Stéphane Dion

Stéphane Dion  link Wikidata (Diplomat, deep state operative)
Born	Stéphane Maurice Dion 28 September 1955 Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	Laval University, Sciences Po
Children	1 daughter
Spouse	Janine Krieber
Party	Liberal Party of Canada
Canadian diplomat who attended the 1998 Bilderberg as Canada/President of the Privy Council

Stéphane Maurice Dion is a Canadian diplomat, academic and former politician. He attended the 1998 Bilderberg meeting.

Background

His father was Léon Dion, was a Quebec academic and staunch federalist. Consulted many times by several Quebec politicians, foremost among whom is Robert Bourassa, he acquired the nickname of "confessor". His mother, Denyse (née Kormann), was a real-estate agent born in Paris, France, and Stéphane holds dual citizenship.

Education

He studied political science at Université Laval in the department co-founded by his father. Dion spent four years in Paris with his wife, studying public administration under the supervision of noted sociologist Michel Crozier.

Marriage

While studying, he married Janine Krieber, a Canadian political scientist, studying "terrorism" and international security. She later taught political science and sociology at Royal Military College Saint-Jean.

Career

Before entering politics, Dion was a professor of political science at the Université de Montréal from 1984 until 1996. His research focused on Canadian federalism and public administration. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., during a 1990–91 sabbatical leave.

Originally supporting Québec independence, after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord in 1990, Dion converted to federalism, as he later recounted to journalist Michel Vastel, occurred as he was preparing for a presentation in Washington:

I sat down at my computer at 11 o'clock, and, at noon, I had a text that was so interesting that the Americans wanted to publish it. It was on that day that I realized I was truly a federalist.

Throughout his tenure in government, Dion held a number of portfolios. He was first named Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs by Prime Minister Chrétien in 1996, following the aftermath of the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum. His reference question to the Supreme Court of Canada, produced Reference Re Secession of Quebec and his Clarity Act, which provided guidelines for subsequent referendums.

He returned to the backbench in 2003 when Paul Martin became the prime minister. After the 2004 election however, he returned to Cabinet as Minister of Environment, where he was in charge of implementing the Kyoto Protocol and chaired United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change when Montreal hosted the UN climate conference in 2005.

The Liberal government lost the 2006 election and Martin resigned as leader. Dion campaigned to replace him and subsequently won the party leadership election. Dion ran on an environmental platform in the 2008 federal election, but was defeated by the Conservatives led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in one of the Liberals' worst electoral showings.

After a subsequent parliamentary dispute, he was replaced as leader by Michael Ignatieff. Dion continued to sit as the member of Parliament for Saint-Laurent. In 2015, the Liberal Party returned to power and Dion was named Minister of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, until 2017, when he left politics to become a diplomat.

Dion was Ambassador to Germany and from 2017 until June 2022. He was also appointed special envoy to the European Union. In 2022 he was appointed Canada's Ambassador to France and Monaco while retaining his role as special envoy to the European Union.

References

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