Claude Béland: Not Retiring Anytime Soon

At age 75, former Mouvement Desjardins president Claude Béland shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Besides presiding or sitting on over a dozen board of directors of major organizations, he spends much of his time giving talks to various community and business groups on the virtues of “cooperativisme”, entrepreneurship, and social responsibility.

“I’m quite active for 75,” admitted Béland, who has been a quiet resident of TMR for over 50 years. “As long as your health allows you to be active, I prefer to be active.”

In 2000, he stepped down as Mouvement Desjardins head after 13 years. In many ways, he has kept almost as active since then due to high-profile positions on various government commissions and panels that he held during the 1990s.

Since Béland was now more or less “retired,” many people felt that he was then free to sit on various boards and give more speeches. “I never call anybody and ask if they have work for me. People always come to me and I’ll respond to invitations.”

He usually responds to concerns to which he feels particularly close. Béland heads the board of the Quebec Bar’s professional insurance funds, the Association des fondations des établissements de santé du Québec, the Mouvement Démocratie et Citoyenneté, the Conseil éthique de l’industrie québécoise des boissons alcooliques, and the Carrefour de lutte au décrochage scolaire (school dropping out).

The closest activity to a full-time position is as associate professor at UQAM’s human resources and organization department and its first title-holder of its Chair in Economics and Humanism that seeks to clarify the political and social impacts of globalization.

In 2002, Béland was asked to head the provincial commission on reforms to democratic institutions that recommended more of a proportional-representation system for Quebec, among other proposals. The City of Montreal has similarly asked him to work on reforming its electoral system given that boroughs of different populations have the same power.

Never far from the public eye, Béland recently joined several Quebecers of all political stripes to call on the new Liberal-minority government to institute such an electoral system, ensuring that more votes would count in the final results. As a familiar face around Quebec, he was then asked to give a dozen media interviews. He even co-hosts a local weekly radio show on democracy and citizenship on Radio Ville-Marie).

Since his “retirement,” Béland has also become a much sought-after speaker on various topics. Just for the rest of this month, he will give talks to business lawyers, members of the Québec forest cooperatives federation, administrators at Université Laval, entrepreneurs at a mentoring conference, and on health cooperatives to the Conseil de la Coopération du Québec.

When he isn’t travelling around, Béland likes to relax in his TMR home and do some backyard gardening. His father, a building contractor, constructed two houses on a major Town artery for his own family and another dozen on Glencoe in the 1950s.

“It’s wonderful here,” he exclaimed, saying it’s a quiet area with respectful neighbours. “Even though we have a cottage in the Laurentians, my wife and I often say that it’s like living in an urban community in the country.”