What makes the Quebec Conservative Party different from other parties？
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, I catch up with Quebec Conservative Party Leader Eric Duhaime to talk about how his campaign is coming along, the legacy media's coverage of his party, and what he's looking forward to in the upcoming election.
Transcript
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Ili Canté-Nantel here for True North at the Hôtel V in Gatineau,
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where Quebec Conservative Party leader Eric Duhem
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is announcing his latest candidate for the upcoming provincial election.
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because the once very small party that only received 1.46% of the vote
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in the last provincial election has placed second in some polls,
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I had the opportunity to catch up with Duhem to ask him a couple of questions,
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including how his election readiness is coming along,
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what he thinks of the legacy media's coverage of him and his party,
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as well as what are his expectations going into the campaign period.
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How many candidates does your party have now for the election
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and are you satisfied with the team that you've built?
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Absolutely. We are now at 108 candidates out of 125.
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We'll have another 10 candidates to announce within the next few hours.
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And the election is now, what, 54, 55 days ahead of us.
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So it's going to be a great sprint and we're looking forward to it.
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Obviously, with the election comes media coverage.
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The CBC ran a piece where it claimed that 30% of your candidates
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were linked to conspiracy theories and what they call right-wing extremists.
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What do you make of the legacy media putting reports out there
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suggesting that your candidates are conspiracy theorists and have links to extremism?
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It's always surprising that because someone shared a link or liked a page
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or made a comment somewhere, they're automatically labelled.
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It's weird that they're not concerned about the fact that a cabinet minister of Legault's government
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has been accused three times by the ethics commissioner for patronage or conflict of interest.
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But they're trying to find out, you know, someone who I've shared something on the link.
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And you have to understand that over the last two years,
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being a conspiracy theorist is just that you were against the government on any issues
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and you were not like all the members of the National Assembly of the four other parties
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who were all saying, yes, yes, yes, Mr. Legault, as soon as you were asking questions,
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they were saying that you were a conspiracy theorist.
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So I think that, you know, we have to calm down.
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Those accusations are completely false and it's a disgrace that some reporters are paying too much attention to that.
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Right. François Legault's CAC has been running an ad on TV which features an old woman
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saying that no one could have handled the pandemic better than him.
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Considering that Legault's pandemic response included some of the harshest lockdowns in all of Canada,
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a vaccine passport that restricted access to church and to groceries in Walmart and Costco,
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and that also put in a curfew twice even when around 90% of the population was vaccinated.
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What do you make of the fact he seems to be proud of his response
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First off, he underpaid that poor old woman who gave her a check of $200.
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Well, it works like $10,000 or $20,000 according to the estimates done by the unions of Acter.
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The other thing that is surprising with those ads is that, you know,
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well, my answer to that is who would have done worst?
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Because we were the province where we've been the most locked down.
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The curfews, the restaurants were shut down for the longest period of time.
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The only place where the construction industry was shut down.
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Quebec went the furthest of all the provinces in Canada.
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And we have by far, to this day, the worst record in terms of death of COVID.
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So if the measures were so good and he's done everything so perfectly,
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how come we're the worst in the country and one of the worst in the continent?
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I'm wondering why, how could they say such a thing?
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I mean, it's a disgrace that they're trying to say that no one would have done better.
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So the Conservative Party in 2018 got 1.46% of the vote, no seats.
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And the Main Street poll had you at 24%, almost a quarter of support, which is extraordinary.
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So going into this campaign, what would you consider a victory?
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Would it be one seat, 10 seats, opposition or forming government?
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Well, honestly, if you asked me the question a year ago,
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I would have said to get elected personally and have a few percent or more.
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But nowadays, as you said, it's changing very quickly.
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Obviously, the party went from 500 members to 60,000 members,
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from 1% in the polls to 15%, 19% or 24%, depending of which polling firm you believe in.
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we have the biggest amount of donors right now in Quebec this year.
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We also, we've been invited to the leaders debate that are going to be held during the election campaign.
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So, I mean, we've already, you know, did much, much better than what we were expecting.
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We were going to have 125 candidates out of 125 seats.
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In terms of votes, well, it's not, it's the privilege of every single Quebec voter to do that.
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And no matter how many there's going to be, it's going to be a victory.
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Because if the Conservative Party of Quebec wasn't there,
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the four other parties are so similar that many of us would have stayed home.
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And what the Conservative Party contribution is going to be is that we're going to increase the participation rate,
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which is great, not just for the Conservatives, but for democracy in Quebec.
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So, one of the reasons attributed for your growth has been your strong opposition to the COVID measures.
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You're one of the only political leaders in all of Canada that has stood up against the lockdowns and the mandates
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So, moving forward four years from now, hopefully when there's no more COVID and it's no longer a prominent issue,
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how does your party stay relevant and not become irrelevant like maybe the Parti Québécois has over the years?
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Well, we're a Conservative Party, and that means also that we want lower taxes.
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We're the only ones who are going to propose decreasing taxes for all Quebecers during the election campaign.
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We want to suspend tax on gas with what's going on with the inflation right now.
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We're the only ones also who are ready to open up the door to the private sector in health care.
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We're also the only ones in Quebec right now that say it's time to exploit our gas and oil in Quebec.
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We're the only ones who are saying that we should fund all parents who need a kindergarten for their kids,
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And so there's a lot of things where we're completely different,
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and we're going to show that and we're going to have the opportunity to talk about it
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when we reveal our platform on Sunday and during the whole election campaign.
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True North will continue to bring you independent coverage of the Quebec provincial election.
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