Marie-Louise Tardif cleared by the DPCP, but not yet reinstated in the caucus
Karoline Boucher The Canadian Press CAQ MP Laviolette-Saint -Maurice, Marie-Louise Tardif
Laviolette-Saint-Maurice MLA Marie-Louise Tardif gets off scot-free: She won't face threatening charges, but she's not yet guaranteed to rejoin the elected caucus caquistes.
In a statement sent on Tuesday, the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) indicated that he was “not convinced of a reasonable prospect of conviction in view of the evidence collected” against Mrs. Tardif.
The Sûreté du Québec had indeed investigated threats that it would have made in the middle of the courtroom. She would then have targeted a witness who accredited the words of a former employee of the MP who was suing her for illegal dismissal, according to what the daily Le Nouvelliste had reported.
Following these allegations and the launch of this investigation, Ms. Tardif announced that she was retiring from the caucus of CAQ deputies.
In a press scrum in parliament on Tuesday, Mr. Legault held to emphasize that the DPCP thus considered that Ms. Tardif's remarks were not threats.
But he has not committed to admitting him back into his parliamentary group: the decision is up to the caucus, which should therefore discuss it soon.
“We will discuss it with the caucus, he said. -he assures. It's not just a decision for the leader. […] We will discuss it there. But what I'm telling you is that since there's no charge there, probably she's going to be reinstated.
It was not the first time Ms. Tardif had been at the center of controversy.
In the midst of the election campaign last year, when she sought to make re-elected under the CAQ banner, she told local radio that the party was “still quite restrictive and controlling” and that she did not have the same latitude as if she were an independent.
In 2019, she was blamed by the Ethics Commissioner of the National Assembly for having donated furniture belonging to the Assembly to a community organization of which she was still employed.
