[2][3] He became a Quebec nationalist in his youth and joined the Rassemblement pour l'Indépendance Nationale (RIN) on the recommendation of party leader Pierre Bourgault in the 1960s.
He also rented space in his Montreal nightclub to René Lévesque, who merged his own Mouvement Souveraineté-Association with the RIN and a third group to create the Parti Québécois in 1969.
[citation needed] In 1981, the federal government of Pierre Trudeau reached an agreement with all provincial premiers except Lévesque to patriate the Canadian constitution.
In a subsequent legislative debate, Blais likened the constitutional agreement to the 1759 battle of the Plains of Abraham and compared Trudeau and the other premiers to General James Wolfe, who "climbed the banks of the Saint Lawrence in the middle of the night to attack Montcalm and his sleeping soldiers.
Some party members favoured a hardline stance, while others sought to win increased autonomy for Quebec within the Canadian federation (a position known as the "beau risque").
[citation needed] Blais served as parliamentary assistant to the minister of cultural communities and immigration from February 12 to October 23, 1985.
[citation needed] Blais was re-elected in the 1985 provincial election as the PQ was defeated by the Quebec Liberal Party.
[7] He criticized the Liberal government's passage of a law guaranteeing English-language health and social services in 1985, on the grounds that it would give Quebec's anglophone population the "hope of becoming once again a dominant minority.
[18] (A representative of the Public Service Alliance of Canada responded that a promise would not suffice and demanded a signed legal document.
[citation needed] When Lucien Bouchard succeeded Parizeau as premier in January 1996, one of his first decisions was to eliminate the "regional delegate" positions.