EXCLUSIVE： Éric Duhaime Conservative Party of Quebec chats with Matthew Horwood
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
199.05453
Summary
Eric Dumas is the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, a party that has grown from 500 members to over 58,000. In this interview, he talks about the party's rapid growth, his vision for the future of the party, and why he thinks Quebec is more conservative than other Canadian provinces.
Transcript
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This is Matthew Horwood reporting from the Western Standard.
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I have here Eric Duhem, the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec.
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Very good. You just had an address where you said that the party has grown from 500 members to over 58,000.
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What do you owe this rapid growth to over the past couple of years?
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I mean, the government has been way too interventionist over the last two, three years.
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Many of us voted for the CAC, the current government of Francois Legault in Quebec,
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and were very, very disappointed of what he did.
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He did the opposite of what we were promised during the election campaign.
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You know, Quebec's civic rights have never been as bad.
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Our individual freedom has never been as little respected as it has been over the last two years.
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Our democracy has been put on pause for over two years.
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I think there's a lot of people who are unsatisfied and are looking for a true change,
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We're the voice of freedom in Quebec as we speak.
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So it sounds to me like you're very critical of the public health measures right over the bridge.
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You've had some of the toughest restrictions in Canada.
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What do you think of the response to COVID that has happened over the past two years?
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Well, obviously, it was abusive measures that have been adopted by Quebec, like many other jurisdictions.
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So, as you rightly pointed out, we still have the mask compulsory.
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There's all sorts of things that have been done in Quebec that were not done elsewhere.
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And even with the worst measures, we have, right now, the worst record in terms of deaths in Canada per capita.
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So, if the measures were working, we would know.
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We hit our mental health over the last two years and for no results.
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And I would assume that, like Conservatives in English Canada, or most Conservatives, you are against the idea of vaccine passports and mandatory vaccines?
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For me, every Quebecer is equal and every citizen has the same rights.
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And I was not proud to live in a province where we were asking people to show a proof of vaccination to get in public places.
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It was the first time in our history and hopefully the last one.
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Could you tell me a little bit about the difference between Quebec Conservatism and English Canada Conservatism?
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My boss, Derek, he said that you are more Conservative than Albertan Conservatives.
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Let's say, let's talk about the health care reforms.
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In Quebec, we're openly talking about the importance to add the contribution of private sector.
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If I become Premier of Quebec, there will be private hospitals managed and owned by private interests and investors.
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The strong majority of Quebecers agree that we need more private in health care.
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I think in English Canada, it's not as popular for all sorts of reasons because it's what, for many English Canadians, that's kind of something that differentiates them from the Americans, let's say.
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We know with our language, our culture, our history, our identity, we know we're not Americans.
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We don't need a public monopoly on health care.
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But on certain other issues, it's the opposite.
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Quebecers on the cultural issues want the government to intervene much more because they want to protect and promote our French language that is always threatened because we're a small minority.
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So it depends which issues we're talking about.
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And the other major difference also between Quebec and the rest of Canada in terms of conservatism is probably the decentralization.
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For Quebecers, it's very important the respect of our constitution, the respect of our jurisdictions, the respect of our regions.
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And we're all united no matter which color we are.
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Quebecers are very jealous of their jurisdictions.
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And historically, the conservative movement in Canada has been.
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And that's why today I said and I underlined the fact that it's important to respect decisions that are made democratically in Quebec at the National Assembly and not try to have the federal government to intervene and to overlap with those decisions.
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Speaking of the federal government's power over Quebec, what do you think of the issue of separatism?
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Quebecers have paid tremendously because of that debate.
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We've spent almost half a century debating about that issue.
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There's no appetite right now to go back there.
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We need to produce gas and oil locally in Quebec.
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We need to give more freedom of choice to parents in the education of their kids.
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We need to lower taxes because we're one of the most taxed states in the continent.
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So there's a lot of things that we want to do, and we want to move on from a linguistic and constitutional crisis.
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A very divisive issue has gotten a lot of attention in English Canada, particularly.
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Look, the Quebec National Assembly adopted a bill on that.
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There's kind of a bon entente right now, kind of a peace.
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And the last thing we need to do is to reopen that can of warm.
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As I said, there's other reforms we need to do, and I don't think we need to split Quebecers on such issues again.
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What would you say your main issues are with the Liberal government and how they've been governing over the past couple of years?
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Well, first off, they're spending way too much.
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I mean, for me, the equity between generations is something very important,
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and I don't like to see the government indebting the youth that badly.
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It's terrible what Justin Trudeau has been doing here.
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It's the worst legacy ever, and unfortunately, we don't feel it yet because the people who are going to feel it the most are not even born yet.
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I really, really don't like the way that guy's spending right now.
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On the constitutional side, obviously, he's a centralist.
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He thinks out of what knows best and everything, and that's something else that I don't appreciate.
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I don't think it's the role of the federal government to intervene on everything.
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I think he should mind his own business more often.
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Did you catch the conservative leadership debate last night?
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Any candidates you really favored or did not favor?
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First off, I liked it because, you know, there was a lot of fight,
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and personally, I like it when it's a little bit rough.
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We all say we're against violence, but when they're fighting, we're screaming, and we love it.
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Both the two main candidates did a very good job, I think.
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And for me, you know, there's a lot of side shows, and it's okay,
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because we like to see the fight and to see how they react in such a circumstance.
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But overall, I think there's a lot more that unites us as conservatives right now than divides us.
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If I look on fiscal issues, I think that, you know, we have two fiscal conservative leaders
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that are much closer to each other than they could be close to Justin Trudeau.
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The same thing, like for us in Quebec, we have a huge project,
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like $14 billion of liquefied, the natural gas, LGN, Saguenay, in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region.
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Both candidates are supporting the project, even if the government of Quebec is against it,
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and we are supporting it as conservatives in Quebec.
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So we're very happy to have the support of both candidates.
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On health care reforms, I think they're also open to give us the power
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to act the way we want to do with our health care reforms that we're proposing.
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So, you know, at the end of the day, I think we're going to have a much better leader,
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no matter who wins, than the current prime minister.
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What do you think of Jean Charest's performance last night?
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Now, he was attacked for being, you know, a liberal in conservative clothing,
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but many people pointed out that he was actually very fiscally conservative
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when he was the premier of Quebec. What are your thoughts on that?
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Well, yesterday I found Jean Charest quite aggressive.
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I think it's the first time during this leadership debate that we saw him a little bit on the attack.
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And so that was something new that I've noticed a lot.
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In terms of content, I didn't see a lot of differences from what Pierre and Charest were saying since the beginning.
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I think it's quite similar to what we've saw since the beginning of the campaign.
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Personally, because I'm leading the provincial conservatives,
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I don't want to intervene on the federal scene because I have a lot of people in my team who work on both sides.
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And I don't, you know, people don't like to have a leader of a provincial party telling them how to vote federally.
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So I'm going to stay neutral until the end of that debate.
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I got to ask you, because this is a subject that a lot of our viewers and our readers really enjoy.
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Do you have any thoughts on the World Economic Forum and their role in Canadian politics and things of that nature?
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Look, I'm not, I hear a lot about it and we hear a lot of things that are going on.
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But for me, I'm not influenced in any way, form or shape by them.
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I've never been in touch with anybody linked to them or that I know of.
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And so for me, you know, it's, I don't really know how much impact they're having.
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But I think, like, if I take the example of what happened in Quebec and the reason why the government went so far
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and went over the top on health measures during the crisis,
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I don't think it's because there was international influence.
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I think it was a lot by, they were governing by polls and we had a lot and it's normal.
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We had a lot of seniors who were insecure when the virus arrived
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and they were looking at, you know, getting those support, those votes.
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And instead of looking at the well-being of the population and the collateral damage of their measures,
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they were strictly focusing on COVID and they've imposed us abusive measures.
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I think the polls played a major role in the bad decisions that were made by the Legault government in Quebec.
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And a lot of health care experts have said that lockdowns were needed
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because we didn't have enough health care capacity in our provinces.
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And of course, now we've had a lot of unvaccinated nurses being let go.
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What are your thoughts on increasing health care capacity in Quebec
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and making sure that lockdowns for, you know, God forbid, a future pandemic are not needed?
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That's why I want to add the contribution of the private sector.
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I mean, any monopoly is no good and the public monopoly on health care is no good.
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And unfortunately, it became a dogma in Canada.
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I seriously believe that we need some competition.
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We need hospitals to compete against each other.
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And it was broke, actually, even before COVID arrived.
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The COVID only has put the spotlight on it and now we know it more than ever.
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It is inefficient and it will be inefficient if we don't fix it,
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if we don't add the contribution of the private sector.
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Like any kind of business, a public monopoly always ends up with a lot of waste.
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And last question is, what is your plan to beat Francois Legault
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I'm going to tell Quebecers that we're in favour of restoring
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and respecting their civic rights, respecting our democracy,
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respecting our individual rights, respecting free markets.
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I think citizens are fed up of government intervening way too much in their lives
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And this is what the Conservative Party of Quebec will propose to them.
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Well, Eric Duhaym, very good to speak with you.