Louis Plamondon

Louis Plamondon (born July 31, 1943) is a Canadian politician who served as the interim speaker of the House of Commons of Canada from September 27 to October 3, 2023.

He has a teaching certificate from L'École normale Maurice L. Duplessis (1964), a Bachelor of Arts degree from Laval University (1968), and a B.A.An.

Shortly after joining the BQ, Plamondon asked the federal government to apologize to the province of Quebec and provide financial compensation for those who were wrongly arrested under the War Measures Act in the 1970 FLQ Crisis.

from the University of Montreal (1976).

He was a math teacher and restaurant owner before entering political life.

Plamondon supported the "oui" side in Quebec's 1980 referendum on sovereignty.

A member of the Bloc Québécois, he has represented Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel (formerly known as Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour and Richelieu) since 1984.

As the longest-serving current member of the House of Commons, Plamondon is Dean of the House, and holds the record as Canada's longest-serving dean.

Plamondon was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1984 federal election, defeating Liberal Party incumbent Jean-Louis Leduc in Richelieu.

The Progressive Conservatives won a landslide majority government in this election under Brian Mulroney's leadership, and Plamondon entered parliament as a government backbencher.

He was associated with the Quebec nationalist wing of his party and soon became known as a maverick.

In 1985, he promoted a partnership between the federal and Quebec governments and the Quebec Federation of Labour's Solidarity Fund.

Two years later, he stood with striking letter carriers in Sorel and criticized his own government's decision to approve replacement workers.

He was prominent among a group of Quebec Tory MPs who tried to reduce the party's reliance on corporate donations.

Ricardo López, a right-wing Quebec Tory MP, once suggested that Plamondon would be more suited to the social democratic New Democratic Party.

In 1986, he criticized justice minister John Crosbie for appointing an anglophone to replace the sole francophone judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal.

He later criticized industry minister Sinclair Stevens for awarding a multimillion-dollar untendered contract to a shipbuilding company in Quebec City.

Plamondon also expressed sympathy with fellow MP Robert Toupin, who left the Progressive Conservatives in May 1986 to sit as an independent.

Plamondon was on the socially liberal wing of the Progressive Conservative Party.

He voted against a motion to reintroduce capital punishment in 1987 and later opposed efforts to restrict abortion services.

He strongly supported the Mulroney government's efforts to strengthen official bilingualism and criticized dissident anglophone Tory MPs who tried to weaken the government's reforms.

Plamondon was also one of the more pro-labour members of the Tory caucus.

Plamondon was re-elected without difficulty in the 1988 federal election, as the Progressive Conservatives won a second majority government across the country.

Over the following year, he became even more strongly aligned with the Quebec nationalist wing of his party.

He supported Quebec premier Robert Bourassa's use of the Canadian constitution's notwithstanding clause to prohibit outdoor English-language signs, and expressed regret that the ban was not extended to indoor signs.

He also criticized D'Iberville Fortier, Canada's official languages commissioner, for suggesting that Quebec was acting in an unjust manner toward its anglophone minority.

Plamondon has won his seat in twelve consecutive federal elections, winning twice as a Progressive Conservative before becoming a founding member of the Bloc Québécois in 1990, after which he has been re-elected ten more times.

Consistent with his nationalist views, Plamondon was a vocal supporter of the Mulroney government's proposed Meech Lake Accord on constitutional reform and opposed Jean Charest's efforts to modify the accord in early 1990.

During this period, Plamondon speculated that sovereignty-association between Quebec and Canada would be "logical and reasonable" if the accord failed and added that he might become a "Quebec-only MP" in that event.

When the accord was rejected in June 1990, Plamondon resigned from the Progressive Conservative caucus and informed the House of Commons that he could no longer support a united Canada.

Plamondon was one of a group of Progressive Conservative and Liberal MPs from Quebec who left their parties after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord.

This group soon coalesced as the Bloc Québécois under the leadership of Lucien Bouchard.

The Bloc was not initially given official recognition in the House of Commons, and its members were designated as independent MPs. Plamondon was recognized as the Bloc's house leader in 1992.

In its original form, the Bloc Québécois was a loose alliance of parliamentarians rather than a formal political party.

Plamondon was one of the first Bloquistes to promote the creation of a strong party organization to challenge the Progressive Conservative Party's Quebec machine in the next federal election.

Others, including Lucien Bouchard, initially favoured a weaker party structure that would simply allow Bloc candidates to have their party designation appear on the ballot.

The vision favoured by Plamondon ultimately won out, and the Bloc became a strong political organization throughout Quebec.

He, along with six other Bloc MPs, resigned from the Bloc's caucus to sit as an independent MP on February 28, 2018 citing conflicts with the leadership style of Martine Ouellet.

He rejoined the Bloc Québécois caucus on September 17, 2018.

Plamondon was born in Saint-Raymond-de-Portneuf, Quebec and is the brother of lyricist Luc Plamondon.