Juno News - August 16, 2022


What makes the Quebec Conservative Party different from other parties？


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

187.73839

Word Count

1,329

Sentence Count

74


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Ili Canté-Nantel here for True North at the Hôtel V in Gatineau,
00:00:05.240 where Quebec Conservative Party leader Eric Duhem
00:00:07.940 is announcing his latest candidate for the upcoming provincial election.
00:00:12.240 The PCQ is an anomaly in Canadian politics
00:00:15.300 because the once very small party that only received 1.46% of the vote
00:00:20.860 in the last provincial election has placed second in some polls,
00:00:25.620 with one poll giving the party 24% support.
00:00:30.000 I had the opportunity to catch up with Duhem to ask him a couple of questions,
00:00:33.900 including how his election readiness is coming along,
00:00:37.440 what he thinks of the legacy media's coverage of him and his party,
00:00:41.400 as well as what are his expectations going into the campaign period.
00:00:46.160 How many candidates does your party have now for the election
00:00:48.980 and are you satisfied with the team that you've built?
00:00:51.380 Absolutely. We are now at 108 candidates out of 125.
00:00:55.920 We'll have another 10 candidates to announce within the next few hours.
00:00:59.220 We're revealing our platform on Sunday.
00:01:02.600 So we're kind of in a sprint right now.
00:01:05.200 There's so many things to do.
00:01:06.720 And the election is now, what, 54, 55 days ahead of us.
00:01:11.580 So it's going to be a great sprint and we're looking forward to it.
00:01:16.560 Obviously, with the election comes media coverage.
00:01:19.160 The CBC ran a piece where it claimed that 30% of your candidates
00:01:23.400 were linked to conspiracy theories and what they call right-wing extremists.
00:01:28.380 What do you make of the legacy media putting reports out there
00:01:31.400 suggesting that your candidates are conspiracy theorists and have links to extremism?
00:01:36.280 It's always surprising that because someone shared a link or liked a page
00:01:40.000 or made a comment somewhere, they're automatically labelled.
00:01:42.940 It's weird that they're not concerned about the fact that a cabinet minister of Legault's government
00:01:48.680 has been accused three times by the ethics commissioner for patronage or conflict of interest.
00:01:56.440 And that doesn't make the big news.
00:01:58.060 But they're trying to find out, you know, someone who I've shared something on the link.
00:02:01.920 And you have to understand that over the last two years,
00:02:03.920 being a conspiracy theorist is just that you were against the government on any issues
00:02:08.440 and you were not like all the members of the National Assembly of the four other parties
00:02:13.000 who were all saying, yes, yes, yes, Mr. Legault, as soon as you were asking questions,
00:02:16.880 they were saying that you were a conspiracy theorist.
00:02:19.140 So I think that, you know, we have to calm down.
00:02:22.240 Those accusations are completely false and it's a disgrace that some reporters are paying too much attention to that.
00:02:28.080 Right.
00:02:28.520 Right. François Legault's CAC has been running an ad on TV which features an old woman
00:02:33.180 saying that no one could have handled the pandemic better than him.
00:02:37.560 Considering that Legault's pandemic response included some of the harshest lockdowns in all of Canada,
00:02:42.860 a vaccine passport that restricted access to church and to groceries in Walmart and Costco,
00:02:47.480 and that also put in a curfew twice even when around 90% of the population was vaccinated.
00:02:54.160 What do you make of the fact he seems to be proud of his response
00:02:57.500 and campaigning on that response?
00:03:00.320 It's very surprising.
00:03:01.280 First off, he underpaid that poor old woman who gave her a check of $200.
00:03:06.060 Well, it works like $10,000 or $20,000 according to the estimates done by the unions of Acter.
00:03:12.880 The other thing that is surprising with those ads is that, you know,
00:03:15.940 when they say no one would have done better,
00:03:17.960 well, my answer to that is who would have done worst?
00:03:20.760 Because we were the province where we've been the most locked down.
00:03:24.520 The curfews, the restaurants were shut down for the longest period of time.
00:03:28.960 The only place where the construction industry was shut down.
00:03:32.220 And we can go on and on and on and on.
00:03:34.340 Quebec went the furthest of all the provinces in Canada.
00:03:37.620 And we have by far, to this day, the worst record in terms of death of COVID.
00:03:42.880 So if the measures were so good and he's done everything so perfectly,
00:03:47.480 how come we're the worst in the country and one of the worst in the continent?
00:03:51.420 I'm wondering why, how could they say such a thing?
00:03:54.040 I mean, it's a disgrace that they're trying to say that no one would have done better.
00:03:57.800 It's actually the opposite.
00:03:58.840 No one would have probably done worst.
00:04:01.100 Right.
00:04:01.500 So the Conservative Party in 2018 got 1.46% of the vote, no seats.
00:04:06.360 Now some polls have put you in second place.
00:04:09.080 And the Main Street poll had you at 24%, almost a quarter of support, which is extraordinary.
00:04:16.100 So going into this campaign, what would you consider a victory?
00:04:19.480 Would it be one seat, 10 seats, opposition or forming government?
00:04:23.220 Well, honestly, if you asked me the question a year ago,
00:04:25.480 I would have said to get elected personally and have a few percent or more.
00:04:30.180 But nowadays, as you said, it's changing very quickly.
00:04:33.900 Obviously, the party went from 500 members to 60,000 members,
00:04:38.980 from 1% in the polls to 15%, 19% or 24%, depending of which polling firm you believe in.
00:04:45.740 We're also the party that is raising the big,
00:04:49.080 we have the biggest amount of donors right now in Quebec this year.
00:04:52.680 And the growth keeps going.
00:04:54.400 We also, we've been invited to the leaders debate that are going to be held during the election campaign.
00:04:59.880 So, I mean, we've already, you know, did much, much better than what we were expecting.
00:05:05.880 We were going to have 125 candidates out of 125 seats.
00:05:09.920 So I think we already have a huge success.
00:05:13.120 In terms of votes, well, it's not, it's the privilege of every single Quebec voter to do that.
00:05:17.960 And no matter how many there's going to be, it's going to be a victory.
00:05:20.040 Because if the Conservative Party of Quebec wasn't there,
00:05:22.480 the four other parties are so similar that many of us would have stayed home.
00:05:25.840 And what the Conservative Party contribution is going to be is that we're going to increase the participation rate,
00:05:30.640 which is great, not just for the Conservatives, but for democracy in Quebec.
00:05:34.020 Right. And one last question.
00:05:36.320 So, one of the reasons attributed for your growth has been your strong opposition to the COVID measures.
00:05:44.480 You're one of the only political leaders in all of Canada that has stood up against the lockdowns and the mandates
00:05:49.060 when it wasn't popular to do so.
00:05:50.940 So, moving forward four years from now, hopefully when there's no more COVID and it's no longer a prominent issue,
00:05:58.600 how does your party stay relevant and not become irrelevant like maybe the Parti Québécois has over the years?
00:06:05.260 Well, we're a Conservative Party, and that means also that we want lower taxes.
00:06:09.820 We're the only ones who are going to propose decreasing taxes for all Quebecers during the election campaign.
00:06:14.720 We want to suspend tax on gas with what's going on with the inflation right now.
00:06:18.820 We're the only ones also who are ready to open up the door to the private sector in health care.
00:06:23.420 We're also the only ones in Quebec right now that say it's time to exploit our gas and oil in Quebec.
00:06:29.140 And I can keep going on and on and on.
00:06:33.400 We're the only ones who are saying that we should fund all parents who need a kindergarten for their kids,
00:06:38.700 not just the public monopoly.
00:06:41.140 And so there's a lot of things where we're completely different,
00:06:43.920 and we're going to show that and we're going to have the opportunity to talk about it
00:06:47.320 when we reveal our platform on Sunday and during the whole election campaign.
00:06:52.200 True North will continue to bring you independent coverage of the Quebec provincial election.
00:06:56.700 To support our work, please visit donate.tnc.news to make a donation.
00:07:02.460 For True North, I'm Élie Cantén-Antaire.
00:07:03.920 They're not there or are you.