Born on June 24, 1958 in Sherbrooke, Quebec, he was elected Member of Parliment for Sherbrooke, in 1984 and was appointed to Brian Mulroney's cabinet as secretary of state in 1984. In 1991 he became Enviroment Minister. He ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party after Mulroney's retirement but lost to Defence Minister Kim Campbell. After the 1993 election, in which all but two of the Conservative party's candidates lost their seats, Charest was elected party leader.
In the 1997 election the Conservative party recived 19% of the vote, but won only 20 seats out of 301. A year later Charest left federal politics to become leader of the Quebec Liberal Party. In the provicial election later that year, the Liberals received more votes than the incumbant Parti Quebecois, but the PQ won enough seats to form a majority government. In 2003 Charest was elected premier of Quebec, ending nine years of rule by the PQ.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump