A lawyer by profession, Joyal served as vice-president of the
Quebec wing of the
Liberal Party of Canada. He was first elected to the
House of Commons of Canada in the
1974 general election and remained a Liberal
member of Parliament for ten years. In 1978, Joyal, along with a group of concerned Montreal citizens that included
Nick Auf der Maur and Robert Keaton, co-founded the
Municipal Action Group ("MAG"). Joyal was particularly well known at the time for having supported L’Association des gens de l’air, a group which was criticizing the lack of spoken French by airport controllers. Joyal led the newly formed MAG and ran for mayor against the incumbent, Jean Drapeau. MAG succeeded in electing one member to Montreal council (auf der Maur), but Drapeau's party won 52 seats. As Joyal had not resigned his federal seat, he returned to Ottawa. Following the
1980 general election, Joyal served as co-chair of the Joint Committee on the Patriation of the
Canadian Constitution. In 1982, he joined the
Cabinet of
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as a
Minister of State. He was appointed
Secretary of State for Canada in 1982. When
John Turner succeeded Trudeau in June 1984, Joyal remained in cabinet as Secretary of State. Joyal lost his seat in the
1984 election that defeated the Turner government. On November 26, 1997, Joyal was appointed to the
Senate of Canada on the recommendation of Prime Minister
Jean Chrétien and served on a number of committees specialising in legal and constitutional affairs. With the
Senate Liberal Caucus facing losing official
parliamentary caucus status in 2020 with a third of its caucus facing mandatory retirements on their turning age 75, Senator
Joseph Day announced that the
Senate Liberal Caucus had been dissolved and a new
Progressive Senate Group formed in its wake, with the entire membership joining the new group, including Joyal. He is an Officer of the
National Order of Quebec and is also a
Chevalier in
France's
Légion d’Honneur. He is an expert art collector and appraiser. In recent years, he has used his knowledge of the art world and his influence on the Senate and the government to get Parliament to assemble a collection of original portraits of the
kings of France for the period during which Canada was first explored and colonized by France. In 2004, these paintings were placed on the walls of the Salon de la Francophonie, featured in the Centre Block of the
Parliament Buildings, as companions to the portraits of the
British and then
Canadian monarchs who had been the sovereigns of the territories forming Canada since 1763. He retired from the Senate reaching the age of 75, after more than 22 years of representing Kennebec on January 31, 2020. ==Electoral record==