Juno News - Quebec’s conservative movement is growing

00:00:00.000 Welcome back to the Andrew Lawton Show. We don't do a lot of Quebec politics on the show and a

00:00:12.500 part of it is because it is just this this different animal as I've always said and it's

00:00:16.260 something that I don't have a foothold in as much as I do in other forms of politics but it is

00:00:22.480 important we've got an election coming up and there's a new conservative party which I think

00:00:26.760 is very very much worth pointing out and acknowledging. My colleague Elie Kensin-Nantel

00:00:32.560 has been doing a fair bit of coverage on this at True North but also I think it's important to

00:00:37.740 point out that the CAQ the party led by Francois Legault which is in government now ran last time

00:00:43.920 as a conservative party and it became the province that had the most draconian restrictions in Canada

00:00:49.940 as far as COVID is concerned from curfews to the threat of taxing the unvaccinated you name it.

00:00:56.600 So Roy Eepin I have known for many many years he's a physician in Montreal he's also

00:01:01.680 the Quebec Conservative Party's candidate in Notre Dame de Grasse and a fantastic supporter

00:01:07.020 of independent media and True North and he joins me now. Roy it is great to talk to you thanks for

00:01:12.900 coming on today. Thank you for having me on. I mean oftentimes I just want to sort of put this out

00:01:18.940 there for the non-Quebeckers in the audience first there I think is this mystical quality of Quebec

00:01:24.720 politics and that it doesn't really exist on the same plane sometimes and the same coalitions and

00:01:31.120 fault lines as politics in the rest of Canada so what is it that the Conservative Party of Quebec has

00:01:37.220 really been about in this election what are the issues that are really defining your and your party's

00:01:42.740 campaign. So Eric and I are friends for quite a time and Eric has done something quite remarkable he's

00:01:52.520 trying to move the the conversation from the Sovereignist Federalist kind of perspective and

00:01:59.300 really talk about issues that affect everyday life so things like the pandemic things like economic

00:02:06.700 affordability things like the rights of children and the rights of adults and the you know we we

00:02:12.380 basically want more freedom. He took the party from 500 members when he first joined when he first became

00:02:19.740 our leader to 60,000 members right now which is pretty much astonishing and you know we we've gone from

00:02:30.220 0.5% of the polls to about 20% of the polls which is also pretty astonishing. One thing that I saw in the

00:02:38.380 last Quebec election a lot of Conservatives that were supporting Francois Legault and the the CAQ

00:02:44.860 as an alternative from the Liberals an alternative from the Parti Quebecois but a lot of these people

00:02:50.540 very disappointed I think one of the primary frustrations is outside of COVID the opposition and

00:02:57.500 hostility to oil and gas development for example and also you look at COVID protocol Quebec had

00:03:03.580 among the strictest COVID measures in the country curfew threat of a tax on the unvaccinated are you 0.96

00:03:10.220 sensing when you talk to people that you're trying to court the votes of that there was some buyer's

00:03:15.980 remorse in the last election? Oh very much so very much so if you look at Mr Legault's uh promises that

00:03:23.420 he made he's broken pretty much all of them he said he was going to cut taxes he didn't he said he

00:03:29.340 was going to reduce the size of the civil service he actually grew it tremendously he said he was going

00:03:34.700 to allow liquid natural gas uh uh exploration he he broke that promise um in fact there there's a lady

00:03:43.500 that was celebrating his victory at one of his victory parties who now is voting against him so I think

00:03:50.380 there's a lot of buyers remorse I mean he he kind of tried to put himself off as sort of uh middle of

00:03:56.780 the road or even a little bit to the right and he he's not he's the same leftist as anyone else uh

00:04:02.860 running you know uh in in Quebec we are we are the new new voice for change

00:04:11.020 I've heard from a lot of people specifically anglophones in Quebec and just this increasing

00:04:16.140 marginalization which obviously has been going on for many years now but I mean even just absurdly

00:04:21.100 earlier in the campaign Francois Legault apologized for having a French or an English page on his

00:04:26.780 website in addition to a French page so so there is really no place in the existing Quebec political

00:04:34.460 structure for the English minority is there um so that that was kind of embarrassing and on top of it um

00:04:45.500 he refused to debate in English um there will be no English debate in this uh in this election campaign

00:04:53.820 um Eric on the other hand has been very open to the English community um and other communities in Quebec

00:04:59.820 um he has his his nationalist side but he he thinks that Quebecers should all be equal and and and unite

00:05:07.820 you know Francois Legault tries to separate people and we try to unite people um he's he's done interviews

00:05:15.660 with all kinds of in English uh people he did a big interview with Jordan Peterson a few weeks ago uh

00:05:22.780 which has gotten hundreds of thousands of hits um Eric Eric is very open and and and uh the English

00:05:32.620 community should stop feeling held hostage by the Liberal Party and and and look at other alternatives

00:05:39.500 and that's actually happening um we have a new law called build 96 which is quite oppressive towards

00:05:47.260 English and other minorities and our party opposes it because it it violates the Quebec human rights 1.00

00:05:54.460 code 38 times any law that violates the the human rights code of a province that many times has something

00:06:02.620 seriously wrong with it so the Liberal Party of Quebec which has been the traditional party of the

00:06:07.980 Anglophone minority um has has done its best to drive the Anglophone minority away they voted twice for this 1.00

00:06:15.900 oppressive Bill 96 on third reading they did vote against it but not before they made it worse um and

00:06:22.140 because of that 15 of their 30 members from the last uh legislature have resigned and are not running

00:06:29.740 again so the Liberals are in in main in in major in main trouble and I think that as Eric says the English

00:06:37.980 community should not feel held hostage by the the Liberal Party of Quebec just on Bill 96 I I just saw

00:06:45.820 the other day that Otterbox the you know the largest uh cell phone case provider is no longer letting

00:06:51.580 Quebecers purchase cases because they're not convinced they're able to be compliant right now

00:06:57.020 with that so it it's not just about you know this proclamation that yes we support the French language

00:07:03.100 there are very real world economic consequences to some of these things and and I I do think people

00:07:08.060 suffer from them I I want to just turn to health care though this is obviously your specialty not just as a

00:07:12.940 candidate you're a physician you have been for for many years you've come out and and talked about

00:07:18.860 some very I mean what I would say for a lot of politicians are third rail issues on health care

00:07:23.900 which is looking at a way to deliver services better and not just rely on government government

00:07:29.420 government and I was wondering if you could explain I mean your personal approach to this but also your

00:07:32.700 parties so I along with several other doctors and health professionals wrote our uh health policy uh we saw from the

00:07:41.340 pandemic that we basically did not have a functioning health system that was able to to actually cope

00:07:48.140 with all these things um so we looked at various other systems uh of doing health care we ranked quite

00:07:55.100 lowers for uh health care uh compared to other countries and we looked at countries that did better

00:08:01.260 um you know people will immediately say that I'm trying to mimic the United States we're not we are actually

00:08:08.140 trying to mimic Sweden um Sweden has a system with private health care uh we would like eventually

00:08:15.740 to have a private hospital uh the Swedish system also has a 30 60 90 day guarantee where after 90 days

00:08:22.540 if the state does not give you health care the the state will be required to pay for private health care

00:08:28.860 uh we also want to uh allow insurance um to pay for uh health care which will be tax deductible

00:08:36.460 um and was allowed under the Shaouli decision um which was several years ago but the Quebec government

00:08:42.300 seems to have completely ignored the supreme court ruling saying that that that was possible

00:08:47.500 um we have many other things uh for instance one of the other things I find very interesting that

00:08:52.620 we have in our is that we're giving autonomy insurance so you can buy autonomy insurance when you're

00:08:58.300 younger um or even when you're older to get you into a better nursing home or keep you at home

00:09:04.940 we think the best thing for older people and and people who have illness is to try and keep them 1.00

00:09:09.900 as home as much as much as possible um so this would also open up secondary markets for more private uh

00:09:18.380 nursing homes and other such uh things we also want to change the way that health care is paid for

00:09:24.860 instead of giving block grants to hospital we would uh allow uh grants to follow the patient uh depending

00:09:31.260 where they wanted to go so we would get even public institutions to uh compete with each other

00:09:38.140 talking about pandemic response specifically it was hospital capacity those issues you just alluded to

00:09:44.300 that was used by government not just in Quebec elsewhere in Canada as well as justification for

00:09:49.660 these measures that are just in my view completely antithetical to a free society the idea that in Quebec

00:09:54.780 people were fined for walking outside their own homes after 8 pm the fact that people were for a time

00:10:01.660 threatened with uh having to pay the government a fine if they were not vaccinated i mean do these

00:10:07.660 things that all fit in with the vision that the conservative party of Quebec has for the province

00:10:14.380 uh certainly not we believe in freedom we believe in freedom of choice and we believe that in in in all

00:10:20.620 things Quebecers the individual Quebecer is better informed and better able to make decisions for his

00:10:27.500 own life than than the government the government should have given advice um and and and left it at that um

00:10:36.380 you know we had some of the worst lockdown measures in north america but we had some of the worst death

00:10:41.740 rates in north america so a did not lead to b uh and why is that we basically have a system of uh care for

00:10:52.300 elderly people which failed we also banned people the families of these elderly people from going to

00:10:58.780 visiting them in these so-called uh health uh health facilities they're called chlds um and basically these

00:11:08.700 these older people were not allowed to see their families for prolonged periods of time and that

00:11:13.900 caused uh depression that caused neglect i mean families came to wash their family members they came

00:11:21.740 to feed their family members they kept them uh company and i think we basically should have spent a

00:11:28.060 lot more time examining the harms rather than the unproven benefits and the the evidence is coming out more

00:11:35.980 and more that these there were no ben there were very few benefits and what we did do was cause a

00:11:41.340 lot of trouble to elderly and young people um and in fact we have uh something in our platform that says

00:11:48.380 that if we were in power we would actually say that if those kind of measures were needed to come back

00:11:53.340 we would have to have 80 an 80 percent 90 majority in the house in order for that to pass so they would

00:11:59.740 have to be broad broad consensus and we would also want a lot more discussion than that

00:12:05.660 happen and we would not silence the opponents we would allow everyone to speak and then make a

00:12:10.220 decision and then the politicians should be responsible for that um there needs to be more

00:12:15.420 separations between public health and the politicians uh and there are there there were things from the

00:12:21.340 cbc showing that the the government the the cac government was looking for uh reasons to for that

00:12:28.700 second lockdown there was no reason for that second lockdown it was it was purely political theater

00:12:35.820 one thing when you talk about just the the shake up or makeup rather of the assembly in quebec i've

00:12:41.500 seen some of the polling and i know there's the obligatory caveat that the only poll that matters

00:12:45.500 is the one on election day but nevertheless polling that shows the the cat could have a significant

00:12:51.180 increase from from its seat count in the previous assembly and while your party is polling at 20

00:12:58.620 it's possible that with the distribution that could amount to no seats so do you feel that there is some

00:13:04.460 system change that's needed so that when you have a party like yours or another one that's commanding

00:13:09.580 a one-fifth of the vote potentially or even more that that equates to representation

00:13:13.660 so we don't actually have a an official uh policy on uh on uh changing the voting system though

00:13:22.060 interestingly enough the cac and two of the other parties actually said they would have changed the

00:13:26.940 voting system but once again mr lago actually is not able to keep any of his problems yeah like that's

00:13:32.380 the federal liberals it's all well and good until you uh get a majority with a minority of votes and

00:13:36.460 then uh well maybe the system's fine the cac is more like the federal liberals than anything else

00:13:42.220 unfortunately um and they're quite a divisive uh party but you know i i i don't think that's

00:13:49.580 going to happen i think there are several strongholds that we have in in both regions uh both those

00:13:55.100 seats are very much in play there are several seats in quebec city that are in play and there are even a

00:14:01.020 few seats in montreal that are in play i'm you know it's it's actually quite remarkable in my writing

00:14:05.900 i'm running at around 14 15 according to main street uh who's a polling company and uh out of

00:14:11.980 toronto or ottawa i can't remember which um but uh i mean that sounds like a little but remember my

00:14:19.260 party was running at 0.5 percent in that writing and uh kathleen wild the previous uh mna won that 0.56

00:14:26.060 writing was over 65 percent of the vote um so you know we are making progress and and uh the other

00:14:34.700 problem in in this election is the funding model in quebec so the maximum donation you can give on an

00:14:41.180 off year is for a political party is one hundred dollars um which basically makes it very hard for

00:14:47.900 a new party to to to to get funding and in an election year you can give two hundred dollars and

00:14:53.580 you don't even give it to the party you give it to a covet who then gives it to the party so you know

00:15:00.940 it it severely limits fundraising but in spite of that we we have managed to raise quite a lot of money

00:15:06.780 good good well obviously we'll have to see what happens on election day roy eepin dr roy eepin

00:15:14.060 candidate for the uh conservative party of quebec in notre dame de gras good luck roy and thanks so

00:15:19.420 much for coming on today thank you andrew thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the

00:15:25.260 program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - September 29, 2022

Quebec’s conservative movement is growing

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