Lise Thibault (born April 2, 1939) is a Canadian civil servant who was appointed the 27th Lieutenant Governor of Quebec on January 30, 1997. As a former Vice-Regal representative of Elizabeth II, as Queen in Right of Quebec, she is styled The Honourable for life.
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Born in Saint-Roch-de-l'Achigan, Quebec, Thibault, she was the eldest daughter of Paul Trudel and Laurenza Wolfe. She was educated at the Académie Marie-Anne de Montréal, and then went on to teachers' college at Cégep de Saint-Jérôme. She married married René Thibault in 1959.[1]
Thibault taught with the adult education department of the Milles-Îles and Des Écores school boards from 1973 to 1978. She worked for Télé-Métropole from 1977 to 1981. From 1982 to 1984 she was a host and researcher at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as for programs about family and community issues. She was the vice president for Quebec's Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CSST) from 1987 to 1993. She was President and CEO of the Office des personnes handicapées du Québec from 1993 to 1995.[1]
On the advice of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, the Governor General appointed her Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, following the resignation of Jean-Louis Roux in 1997. She became Quebec's first female viceroy, and the first disabled lieutenant governor in Canada; Thibault was permanently disabled in a tobogganing accident as a teenager, and uses a wheelchair. In February 2005 Madame Thibault suffered a stroke. She was one of the longest serving lieutenant governors in Canadian history, serving for over ten years.
In 2007, she was accused of spending beyond the limits of her expense account. Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he would recommend the appointment of a new Lieutenant Governor after the provincial election; it was said by the Prime Minister's Office that the decision to replace Thibault had nothing to do with her spending. The appointment of her successor, Pierre Duchesne, was announced on May 18, 2007.[2] He was sworn in on June 7, 2007.
Questions on her spending continued after her departure, with federal and provincial auditors general pointing to $700,000 in unjustified expenses (CBC). The files were turned over to the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for investigation. She was criminally charged for offenses involving fraud, breach of trust, forgery and fabrication of false documents related to the misspending of public funds during her ten years in office. [3]
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by Jean-Louis Roux |
Lieutenant Governor of Quebec 1997–2007 |
Succeeded by Pierre Duchesne |
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