Mr. Couillard has some troubled areas in his past, at the very least some decisions that were not all that clear.

[…] There is also the fact that he accepted an advisory role to the Saudi Minister of Health. One could say he that had the right to go and earn money wherever he might choose, particularly since he had already been a practicing neurosurgeon in Saudi Arabia.

This kind of choice leaves us with an uneasy feeling. What would we have said of a Quebec doctor becoming the advisor to the governments of Franco, Mussolini or Stalin? The Saudi dictatorship is no better than these regimes in terms of cruelty, and human rights abuse.

Saudi Arabia is one of the countries in the world where women are the most mistreated. It is the main exporter of Wahhabism, the murderous ideology behind Islamic radicalism. Jews have no more right to live there than they had in ‘judenfrei’ Germany conceived by the Nazis.

Mr. Couillard, it must be said, is in good company. Canada maintains diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and Brian Mulroney led a commercial mission there in 2010, at the end of which he made a vibrant plea for an increased ‘rapprochement’ between the two countries.

Oil speaks louder than morality.