The "Lobster Pot" story

In the summer of 1995, Hébert broke the story in La Presse that the 1995 Quebec referendum question's guarantee of an offer of partnership with the rest of Canada before declaring sovereignty following a "Yes" vote was a sham. Hébert wrote that in a June 13 meeting with fifteen foreign diplomats, Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau had stated that what mattered most was to get a majority vote from Quebec citizens for the proposal to secede from Canada because with that, Quebecers would be trapped "like lobsters thrown in boiling water" (in French: "comme des homards dans l'eau bouillante").^[5]

At the time, Parizeau was in France and in his place Quebec's deputy premier, Bernard Landry, who was not present at the meeting, declared categorically that the report was false. However, Hébert clarified her sources, stating that the information had been given to Foreign Affairs Canada in an official briefing by Jan Fietelaars, the Ambassador from the Netherlands who had been a participant at the meeting; in addition, she had backed up the claim by having it confirmed by three others: Ambassador Christian Fellens of Belgium, who was also present, and two other diplomatic attendees who spoke off the record. The remark hampered support for the "Yes" side as a result.^[6]

Pundit and author

Currently, Hébert is a national affairs writer with the Toronto Star as well as a guest columnist for Le Devoir and L'actualite. She appears frequently on CBC Television's The National as a member of the At Issue political panel hosted by Rosemary Barton alongside fellow panelists Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj. Hébert is also a regular participant in various other French and English-language television and radio current affairs programs.^[2][7]

Hébert received the 2005 Public Service Citation of the Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service of Canada (APEX). In February 2006, the Public Policy Forum voted her the Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism.^[3] She delivered the Michener Lecture at Queen's University in 2008.

In June 2006, Hébert took two months' leave of absence from the Toronto Star to write her first book, French Kiss: Stephen Harper's Blind Date with Quebec (Knopf Canada, February 2007, ISBN 978-0-676-97907-7). French Kiss received shortlist honours for the 2008 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction.^[1]

In September 2014, her second book was released, The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and the Day that Almost Was (in French, Confessions post-référendaires: Les acteurs politiques de 1995 et le scénario d'un oui). The book, cowritten with Jean Lapierre, was a shortlisted nominee for the 2015 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.^[8]