Government ministers Robert Kaplan and Lloyd Axworthy ordered Regalado's arrest and deportation in 1982, charging that his continued presence in Canada was "detrimental to the national interest."
[3] Shortly after Regalado's arrest, Sciortino issued subpoenas ordering Kaplan and Axworthy to testify at an immigration appeal board hearing on the matter.
[7] Sciortino indicated that he hoped a "political solution" would be found permitting Regalado to remain in Canada and indicated that his client was still trying to find out why he had been deemed a "security risk" in the first place.
[15][16] Sciortino ran for the New Democratic Party of Quebec (NDP) in the 1985 provincial election in the predominantly Italian Canadian division of Viau.
In 1987, Sciortino strongly criticized the Canadian government's decision to prevent eighty-five Chilean refugees stranded in Argentina from gaining access to Canada.
[2][19] Late in the campaign, he took part in a press conference called by NDP candidate Jean-Paul Harney to support using the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Constitution to protect Quebec's francophone culture and restrict the use of other languages.
Sciortino finished a fairly strong third on election day, amid a rise in NDP support among Montreal's francophone voters.
The first round of balloting at the first nomination meeting saw Perreault receive 245 votes, compared with 114 for Sciortino, 89 for retired civil servant Claude Bernard, and 71 for Jean-Louis Hérivault.
He supported the sovereigntist option in the 1995 Quebec referendum and, after its narrow defeat, acknowledged that the PQ's outreach efforts to minority communities had not been successful.
[35] On the night of the 1995 referendum, PQ premier Jacques Parizeau delivered a speech that blamed the sovereigntist defeat on "money and the ethnic vote."