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Quebec election: Poilievre victory seen as good news for Conservative Party of Quebec

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MONTREAL — Pierre Poilievre’s successful bid to lead the federal Tories bodes well for the Conservative Party of Quebec, which is running in the provincial election on similar messages, analysts say.

Sylvie Trottier said she jumped for joy when she learned that Poilievre on Sept. 10 won the leadership race with a resounding 68 per cent on the first ballot.

Trottier, a Quebec Conservative party supporter who was at a recent campaign event in Montreal with party leader Éric Duhaime, said Poilievre won her over when he went to Ottawa last winter to visit the “Freedom Convoy” — the massive protest against COVID-19 restrictions that blockaded the streets surrounding Parliament Hill.

Poilievre “has a lot of ideas that are similar to Duhaime,” said Trottier, 66. “He wants to take care of the people, and he is for the freedom of expression and for individual liberty .… It will create a wave for the Conservatives here.”

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Louise Poudrier, the Quebec Conservative candidate in Montreal’s Hochelaga-Maisonneuve riding, said her party — which has no official ties with the Conservative Party of Canada — shares values with Poilievre like freedom of expression and smaller government.

“For people who are part of the Conservative alliance, the fact that Mr. Poilievre was elected leader of the federal Conservative party is a good sign; it’s encouraging for us,” Poudrier said in an interview. “It says to us that we’re not alone in sharing these values.”

Frédéric Boily, a University of Alberta professor who studies Canadian and Quebec politics, said the federal Tory leadership race is “good news for Éric Duhaime in the sense that it bolsters his message, which has similarities with that of Pierre Poilievre.”

Boily said Duhaime and Poilievre benefited from discontent with public health measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. And while almost all of those measures have now been lifted, public resentment lingers, he said.

“It creates the conditions for a certain kind of political message, one that finds the state goes too far, that the state spends too much, that the state is indebting itself,” he said in a recent interview, adding that inflation has contributed to that resentment against the government.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also allowed Poilievre and Duhaime to talk about their support for a liquid natural gas plant and pipeline in Quebec’s Saguenay region. The day after Poilievre’s win, Duhaime highlighted their shared support for the natural gas project, describing Poilievre as a longtime friend who volunteered on his failed 2003 provincial election campaign.

“We have a shared understanding of many issues,” Duhaime told reporters, adding that, like many of his party’s supporters, he is also a member of the federal Conservative party.

Poilievre won almost all of Canada’s 338 ridings in the leadership race, including 72 of Quebec’s 78 ridings.

Frédérick Guillaume Dufour, a professor at Université du Québec à Montréal who studies political sociology, said Poilievre’s performance in Quebec was surprising because the province has not traditionally supported politicians like Poilievre who have a caustic style and libertarian leanings.

“I think it demonstrates that there’s a market for ideas that are more populist, more libertarian in Quebec, and right now, it’s Éric Duhaime who occupies that political territory,” Dufour said in a recent interview.

Support for smaller government isn’t entirely foreign to the province. The Action démocratique du Québec — the party that Duhaime stood for in 2003 — advocated for reducing the role of the state in Quebec society. That party merged into the Coalition Avenir Québec in 2012.

Since taking office 2018, the CAQ has moved to the centre-right, and pandemic-related health measures introduced by the CAQ government came with significant state intervention in the economy. The CAQ’s move to the centre has created space for a more fiscally conservative party on the right, Dufour said.

As well, CAQ Leader François Legault sees the state as a tool for his nationalist economic policies, Dufour said, adding that Duhaime is a supporter of more free markets.

Despite Poilievre’s impressive success in Quebec during his leadership campaign, Boily and Dufour say it’s not clear that the new Conservative leader is well known among Quebecers who aren’t federal Tory party members.

And with recent polls placing support for the CAQ above 40 per cent — compared to slightly below 20 per cent for the provincial Conservatives — Legault’s party appears to remain the choice of conservative Quebecers, Boily said. “The largest part of the Quebec right remains incarnated by the Coalition Avenir Québec.”

Quebecers go to the polls Oct. 3.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2022.

 

Jacob Serebrin, The Canadian Press

Politics

Trump faces political risks as trial begins – NBC News

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April 15, 202400:53

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As Donald Trump the candidate overlaps with Donald Trump the defendant, new polling finds that many crucial independent voters consider his trial to be a serious issue. NBC News’ Hallie Jackson reports.

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Florida's Bob Graham dead at 87: A leader who looked beyond politics, served ordinary folks – Toronto Star

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A leader like Bob Graham would be a unicorn in the hyper-partisan politics of today.

The former Florida governor and U.S. senator wasn’t a slick, slogan-spouting politician. He didn’t have an us-against-them mentality. Sometimes, he even came across as more of a kind-hearted professor just trying to make the world a better place.

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The Earthquake Shaking BC Politics

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Six months from now Kevin Falcon is going to be staggering toward a catastrophic defeat for the remnants of the BC Liberals.

But what that will mean for the province’s political future is still up in the air, with the uncertainty increased by two shocking polls that show the Conservatives far ahead of BC United and only a few percentage points behind the NDP.

BC United is already toast, done in by self-inflicted wounds and the arrival of John Rustad and the Conservative Party of BC.

Falcon’s party has stumbled since the decision to abandon the BC Liberal brand in favour of BC United. The change, promoted by Falcon and approved by party members, took place a year ago this week. It was an immediate disaster.

That was made much worse when Rustad relaunched the B.C. Conservatives after Falcon kicked him out of caucus for doubting the basic science of climate change.

Falcon’s party had fallen from 33 per cent support to 19 per cent, trailing the Conservatives at 25 per cent. (The NDP has 42 per cent support.) That’s despite his repeated assurances that voters would quickly become familiar with the BC United brand.

BC United is left with almost no safe seats in this election based on the current polling.

Take Abbotsford West, where Mike de Jong is quitting after 30 years in the legislature to seek a federal Conservative nomination. It’s been a BC Liberal/United stronghold. In 2020 de Jong captured 46 per cent of the votes to the New Democrats’ 37 per cent and the Conservatives’ nine per cent.

But that was when the Conservatives were at about eight per cent in the polls, not 25 per cent.

Double their vote in this October’s election at the expense of the Liberals — a cautious estimate — and the NDP wins.

United’s prospects are even worse in ridings that were close in the 2020 election, like Skeena. Ellis Ross took it for the BC Liberals in 2020 with 52 per cent of the vote to the NDP’s 45 per cent.

But there was no Conservative candidate. Rustad has committed to running a candidate in every riding and the NDP can count on an easy win in Skeena.

It’s the same story across the province. The Conservatives and BC United will split the centre-right vote, handing the NDP easy wins and a big majority. And BC United will be fighting to avoid being beaten by the Conservatives in the ridings that are in play.

United’s situation became even more dire last week. A Liaison Strategies poll found the NDP at 38 per cent support, Conservatives at 34 per cent, United at 16 per cent and Greens at 11 per cent. That’s similar to a March poll from Mainstreet Research.

If those polls are accurate, BC United could end up with no seats. Voters who don’t want an NDP government will consider strategic voting based on which party has a chance of winning in their ridings.
Based on the Liaison poll, that would be the Conservatives. That’s especially true outside Vancouver and Vancouver Island, where the poll shows the Conservatives at 39 per cent, the NDP at 30 per cent and United lagging at 19 per cent. (The caveat about the polls’ accuracy is important. Curtis Fric and Philippe J. Fournier offer a useful analysis of possible factors affecting the results on Substack.)

And contributors will also be making some hard choices about which party gets their money. Until now BC United was far ahead of the Conservatives, thanks to its strong fundraising structure and the perception that it was the front-runner on the right. That’s under threat.

The polls also mark a big change in the NDP’s situation. This election looked like a cakewalk, with a divided centre-right splitting the vote and a big majority almost guaranteed. Most polls this year gave the New Democrats at least a 17 per cent lead over the Conservatives.

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