Juno News - April 23, 2024


Has Quebec turned on Legault？ (ft. Eric Duhaime)


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

190.67305

Word Count

2,629

Sentence Count

148

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

In this episode of the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference, I sit down with Conservative Party of Quebec Leader Eric Dumas to discuss the immigration crisis in Canada. We talk about the need to decentralize immigration in Canada, the impact of the Trudeau government's immigration policies, and the need for a referendum on immigration.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So I'm here now at the Canada Strong and Free Network conference with the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, Eric Duhem.
00:00:08.060 This has become a little tradition at True North where I sit down with Eric and make him practice his English every year at this conference.
00:00:16.940 And he just happens also to be a speaker every year at this conference.
00:00:19.740 I guess English Canada does have a soft spot for Quebec Conservatives after all.
00:00:25.580 And I don't think there's anything wrong with that personally as a fellow French Canadians.
00:00:30.660 So you're here to talk about immigration, which has become quite a prominent issue with the Trudeau mass immigration agenda just becoming an absolute disaster with, you know, a lot of people in this country right now.
00:00:42.900 Housing prices are up. You have hundreds of people lining up for for jobs.
00:00:47.120 It's just not really sustainable.
00:00:49.240 And I guess Legault is seeing that and Legault has told Trudeau this week that he's going to call a referendum on immigration if Trudeau doesn't act.
00:00:57.980 What are your thoughts on this?
00:00:59.020 Well, the first thing we need to say is that it's true that there's an immigration crisis in Canada.
00:01:03.580 Obviously, we see it in all the regions, but particularly in Quebec.
00:01:07.360 Fifty percent of those who want to come here as refugee are coming in or entering in Quebec.
00:01:12.760 Quebec, it's much more than the percentage of the population that we count within the country.
00:01:18.560 So there is a real problem right now.
00:01:20.840 And that crisis is, of course, exacerbated by the policies and the message of the Trudeau government.
00:01:26.840 I think everybody agrees on that.
00:01:28.700 That being said, having a referendum on the issue is not going to solve the question.
00:01:32.440 There's already a large consensus.
00:01:34.020 All the five parties in Quebec, the main five parties who represent 99 percent of the population, all agree that Quebec should control more its immigration.
00:01:42.980 And that's the speech I came to give today to tell conservatives from all across Canada that we need to make sure that we want to decentralize in terms of immigration.
00:01:53.100 And I saw Danielle Smith, Premier Smith, also had a message last week saying that she wanted more power regarding immigration because we live in a country that is very diverse, very large, very big.
00:02:05.420 The realities in one region compared to the other are very different in matter of housing, in matter of manpower, of linguistic realities.
00:02:13.540 We live in a diverse country, and we need to take that into account in our immigration policies as well.
00:02:19.340 But it's not a referendum that's going to solve the issue.
00:02:21.420 We already know what Quebecers want.
00:02:23.580 What we need to do is to get rid of the Trudeau Liberals.
00:02:26.060 Unfortunately, the Premier Legault cannot say that because his voters are massively voting for the Liberals federally, and he's probably scared politically that it could cost him a few political points.
00:02:35.880 But that's the reality.
00:02:37.160 I mean, we need a change of government.
00:02:39.340 And what I also said today is that, you know, yes, we have an immigration crisis.
00:02:43.980 Yes, we have a housing crisis.
00:02:45.440 Yes, we have an economic crisis.
00:02:47.120 But at the end of the day, we have more than that.
00:02:49.340 We have a political leadership crisis in this country.
00:02:52.940 We have a guy who's been prime minister for too long that is mismanaging every single file that he's touching.
00:02:59.420 And I hope that we're going to have an election the sooner the better, and we can have a new reality that is going to take over.
00:03:05.820 Because the crisis right now is in the PMO.
00:03:09.320 It's in the prime minister's office.
00:03:11.260 There seems to be a lot of frustration for sure, and a lot of people wanting that election to come.
00:03:16.460 I do want to ask, after October 7th in Quebec, we have seen some very disturbing, radical pro-chemist rallies, both in the streets and places like Montreal, but also on university campuses at McGill, at Concordia.
00:03:29.240 Has Logo done enough to address this issue?
00:03:31.760 No.
00:03:32.200 And even at synagogues also, we saw things that were totally unacceptable.
00:03:37.020 Like bullets being.
00:03:37.960 Bullets in schools and synagogues.
00:03:40.560 You know, we need to do much more, and we need to also make sure that, you know, we always take into account, in Quebec in particular, will they speak French?
00:03:50.920 Like the newcomers, are they going to speak French?
00:03:53.060 Well, we now have a policy where the strong majority of immigrants come in Quebec and speak French, often even better than me.
00:03:59.920 But the thing is not, it's not the language problem, it's the cultural problem and the integration problem, because even if they speak the language, they don't feel Canadian in any way, form or shape.
00:04:10.700 And they talk about Canada as your country, it's not their country, even if they're born here after a generation or two.
00:04:16.700 And we saw what the slogans, they've imported the hatred from outside, and that's very concerning.
00:04:22.400 And that's why we should look at other criterias than just the language when we're talking about immigration in Quebec.
00:04:30.360 Yeah, no, for sure.
00:04:31.600 Another issue that's impacting a lot of Canadians right now is the carbon tax.
00:04:36.140 That's become super unaffordable for many people, even after the so-called rebate is kicked in.
00:04:41.680 But in Quebec, there's not even a federal rebate.
00:04:44.360 You met with farmers, because the farmers in Quebec have been standing up and saying, enough is enough, we don't want this tax.
00:04:50.760 Why was it important for you to go and talk to the farmers, and what did the farmers tell you?
00:04:55.720 The farmers are sick and tired.
00:04:57.400 There's also a crisis.
00:04:58.980 I was talking about all those crises emerging everywhere.
00:05:01.600 There's also a farming crisis all across Canada, and even in Europe right now, we can see it.
00:05:08.820 But it's a crisis that is fed by the government.
00:05:11.960 And especially in Quebec, you know, we have a government that says that they want to become the world leaders in terms of environment for our farmers.
00:05:21.040 Well, there's a cost to that.
00:05:22.600 Quebec is one of the poorest states or provinces in North America, but we want to be the world leader in terms of environment.
00:05:29.360 And our farmers right now are paying the price, and it's huge.
00:05:33.820 They have now environmental new taxes.
00:05:36.700 They have all sorts of regulations, all sorts of papers that they need to fill.
00:05:40.720 So their message is, get the government out of my way.
00:05:44.980 That's the main message that they're asking right now, and I think they're totally right to ask that.
00:05:50.140 And I'm concerned about the government and the other parties at the National Assembly, because if you look at what they did with the energy file,
00:05:56.860 and they've adopted a bill saying, oh, we're not going to exploit our natural gas in Quebec, even if we have one of the largest reserves unexploited on Earth, we're not going to touch it.
00:06:06.520 We're going to import 100% of our gas from outside, because we want to make sure that our environmental record looks good.
00:06:14.000 Are they doing the same thing with the agriculture now?
00:06:17.600 Are they telling us that they're going to shut down the industry and try to make sure that we import 100% of what we eat,
00:06:25.080 because we want to make sure that it looks good in terms of our environmental record?
00:06:29.380 That's what I'm concerned about, and that's why I'm with the farmers right now.
00:06:33.180 Right, no, and that is concerning, because as we know, no farmers, no food.
00:06:36.840 It's really that simple.
00:06:37.820 You also recently came out against double mastectomies for young, gender-confused girls,
00:06:45.500 and this came in the midst of this report by Radio-Canada called Trans Express,
00:06:50.480 which I think shocked a lot of people that maybe weren't familiar with how gender-affirming medicine is performed in Canada.
00:06:57.240 Why was that something that you felt the need to speak up on?
00:07:00.020 Because it is a very politically controversial issue.
00:07:02.540 Well, first off, because the parents were really concerned, for those who didn't see the Radio-Canada,
00:07:07.660 this French CBC report, they sent a young girl, 14-year-old girl, to see a physician,
00:07:15.060 and it took her nine minutes to get transition pills, and that was, like, very, very shocking for a lot of people.
00:07:23.080 And I actually also met Premier Higgs from New Brunswick, who was here today,
00:07:28.400 and we talked about that because he's going to table a bill on that same issue as well in the near future.
00:07:35.000 And in Alberta, also, I talked about it with Danielle Smith because she's also doing something out there.
00:07:41.120 We need to protect our kids.
00:07:42.800 I mean, there is currently, you know, it makes no sense that a kid after nine minutes without parental approval
00:07:49.940 could get access to such pills in such an easy way.
00:07:53.860 There's something completely wrong, and that's why I stood up and I talked about it.
00:07:58.000 Even if it's controversial, I think we need to stand up for our principles.
00:08:01.540 Yeah, no, for sure.
00:08:02.840 In reaction to the Danielle Smith announcements, I know the federal Liberals have taken the side of more of the activists,
00:08:09.180 and, for example, Randy Boissoneau, who is an openly gay minister in the Trudeau government,
00:08:14.120 said that this is the NATO movement for the LGBT community, essentially that restricting this sort of health care,
00:08:21.680 which more and more experts are warning about, you know, may not be the solution for some of these kids,
00:08:29.640 is actually an attack on the LGBT community, and that those gay people who support this are almost traitors.
00:08:35.680 What do you make of this?
00:08:36.540 I know you're the first openly gay leader of a political party.
00:08:39.520 You oppose this.
00:08:40.760 Yes.
00:08:41.080 Why is that?
00:08:42.440 And what's your message to those activists to say that you would have to support this because of your sexual orientation?
00:08:46.480 Those activists are completely wrong.
00:08:48.740 First off, it's not because you're gay that you're a socialist.
00:08:52.540 It's not an ideology.
00:08:53.960 It's a sexual orientation.
00:08:55.220 I think that's the first thing that we need to put crystal clear.
00:08:57.620 The second one is we need to look at where were the most progressive policies in that matter.
00:09:03.580 It was in Sweden in particular, but in Scandinavia and even in the UK.
00:09:10.900 And all those countries are currently backtracking because we have very little data because, of course,
00:09:17.640 there's not that many people who do the transition, and it takes a long period of time to figure out what's going on.
00:09:24.800 But the people who were the first ones to implement such policies are now moving backward.
00:09:30.860 And it's coming from the left.
00:09:32.340 It's coming from the people who used to be the activists.
00:09:35.080 So we need to look at what's going on out there and not repeat the same mistake back here in Canada.
00:09:39.820 I wanted to talk about the polls.
00:09:43.920 So in 2022, Legault was re-elected despite, you know, not he was arrogant, in my opinion, at least.
00:09:52.820 You know, he had locked down the province quite extremely, and they rewarded him with quite a majority.
00:09:58.440 Now he would lose pretty badly.
00:10:02.580 What's happened?
00:10:03.540 Why have Quebecers suddenly turned their backs on him?
00:10:05.600 It's been a year now, almost, day to day, that, you know, the slippery slope started for the Legault government.
00:10:12.960 And, yeah, they lost almost half of their supporters within the last year.
00:10:18.160 Why?
00:10:18.780 Because they betrayed people, like, on many issues that they were saying one thing during the election campaign,
00:10:23.620 and they did the exact opposite over the last year.
00:10:26.480 The economy is not going well.
00:10:28.300 Their track record is terrible.
00:10:30.320 The health care system is not fixed.
00:10:32.140 The education system is getting worse and worse.
00:10:34.620 The deficit now this year, $11 billion.
00:10:38.720 Only B.C. is doing worse than us right now in Canada.
00:10:42.240 And we have a government who promised the exact opposite.
00:10:45.060 They were supposed to fix health care.
00:10:46.480 They were supposed to lower our taxes.
00:10:48.400 They were supposed to balance the budgets.
00:10:50.820 They were supposed to, you know, make sure that the education system was even better.
00:10:55.300 On every single front, Quebecers now feel that, you know, it's worse off than before the CAC arrived.
00:11:01.860 And that's why they're going down.
00:11:03.460 If there were an election today, the Conservatives, we would win five seats.
00:11:06.300 It's not the end of the world, but at least we would be present in the National Assembly.
00:11:09.820 But there's still two years and a half, and we're going to work very hard for those two years and a half
00:11:15.100 to make sure we're much more represented in the National Assembly.
00:11:18.580 Those polls also show that the Parti Québécois, which the separatist party,
00:11:23.920 which a lot of people thought was dead after they had a abysmal, really abysmal result in 2022,
00:11:30.780 they would come back, and we know that they want to bring back the debate on separation,
00:11:36.640 which so many people thought was finally over.
00:11:40.040 Do you think we're going to get to the point where we're again going to be talking about Quebec separatism and referendums?
00:11:46.280 It's weird because Quebecers do not want a referendum.
00:11:48.900 Quebecers, if there were a referendum today, they would vote no more than in 1980 and much more than in 1995,
00:11:55.480 the last two referendums.
00:11:56.780 So it's weird to see that the party that is proposing it is going up.
00:12:01.040 But you also have to understand that a lot of the CAC voters used to be former Parti Québécois supporters
00:12:06.520 who supported Legault, who himself is a former Parti Québécois minister, we have to recall.
00:12:11.660 And those people, when you're disappointed of your new choice, what do you do?
00:12:15.660 It's like in a couple.
00:12:16.580 Often when you divorce with your wife or your husband,
00:12:20.300 the first thing you go is you go back with your former boyfriend or girlfriend.
00:12:23.620 But unfortunately, after a few weeks or a few months, you figure out that it's much worse.
00:12:28.540 And that's the reason why you left in the first place and you're looking for a new home.
00:12:32.380 And I think that's what's going to happen, politically speaking, in Quebec in the next few months.
00:12:36.180 I guess lastly, you kind of touched on what I was going to close off with.
00:12:40.560 A lot of the Parti Québécois people are actually, I would argue, culturally and even socially conservative.
00:12:47.280 Are you confident that you can win enough over?
00:12:50.620 Yes, there's a lot of, you know, all the people who are on the right of the political spectrum,
00:12:55.360 and even centre right now, I think that we can offer a good alternative.
00:12:59.660 The Parti Québécois is becoming more and more radically on the left on many issues.
00:13:04.920 And people are not maybe aware of it because, you know, it's a new leader and it's, you know, they're not complete.
00:13:11.120 They haven't talked that much about their policies, but I'm quite confident that over the next few months,
00:13:16.600 because on many issues, you see it, we're always alone.
00:13:19.160 Like, the four parties, they are often unanimous on huge issues and we're the only ones saying, no, it makes no sense.
00:13:24.860 And I think that we're going to be able to bring back all those common sense people.
00:13:28.660 And there's also going to be a federal election coming up in Quebec.
00:13:31.980 We could make a breakthrough as conservatives in Quebec.
00:13:34.940 And I think that's going to also, you know, pump up the base.
00:13:38.640 And I think that's also going to bring back a lot of conservatives home.
00:13:42.400 Eric Duhem, thank you so much, as always, for making time at this conference to speak to us.
00:13:46.680 Thank you very much.