He was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1981 to 1988, and a cabinet minister in the New Democratic Party government of Howard Pawley from 1983 to 1988.
Agathe and was educated at St. Boniface College and the University of Manitoba, working as an educator-administrator before entering public life.
[2] He directed special projects in the Bureau de l'Éducation française for the Department of Education, and was a teacher in the St. Boniface school division.
He also spent five years in Africa as a teacher with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA),[3] and was a member of the Franco-Manitoban Society.
He won a fairly easy re-election in the 1986 election, and retained his cabinet positions until the NDP government was unexpectedly defeated in the legislature in 1988.