province. In 1972, when Trudeau failed to win a single seat west of Manitoba, he appointed senators to cabinet as well. 19th century Prime Ministers
John Abbott and
Mackenzie Bowell served their entire terms in government as Senators. Harper intended for Fortier to represent Montreal in Cabinet. No Montreal-area
riding has elected a Conservative or any member of the party's predecessors—the
Progressive Conservatives, the
Canadian Alliance and the
Reform Party—since
1988. Since then, right-of-centre candidates have rarely even competed in Montreal except in landslides. As a former member of the Canadian Cabinet, he is a member of the
Queen's Privy Council for Canada and thus has the right to the style
The Honourable and the post-nominal designation PC for life. He is the brother of former
Quebec Liberal Party MNA
Margaret Delisle.
Controversy over Senate appointment Fortier's appointment to Cabinet drew considerable controversy. The main charge was that Fortier's appointment was a significant departure from past Conservative policy. The Conservatives, and before them Reform and the Alliance, had strongly opposed Senate appointments and unelected Cabinet ministers while in
opposition. Opponents of Fortier's appointment also note that in doing so, Harper broke a promise made on
Radio-Canada television during the election campaign. As a Senator, Fortier did not attend
Question Period to respond to questions from the opposition parties in the House. His
Parliamentary Secretaries,
James Moore at Public Works and
Gerald Keddy at International Trade, answered questions on his behalf. Fortier was subject to questioning in the Senate, but the
Bloc Québécois and
New Democratic Party were not represented in that body (One senator,
Lillian Dyck, was appointed as an NDP Senator, but the NDP opposes the existence of the Senate and does not recognize her as part of its caucus.The Department of Public Works was at the centre of the
sponsorship scandal and spends billions of dollars per year, and the Conservatives singled the department out for criticism as an example of what they saw as a lack of accountability. Fortier himself claimed he didn't run for a seat because "I didn't want to run in the election. I had a great career, five young kids, and so it wasn't the right situation for me to run when the election came around. That's just the simple truth." [https://web.archive.org/web/20060220113117/http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060207/michael_fortier_060207 In his
blog,
Andrew Coyne commented that "it is a fine thing for a Prime Minister elected on a platform of democratic accountability, who promised he would not appoint anyone who was not elected, either to cabinet or to the Senate, to then turn around and do both at one go."
Jeffrey Simpson of
The Globe and Mail wrote that "with breathtaking insouciance, Prime Minister Stephen Harper jettisoned, or at least delayed, his promise to only elect senators". [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060207.wxsimpson07/BNStory/National/home However, the
Toronto Star's
Chantal Hébert defended the appointments of Fortier and Emerson to Cabinet, arguing that the problem is with the
first-past-the-post system which allows entire parts of the country (such as large cities) to be unrepresented in government. For example, the Conservatives were unable to win any seats in
Toronto,
Montreal and
Vancouver in the last election, while the Liberals have only won four seats in
Edmonton since
1968 and have only elected three MPs from
Calgary since
Alberta joined Confederation in 1905. Michael Fortier was loudly booed at the opening ceremonies of the
2006 World Outgames, an
LGBT sporting event and cultural festival held in Montreal. The Conservative senator's speech was interrupted as he attempted to welcome the estimated crowd of 40,000 at the
Olympic Stadium that evening. Montreal Mayor
Gérald Tremblay, who was greeted with sustained applause, intervened (unsuccessfully) to urge the crowd to listen "with respect" to the representative of the Canadian government.
Promise to seek election On November 21, 2006, Fortier announced that he would seek election to the House of Commons in the riding of
Vaudreuil-Soulanges in the
next federal election, which he lost. The opposition parties pressured him to run in the by-election on November 27 in
Repentigny. However, Fortier repeated his original promise to run in the next general election.
Fortier dismisses advisor connected to Julie Couillard Fortier confirmed June 11, 2008 that he dismissed senior Quebec adviser Bernard Cote after learning that Cote briefly dated
Julie Couillard last year while she was attempting to win a government contract. Cote had to resign because of a perceived conflict of interest, since Public Works was handling the building contracts Couillard was bidding on, Fortier said. Fortier told reporters that Cote, "should have actually recused himself from this matter, which he didn't do, hence his resignation." Couillard sparked the resignation of foreign minister
Maxime Bernier in May 2008 when she went public with the fact her former paramour had forgotten classified NATO briefing documents at her Montreal home for more than a month.
2008 federal election While he chose not to run in an earlier by-election, Fortier was a candidate for the riding of
Vaudreuil-Soulanges in the
2008 federal election, in fulfilment of his promise made at the time of his 2006 Senate appointment. In order to fulfill this promise, on September 8, 2008, he resigned from the Senate to run in the general election. On election night, he was soundly defeated by popular
Bloc Québécois incumbent
Meili Faille, who captured 41.34% of the vote compared to Fortier's 23.69%. == Electoral record ==