Claude Beauchamp

Claude Beauchamp is a journalist, publisher, and political activist in the Canadian province of Quebec.

Beauchamp began his career as a financial writer for La Presse and served as assistant publisher and editor-in-chief of Le Soleil in the late 1970s. He became president and general manager of Publications Les Affaires Inc. in 1980, one year after the company purchased the business journal Les Affaires. Beauchamp relaunched the journal as a tabloid and later oversaw the company's purchase of smaller, niche-oriented papers such as Quebec Construction, Revue Commerce, Quebec Yachting, VeliMag, Voile Libre, Ski Quebec, and Sports Marketing Canada. Corporate revenues rose under Beauchamp's leadership from less than $1 million in 1980 to $13 million in 1985. He remarked on his success in November 1985, "The market was there for years, but nobody was serving it."

Beauchamp was awarded the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society's Olivar-Asselin Award for excellence in journalism in 1984. Two years later, he presided over a Montreal economic summit called by mayor Jean Drapeau. Between 1987 and 1990, he launched English-language papers entitled This Week in Business and Good Times, The Magazine for Successful Retirement, and oversaw the purchase of a French-language seniors' weekly called Le temps de vivre. He resigned as president of Publications Les Affaires Inc. in 1990.

In late 1990, Beauchamp was named as co-chair of a "rescue brigade" set up by the Quebec government via the Société de developpement industrielle du Québec to provide assistance for Quebec companies threatened by the financial downturn of the early 1990s. Beauchamp described the program as an "extraordinary success" in June 1991, saying that it had overseen loans to 158 companies.

Beauchamp began hosting the financial issues program "Capital Action" on the Réseau de l'information television network in 1995. He resigned from this position in 2004.

In September 1991, Beauchamp became president of the newly formed Regroupement économie et constitution (Group for the Economy and the Constitution), an alliance of business leaders whose purpose was to promote private sector growth in a framework of renewed Canadian federalism. Beauchamp said the group would promote federalism in Quebec while also explaining Quebec's needs to the rest of Canada. He added that, in the view of his organization, "the fundamental problems of Quebec and Canada are first of all economic, not political or constitutional," and that sustained financial growth would be impossible in an unstable political climate. In December 1991, he proposed the creation of a "Council of Federation" with mixed federal and provincial representation, to oversee a new Canadian economic union.

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