The six candidates for Erin O’Toole’s replacement have an appointment in Laval on Wednesday night for what is likely to be the only French debate on the race for leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (PCC).
The game will feature six party-certified candidates, Pierre Poilievre-considered a favorite-, Jean Charest, Patrick Brown, Leslyn Lewis, Roman Baber and Scott Aitchison.
The debate, which will take place from 8 pm to 10 pm EDT, will be followed by a series of press briefings with each of the candidates. All will be broadcast on ICI RDI and on Radio-Canada.ca.
Eleven themes will be discussed: immigration; inflation; public safety; health; the strategy to use to win more seats in Quebec; official languages; environment and energy; trade and supply chain; foreign law; and the future of the party.
Under the race rules, all certified candidates must participate in official debates organized by the party. Mr. Poilievre, however, informed it Wednesday that he did not intend to participate in the late evening press briefing.
This will be the second official career debate, the CCP who organized the first game on May 11 in which the member for Carleton prominently promised to replace the Governor of the Bank of Canada if he became Prime Minister.
This commitment notably prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to defend the independence of the central bank.
Poilievre’s statements also prompted Conservative finance critic Ed Fast to leave office, saying the candidate is undermining the credibility party on economic issues.
Mr. Fast is part of a group of 14 federal MPs who support Jean Charest in his leadership career. Mr. Poilievre relies on the support of 54 elected officials, as well as other influential party members, including former minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn.
The debate on Wednesday night will be moderated by activist Marc-Olivier Fortin. It will be held in the Royal Castle, a reception hall on the Boulevard du Souvenir.
This will be a great opportunity for activists – as well as for the population at large – to judge the fluency of aspiring leaders in the Miron language.
Pierre Poilievre and Jean Charest are known bilinguals, but this is not the case for all candidates. Leslyn Lewis, for example, had to stick to a script prepared in the French -language debate of the 2020 race, in which she participated.
Candidates have until June 3 to sell membership cards CCP, after which it will be too late to register for the mail vote that will take place this summer. The winner will be announced on September 10th.
The third and final official game may be arranged in the interim, according to the rules established by the Organizing Committee for the election of the leader. But there is little chance that other debates will take place outside this framework.
An initial exercise – in which all candidates, except Patrick Brown – participated – was held on May 5 as part of the 14th Canada Strong & Free Network networking conference. Jean Charest was notably booed after describing the convoy of truckers as “illegal”.
Another debate was to be arranged by the Independent Press Gallery of Canada, next Monday, but it was canceled, only three candidates promised to participate.
More details are next.
Source: Radio-Canada
