Juno News - April 07, 2023


The future of conservatism in Quebec (feat. Eric Duhaime)

Topics
allegiance to King electoral reform debates
Mentioned
Pierre Valliere Legault Trudeau Gabrielle Nadeau-Dubois Ellie Cantin-Nittel Quebec Solidaire Pierre Poilievre Claire Samson Pascal Derry Eric Duhem Québécois Al-Gabwe
These men REALLY want to “read” to your kids Smith puts the CBC on notice

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

184.49

Word count

2,394

Sentence count

188

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we catch up with the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, Eicards Duhaime, to talk about the recent election victory, the challenges facing the Coalition Avenir Quebec government, and his plans for the future.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.240 I'm here at the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference with the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, Éric Duhaime.
00:00:08.600 We've talked to Éric several times before the Quebec election, but we are yet to catch up with him.
00:00:15.000 So today, I have the pleasure of doing that.
00:00:18.300 Éric, I do have to ask, since the election, we're now in March, how are you doing? How is the party doing?
00:00:24.380 We're doing very well, actually. As you know, the party went from 1% to 13% in the last election on October 3rd.
00:00:33.480 You know, it's the largest increase of a political party in Quebec's history.
00:00:36.740 Like, a party never went from 0 to 13 in one shot. We did it, and we're very proud of it.
00:00:41.800 Unfortunately, it didn't translate into seats. It was a five-way race.
00:00:46.440 We lost the closest race of them all. We lost them, unfortunately, in the Quebec City region. 1.00
00:00:52.060 So we're happy with the votes we got. We got 530,000 Quebecers voting Conservative provincially, but we don't have seats.
00:01:01.120 So we have to make sure that we keep going on that momentum to increase the pressure that we're putting on the government
00:01:06.680 and make sure we're visible within the next four years.
00:01:09.380 Yeah, for sure. And it was an incredible game to see a lot of Quebecers who maybe would have never identified themselves as Conservatives before.
00:01:18.560 I do have to ask this week, the group without the budget, what do you make of his budget?
00:01:24.740 Well, there's positive things, actually. He's decreasing income taxes by 1%.
00:01:29.300 We were proposing 2%, but we're taking credit a little bit of it because if we hadn't been there in the election campaign,
00:01:35.900 he wouldn't have promised to cut taxes like he did.
00:01:41.680 He also is talking now in favour of two private hospitals in Quebec because we've been pushing to make sure that we add the contribution of the private sector in healthcare.
00:01:50.940 But that being said, unfortunately, Mr. Legault is only copying parts of our programme, not the total programme.
00:01:56.140 And he's not cutting the spending of Quebec State, and he's increasing it more than the growth of our economy.
00:02:03.760 And what he's doing is that he's pushing more debts on the back of the young generation.
00:02:08.460 And that's what scares us off, actually.
00:02:11.240 So, you know, he's funding his tax cuts by the wrong way.
00:02:14.580 And on the other side, also, he, you know, he's a statist.
00:02:20.360 I mean, healthcare spending, for example, is going to go up by 7.7% this year, which is unsustainable in the long run.
00:02:27.480 So we're still pushing.
00:02:29.760 We see the impact we're having, but we need to also make sure that we get the message out that Legault is going halfway of what needs to be done.
00:02:37.800 Right.
00:02:38.840 There was a debate at the start of the new National Assembly session with the serment, not the serment, the allegiance to the king, with the Partis Québécois not wanting to make that allegiance.
00:02:52.400 It was now made optional.
00:02:54.080 Where does the Conservative Party, which, you know, the Conservative Party is federally and in other provinces are quite monarchist.
00:03:00.080 So where do you stand on the...
00:03:02.700 I'm not a monarchist, obviously.
00:03:04.200 The monarchy is not that popular in Quebec, especially not among francophones.
00:03:10.180 But that being said, it's a very symbolic thing to do.
00:03:14.240 It doesn't change much in the work.
00:03:16.500 And it's unfortunate that while, you know, we have huge problems with our debt, we have huge problems with our health care system,
00:03:22.620 we have huge problems with the exploitation of our natural resources, we can't balance the books.
00:03:27.240 And the top priority of many politicians in Quebec City is to talk about the queen or the king.
00:03:34.680 I think that, you know, unfortunately, we're not focusing on the right issues.
00:03:39.220 So, you know, they have the right to sit even if they don't give the allegiance to the king.
00:03:45.660 But that being said, I don't think it should be the number one priority.
00:03:48.940 A quick follow-up.
00:03:50.120 Had you been elected, would you have given allegiance to the king?
00:03:52.800 I would have.
00:03:53.700 Not because I believe in the king or the monarchy per se, but because I think it's part of the tradition and of the respect of the institutions.
00:04:00.460 It's been there forever.
00:04:01.900 Even the Bloc Québécois, MPs here in Ottawa, they did it for years.
00:04:05.940 They always did it.
00:04:07.520 So, it's not...
00:04:08.600 And does it make them less Québécois or less separatists?
00:04:11.380 Not at all.
00:04:11.940 I mean, it's...
00:04:13.140 You know, when you're elected, you also have to respect the rules.
00:04:15.960 And I thought that was part of the rules.
00:04:17.660 That's how I see it as a conservative.
00:04:19.220 Yeah, for sure.
00:04:20.680 Another controversy that arrived in Quebec that was the Islamophobia special appointee.
00:04:27.480 The rest of Canada was very happy to see Mrs. Amir al-Gabwe tackle this issue.
00:04:31.500 And Quebec, not so much, mostly because of her criticisms of Quebec.
00:04:34.400 And it got to the point where even the left-wing Quebec Solidarity Party said that she should not have the job.
00:04:40.660 Why do you think, unlike the rest of Canada, Quebec was so opposed to Mrs. Al-Gabwe, even if she apologized for her comment?
00:04:49.400 Well, she's supposed to be there to fight discrimination, why herself made statements that were very discriminatory against Quebecers.
00:04:58.080 So, I find it very ironic that Mr. Trudeau, who's always saying that discrimination is terrible,
00:05:04.340 he's nominating someone that is very controversial because she was part of the discriminatory system in Quebec.
00:05:09.400 And it's a huge problem.
00:05:13.360 I mean, if you don't want to be discriminated, well, don't discriminate others.
00:05:16.960 And that woman, she apologized at the end of the day. 1.00
00:05:20.580 She refused to apologize for a while.
00:05:22.820 She ended up apologizing because she had no choice because otherwise she would have been kicked out.
00:05:27.500 But it was too little, too late in my book.
00:05:30.220 That woman does not deserve to have the top job that Trudeau gave her. 1.00
00:05:33.740 Right. Kind of on a similar topic, you brought up discrimination.
00:05:38.760 We're seeing now in our universities, the woke universities, new forms of discrimination in the name of anti-racism,
00:05:45.400 in the name of equity, diversity and inclusion ideology where, for example, at the University Laval,
00:05:51.200 where they don't certain positions for the Canada Research Chairs were for anyone except able-bodied white men.
00:05:59.120 When the minister, Pascal Derry, has denounced that, why?
00:06:04.140 She denounced it, but she did nothing.
00:06:05.600 It's still going on.
00:06:06.680 So she made a statement to look good among a base, a small C conservative base, but she did nothing.
00:06:12.260 She had the power to stop that and say, we're not accepting any funds if you're promoting discrimination,
00:06:17.640 no matter if it's for wokeism or diversity or call it like you want. 0.56
00:06:22.900 You know, it's pure hypocrisy from the left.
00:06:24.880 That's the way we need to say it, because they're saying that they want to fight discrimination by promoting discrimination.
00:06:30.740 They say they want to promote freedom by depriving people from the freedom of speech or freedom to, you know, to be themselves.
00:06:38.100 I mean, there's something that is completely false.
00:06:40.900 And I think we're not fighting back enough.
00:06:43.240 We need to stop wokeism. 0.88
00:06:45.340 And in Quebec, there's still a lot of, how could I say, resistance vis-Ă -vis wokeism, much more than we see in English Canada, actually.
00:06:54.980 Yeah, and a follow-up to that.
00:06:56.380 Why do you think that is?
00:06:57.240 Because Quebecers, in many ways, are quite progressive.
00:07:00.360 They're more pro-abortion, for example.
00:07:02.080 They tend to favor more sexual liberty.
00:07:05.180 But when it comes to woke, they're so against woke.
00:07:09.420 An example I can think was that the debate, one of the debates during the election, Pierre, what's his name, the QS leader, said the name...
00:07:19.080 Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said the name of Pierre Vallière's book with the N-worded it on television to prove he wasn't woke.
00:07:25.260 The extreme left was using the N-word.
00:07:27.480 Yeah, so why do you think Quebecers are so anti-woke?
00:07:31.180 Well, because, you know, it came from the U.S.
00:07:34.040 It's not part of us.
00:07:35.020 And we have to stop those English Canadians who are anti-American.
00:07:38.220 And on the left, usually, they're anti-American.
00:07:40.340 But it seemed that when there's something crazy out of our border, they're the first one to import it.
00:07:44.740 And they're very American in their politics, actually, because this is not Canadian.
00:07:49.840 This is American politics.
00:07:52.120 And we're not Americans.
00:07:53.440 And we shouldn't invite those useless debates on our campuses.
00:07:59.200 And our governments should make sure that, you know, the freedom of speech is still present there, the freedom of the press, that people should be able to say what they have to say.
00:08:09.140 And it's, I mean, you know, there's a lot of things that the Americans are doing well, but obviously it's not wokeism.
00:08:15.500 No, for sure. And you're right, like almost every single woke concept and idea comes from the U.S., specifically academia, sociology departments.
00:08:23.120 And it's not compatible with Canadian values because it's an individualist type of ideology.
00:08:28.900 Let's move on to you and your party.
00:08:31.440 You had been fighting to have access to the National Assembly, to the press gallery in the National Assembly.
00:08:36.420 How is that going?
00:08:37.500 Have you been able to get in?
00:08:38.520 It's weird because the CAC is giving us things that they're depriving us from basic things.
00:08:43.520 Unfortunately, it's the biggest democratic distortion in Quebec's history.
00:08:47.500 13% of the population right now does not have the right to get within the National Assembly.
00:08:52.160 We have zero seats out of 125, even if we got 13% of the vote.
00:08:56.680 The Liberals got 14% of the vote.
00:08:58.720 And they have 20 members right now sitting within the National Assembly.
00:09:03.160 So, you know, and if you include Quebec Solidaire, the Parti Québécois, and us all together, we got more votes than the CAC.
00:09:11.580 And all together, we have 14 seats versus 90 for the CAC.
00:09:16.140 So it gives you an idea of the problem that we're facing in Quebec.
00:09:20.280 There's a lot of people who feel that their votes were spoiled, were useless.
00:09:24.700 And I think that before being a CAC leader, Mr. Legault should be a statement.
00:09:30.060 And he should acknowledge that democracy exists.
00:09:32.980 And he should try to correct that instead of amplifying the problem that we're facing right now.
00:09:37.860 Just a short follow-up.
00:09:39.600 Are you in support of electoral reform?
00:09:41.420 Well, we're going to have a huge debate.
00:09:43.260 We have a convention coming up in the fall.
00:09:45.840 We're going to have, you know, some debates and some votes.
00:09:48.960 You know, you can't be in favor of a democratic reform by imposing it against the will of your members.
00:09:55.020 We didn't discuss that.
00:09:56.200 You know, we're a new party.
00:09:57.140 I've only been the leader for less than two years now.
00:10:00.440 We had only one convention.
00:10:02.340 We're going to have another one.
00:10:03.480 And it's going to be part of our discussions.
00:10:05.640 And we'll see how the members are going to vote.
00:10:08.260 You have been trying to court some of the CAC MPs.
00:10:11.580 Yes, openly.
00:10:12.680 I do want to, though, challenge that a bit.
00:10:15.080 The people in those writings voted for the CAC to have a CAC MP.
00:10:20.180 Don't you think it may be a bit undemocratic to try to get them to put a Conservative MP when they didn't vote for that?
00:10:26.800 I find that funny that our opponents are saying that because there's 13% of Quebecers who voted Conservative
00:10:32.080 and we have 0% of 125 members and that they call it democracy.
00:10:36.720 If there's one single person who wants to represent 13% of the population, that MP will not represent only his constituents who voted Conservative.
00:10:45.260 He's going to represent 530,000 Quebecers in the National Assembly.
00:10:49.320 That, I find it much more democratic than the current system that we live in.
00:10:53.160 And lastly, you know, you, of course, had this incredible rise.
00:10:58.060 Despite the fact you didn't win seats, you still won a lot for a party, going from 1% to 12%.
00:11:03.740 But a lot of that was maybe 13%.
00:11:06.700 13%, sorry.
00:11:07.440 There we go.
00:11:08.020 Well, that's a...
00:11:09.340 A lot of that may have been attributed to the fact that people were very upset with the way that Legault handled the pandemic.
00:11:15.740 How do you stay relevant going into the next election without that anger?
00:11:19.680 And because you don't have a seat versus you at least had Claire Samson last time that crossed the floor,
00:11:24.820 how do you get that number maybe even more next time?
00:11:28.020 First of all, it's true. The reason why we went up is in big part because there was those lockdowns
00:11:35.060 and a lot of people were furious at the government because Quebec government was one of the worst of them all
00:11:40.140 in terms of managing that pandemic.
00:11:44.100 That being said, you know, the reasons why we were opposing the Legault rules on that
00:11:50.060 are the same ones why we're opposing his plan on controlling the energy today
00:11:54.160 or the reasons why we're promoting the addition of private health care. 0.82
00:11:58.060 It's because we're the promoters of individual freedom.
00:12:01.160 We're against the control by the big government.
00:12:03.780 And that's going to happen in all other issues.
00:12:06.800 Every single day, there's new issues arising.
00:12:09.520 And it's always the same approach that we're having.
00:12:11.440 And what made us popular last election is what's going to make us even more popular in the next election.
00:12:17.060 And the advantage we're going to have in four years that we didn't have now
00:12:19.900 is that we only had one year to organize, to fundraise, to prepare for the election.
00:12:24.480 Now we have four years ahead of us.
00:12:26.580 We're more well-known now than we were.
00:12:28.920 We were completely unknown a year and a half ago when I took over the leadership of the party.
00:12:34.020 Now more and more people know we exist.
00:12:36.540 There's going to be a federal election, hopefully, in the next few months.
00:12:39.160 We're hopefully going to have a new prime minister in Canada with Pierre Paulyev.
00:12:43.040 And I think that's also going to boost our brand in Quebec.
00:12:46.640 So for all those reasons, I'm very optimistic for the future of conservatism in Quebec.
00:12:51.120 This was Éric Duham, leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec,
00:12:55.140 live in Ottawa for True North.
00:12:57.500 I'm Émilie Quentin-Antel.